KATELYNN RICHARDSON
CONTRIBUTOR
Major energy companies asked the Supreme Court Wednesday to reconsider a state court decision allowing Honolulu’s lawsuit against them for alleged climate damages to proceed.
In October, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled against the companies’ effort to dismiss the case on the basis that federal law prevents claims under state law, allowing it to continue to trial. The companies, which include Chevron and Sunoco, urged the Supreme Court Wednesday to intervene, noting “years might pass before another opportunity to address this pressing question comes along.”
“This case presents the Court with its only foreseeable opportunity in the near future to decide a dispositive question that is arising in every climate-change case: whether federal law precludes state-law claims seeking redress for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions on the global climate,” the petition states. “After the decision below, there is now a clear conflict on that question.”
The Supreme Court previously declined energy companies’ request to consider whether the claims in cases out of Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawaii and Rhode Island should be heard in federal court in April 2023. (RELATED: Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Handling Lawsuit Against Oil Companies Calls Climate Change An ‘Existential Threat’)
“State court litigation is not a constitutionally permissible means to establish global climate and energy policy,” Theodore J. Boutrous, the attorney for Chevron, said in a statement. “As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in dismissing a similar New York City lawsuit, ‘such a sprawling case is simply beyond the limits of state law.’”
“Honolulu will respond in court on this, and that will be the only comment on the petition,” Matt Gonser, executive director of the city’s Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Delaware Superior Court held in January that the state’s claims against oil companies for “injuries resulting from out-of-state or global greenhouse emissions and interstate pollution” were preempted by the federal Clean Air Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit likewise found in April 2021 that New York City could not bring claims against energy companies under state law, noting that “global warming is a uniquely international concern that touches upon issues of federalism and foreign policy.”
The Hawaii Supreme Court ruled on Feb.7 that there is no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public, finding that the “spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities.”
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The truly major existential threats to any society, are ‘ignorance’, and ‘poverty’, but who are you going to blame for those?
Stop selling gasoline and diesel in Hawaii. It won’t get you off the hook, but it will smarten a few people up.
And jets can’t fly on the Spirit of Aloha.
You can’t stop selling gas in Hawaii. That would hurt all the service station owners and employees.
Anyway, you need income to pay the fine, and since Big Oil gets most all its income from its customers, that’s who ends up paying. Call it a climate change surcharge, only a few bucks a gallon extra until the fine gets paid off.
And then, they will come back for more. A recipe for the ever-giving money tree. No, two weeks on ‘climate strike’ for energy suppliers would focus the mind of a great number of people, while the people on strike can be compensated without much trouble. Even one month or two months would be quite feasible.
I may have been unclear. The surcharge would be levied by the oil companies.
“once you have paid him the Danegeld/ You never get rid of the Dane”
is still as true as ever was
Exactly. No cars, airplanes, or likely electricity for that matter. Just keep fuel available for military operations only.
Hawaii, the “Rainbow State”, straddles the Tropics, and has afternoon thunderstorms that regulate its temperature to within a few degrees annually. Other than a very occasional hurricane, it has what is likely the most consistent temperature of any US state. “Climate Change”, the inaccurate pseudonym given to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is nonexistent there. How it can get by with any kind of Climate Change lawsuit is a mystery to me.
Excuse my comment, but if you want to see a happy video, watch the Climate Defiance activist, confronting Senator Manchin, get thrown through the air by security. Joe Manchin is a good guy, and I hope he crosses over to the right side.
I find it interesting to see these activists screaming that we must stop the use of fossil fuels while wearing their polyester sweaters and Tyvek jackets.
More good news, the activists that vandalized the Constitution at the National Archives have been charged with felonies.
He’s good on the AGW nonsense, however most of the rest of his positions are mainstream Democrat.
The real issue is that the Democratic party tolerates, if not sponsors, this sort of lawfare. Thus, the legacy media will accept the claims of the plaintiffs as if well founded, and not nihilistic extremism.
Of course, the plaintiff’s bar in general is a major contributor to the Democratic party, and lazy reporters can get story lines from predatory lawyers and their associated NGOs.
Democrat, not Democratic (they just hate democracy).
