Towers outside cities can not sue oil companies for climate change

You can not continue your way to a solution for global warming. Judge John Keenan of the Southern District of New York on Thursday dismissed New York City's lawsuit against international oil and gas companies BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell. In the years to come, billions of dollars of damage from climate change is expected, New York hoped to extract money from transnational corporations that extract oil that people burn to raise the temperature of the planet, exacerbating storms, melting polar ice at sea level, worsening forest fires, prolonging droughts and allowing diseases to spread further and faster.

But no. The problem is not science; it's set. The problem is the law. Although the City's lawyers attempted to argue that their claim was covered by the federal common law and the courts, Keenan J. found that, ultimately, they were suing the issuers, and that the Clean Air Act has taken over. Which means that what New York wanted to do in a lawsuit is covered by the regulatory powers of the President and Congress. "Climate change is a fact of life, as the defendants do not dispute," writes Keenan. "But the serious problems caused by this are not for the judiciary to be improved." Global warming and its solutions must be addressed by the other two branches of government. "

Cities across the country are filing lawsuits, hoping to get money Money from oil companies to pay for works like dykes and infrastructure – it's been developing for decades.The oil companies have continued to market and push for lighter regulation on a product that makes life more difficult on the only planet known to all, while the US government has progressed slowly, if at all, towards the overhaul of energy production and carbon emissions.If regulation and law will not help, according to the theory, we turn to the courts

It's not going well Keenan's decision does not even come a month after a similar defeat 3,000 miles away in June to a lawsuit filed by San Francisco and Oakland against the same oil companies. This case has had the same result, this time of Judge William Alsup of the 9th Circuit: "Although the scope of the complainants' claims is determined by federal law, there are good reasons for the regulation of the global problem of global warming. be determined by our political branches, not by our judicial system, "he writes. "The problem deserves a solution on a larger scale than can be provided by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case."

The devil is that the lawyers who worked on these cases saw this flavor of defeat as a possibility all along. Back to an unprecedented "climate science tutorial", Justice Alsup arrived in March. He expressed some of these concerns. Same as the defense lawyers. "You hear them say," this is a question for the president and the executive, this strikes at the heart of our national economy, if you do that, we will be exposed to billions and billions of dollars of prosecution & # 39; ". Steve Berman, managing partner at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, the representative of California and New York cities, said in June. "The fear is that some judges will accept that and say, who am I, in a lawsuit, here, to kick off the ball by holding the companies accountable for it all?" It's an argument that they can to win. "

Indeed. And beyond that, two previous cases offered unfavorable precedents to the plaintiffs. The cities argued that global warming was damaging them, specifically and locally (and in fact, in California, they tried to file in a state court, but were turned back to the federal government). But the courts do not agree, considering carbon emissions as a global "transboundary" problem of international concern. And American Electric Power c. Connecticut (usually referred to as "AEP") and Kivalina Native Village c. ExxonMobil both concluded that the Clean Air Act "moved" the federal common law when it came to emissions

The lawyers hoped things had changed since then. The new science of attribution has helped to blame liability on specific emitters, cities have seen new costs from global warming, and the legal theory has evolved from lawsuits to broadcasts and continuing sales and marketing. Marketing While Knowing Judge Alsup and Judge Keenan adopted the main arguments we made, namely that the decision of the Supreme Court in AEP and other federal court decisions "stated Theodore Boutrous, partner of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and lawyer of Chevron. "That, I think, sounds the death knell of these kinds of lawsuits."

This does not mean that cities will not continue. They may well appeal layoffs in New York and California. Other cases are continuing in the state of Washington and Colorado. And on Friday, the city of Baltimore filed suit against 26 oil and gas companies at the Maryland State Court

. Now the rating is even steeper. Oil companies do not deny that global warming is a problem, but so far, they do not have to pay to fix it. This is feasible, but by one estimate it will cost $ 53 trillion. And the bill is coming to an end.

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