Honolulu

By Dana Drugmand

As climate change fuels increasingly damaging extreme weather events across the United States, litigation is growing against fossil fuel companies accused of being to blame for the devastation. But a series of recent legal moves by the industry and mixed judicial decisions underscore the challenges that local and state government plaintiffs face in the multi-billion-dollar battle.

Just last month, the industry scored a significant win when a Maryland circuit court judge tossed out a six-year-old climate liability case against more than two dozen of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies. The case, filed in 2018 by Baltimore officials, accused the companies of hiding the climate-harming impacts of their products, causing rising sea levels, severe storms, flooding, heatwaves and other “dire effects on the world.”

The fossil fuel companies successfully argued, however, that because the legal claims center on  global greenhouse gas emissions, they stretch beyond the bounds of state laws. Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are regulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and federal law – particularly the Clean Air Act – preempts state law claims pertaining to those emissions, according to the industry.

“Regulation of interstate and international greenhouse gas emissions is beyond the role of state law,” Phil Goldberg, special counsel for an industry initiative working to combat climate litigation, said in a statement.