Democrats are now the party of Fascism, so I have nothing more to do with them. A study of Hawaiian history shows they were always Fascists from the beginning, with all that Big Kahuna nonsense. So it is no surprise they embrace the Democrats. Aloha means hello and goodbye which proves how confused they really are.
“…spirit of Aloha…” prevents gun licensing? Is it in the State of Hawaii Constitution or just the desire for things to come out as the justice wishes (which is the spirit of Democrat’s law)?
C’mon man, judges discover law, doncha know? Who needs anything written down?
It seems much like the U.K; the US also makes it up on the hoof
Good point. What’s worse is that there’s no way to predict how SCOTUS might rule if they actually accepted this case.
It would be fairly easy to cut off all oil flowing to Hawaii, let it be a test case, you complain about oil companies well then you get no more oil, make an example out of Hawaii. And yes, no more flights to Hawaii, and no more boats, they all run on FF.
I always liked the idea of sacrificing virgins.
Sounds to me like a waste of a perfectly good virgin.
Maybe they misunderstood how to do the sacrifice?
If there is no more oil being shipped to Hawaii, then any boat or plane arriving in the state will be stuck there, as there will be no fuel available to get anyone home.
Just a slowdown on deliveries would concentrate the minds of the populace.
I’m sure it would be impossible to get that by the courts but if it were possible the islands’ FF would just come from points further west across the Pacific, probably at a higher cost to the public
Hawaii used to get its oil from Russia since the Left Coast of the North American Economic Opportunity Zone doesn’t have export capabilities. Then Biden decided to lay sanctions on the NAEOZ by claiming those were actually sanctions against Russia. So Hawaii must get its oil from Libya, Sudan and Alaska at much higher prices – but the legislature voted for it 47-1 with the praise of princelings at Hawaiian Electric.
What kind of sanctions did Biden lay against part of the USA?
Story tip – The Hysteria of Climate Activists is Turning Violent – PJ Media
I see brainwashed academics and their students almost every day in Colorado. The majority are for complete electrification but are against nuclear power. They seem to think that plastics come from stores.
Their ignorance is sad as is their mental illness, but no amount of argument can change the latter.
They seem to think that plastics come from stores.
My wife recently came across a woman who didn’t know she could pick and eat a lemon from the lemon tree in her yard.
The ‘Big Oil’ defendants continue to dink around with jurisdictional technicality protests when they could instead drive a stake through the heart of the meritless accusations in these lawsuits claiming the companies ran disinformation campaigns employing ‘shill’ skeptic climate scientists designed – using Honolulu v Sunoco‘s own words – to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact).” I detailed this and other evidence problems at length in my March 19, 2020 dissection of Honolulu – the ‘leaked industry memo’ this accusation relies on was corroborated by the late Washington Examiner “LeftExposed”contributor Ron Arnold as having been rejected and never implemented. Honolulu was the 10th ‘boilerplate copy’ lawsuit filed by the San Francisco law firm Sher Edling; the days-old Chicago v BP (my dissection of that one should be online by next week) is their 19th similar copy. All of their lawsuits are enslaved to that worthless “reposition global warming” memo set, e.g. their mid Dec 2023 filings for two Native American tribes in Washington state, and all have baseless accusations aimed at Dr Willie Soon, e.g. San Mateo County v Chevron.
It appears that Chevron is going to pack up and leave California and those in San Mateo County will feel the pain of higher fuel (and other) costs, loss of jobs and tax revenues.
It’s quite ironic that what began as Standard Oil of California will become a Texas based company and the descendants of its founder (Rockefeller) are all for it.
There’s always more to these situations. Lee Wasserman, Director of the Rockefeller Family Fund arranged to have the ex-head of Greenpeace USA, John Passacantando, meet with NY AG attorneys in 2015 in part of the plan to accuse Dr Willie Soon of taking bribes from fossil fuel companies. Who’s the Associate Director of the Rockefeller Family fund? Passacantando’s wife, married to him from all the way back to when he was at Greenpeace and she was in the Dept of the Interior. Meanwhile, the accusation about skeptic climate scientists being paid to “reposition global warming” that I noted in my prior comment started getting its hugely increasing media traction at the old forgotten Ozone Action environmental group – headed way back then by Passacantando and that ‘other guy’ that RFF’s Lee Wasserman arranged to meet with the 2015 NY AG attorneys.
Cannot the oil companies counter sue for harassment? And whatever it’s called for frivolous legal action?
The Hawaii Supreme Court recently ruled that the 2nd amendment doesn’t apply in that state because “the spirit of Aloha” means it isn’t needed.
Hawaii tried outlawing legal migration for non Hawaiian US citizens in the 1980’s because too many Haoles were moving there. Aloha is a scam. The fact of the matter is that more native Hawaiians live on the US mainland than in Hawaii.
By the evidence available, Aloha is a native religious belief.
The opening line of the 1st Amendment is
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”
I’m pretty sure the ‘free exercise thereof” applies to individuals who free chose to follow certain religious precepts, not to forcefully imposing them on unwilling individuals.
Has that not also been held to apply to State laws?
The fundamental dispositive issues here are standing and proof of harm. Can any of the plaintiffs show actual, specific harm to the plaintiffs for which they should be compensated? Can they show the energy companies were the direct cause of that harm? Can they draw a direct line from the energy companies to the mythical harm? Can they show that billions of people selfishly and thoughtlessly consuming and benefiting from fossil fuels are not complicit and equally culpable—or more culpable—for the imaginary harms?
Every single one of these cases should be summarily dismissed for lack of demonstrated harm and standing, but unfortunately there is a supply of stupid judges to meet the demands of stupid people.
But the point of these cases is not necessarily to win (though that would be icing on their cake) but to harass and annoy and bleed dry the
golden goosefossil fuel producing companies. As far as they’re concerned, it’s always win-win for their side, lose-lose for the other side.Those consideration obviously do not apply to the holy cause of “climate change”.
The ignorance pervades all levels now from lib politicians to academia and right on to the very top of the corporate ladder. It has been many years since I studied economics in school but common sense is common sense. Unless I am missing something; it is hard for me to accept how many individuals at executive level or working as analysts have fallen for “ green” energy, ESG, and some of this crypto crap or prior to this 0 freaking interest rates! Let it all crash soon , I’m almost ready-
The Spirit of Aloha?
Apparently Hawaii has established a State Religion.
“…that lets citizens…”
Is isn’t just the 2nd Amendment, its also the 1st Amendment they categorically reject.
Ah, so if you receive a green paycheck underwritten by the underclass “citizen”, then you transcend mere “citizen” status – a status that has no Rights, to a Government Caste that not only recognizes the Privilege but also freely supplies the firearm, ammo and training (again, underwritten by the “citizen” underclass).
Its like 1776 never happened, and mere citizens are really Subjects to the Crown.
The court system is a disgrace.
Its practice has seriously devolved, the system itself is another matter.
I became convinced, years ago, by long consideration of what I observe happening around me, that language is something impossible to tie down to any particular meaning. If there were only one simple law, say the requirement for every dog to be licensed, as the one and only power given to government, given a bit of time, the legal class could, and definitely would, evolve this through language changes, into control of every aspect of everyone’s life.
I don’t think very many people know that the words and terms of the original Constitution took their meaning from Bouvier’s Law Dictionary. Over the years, many important concepts have been redefined by the courts simply by taking a very different definition of various words from more contemporary law dictionaries that reflect what influential individuals or groups want the laws to be. Thus have many liberties been lost in the dark of general ignorance.
I love visiting Hawaii, but it boggles my mind that so many people there have no idea how dependent they are on fossil fuels. Hawaii has basically no natural resources to support the current population; they are at the end of a 2,500 mile supply chain of cargo ships and jet aircraft, all burning fuel by the ton.
The electric grids of the various islands are not connected, and while the big island may have enough land for wind and solar to supply their grid, Oahu and Maui do not. Not to mention all those solar panels and wind turbines would have to be imported by the aforementioned cargo ships. In spite of 30+ years of building wind/solar/geothermal plants almost 80% of electricity generated in the state still comes from oil, although they did manage to close the last coal plant in 2022.
A state court has explicitly brought religion, as a proscription against rational discourse, into a decision it is declaring as law. That ought to be enough to have it overturned on Constitutional grounds.