We're all familiar with progressive gun control groups and their lawsuits against the firearms industry - The basic premise being that gun manufacturers should be held liable when their products are used in the commission of a crime. Such litigation is designed to destroy entire industries financially rather than politically. In other words, if Democrats can't change the law and they can't change the minds of the public about 2nd Amendment rights, then they will try to force change by crippling the companies that make the guns they don't like.
The legal argument is absurd because it requires courts to assume business liability based on the misuse of their products. If someone uses a Toyota truck as a getaway vehicle during a robbery, does Toyota share in the liability of that robbery? What if the plaintiffs couldn't even prove they were robbed, or that a Toyota truck was involved? What if the entire robbery is based on a theory backed by zero concrete evidence? Should Toyota be made to pay billions or shut down operations to appease victims that cannot show they were victimized?
The answer is no, of course not, but that's not how the Supreme Court of Hawaii sees the issue when it comes to climate change.
In 2020, the city of Honolulu sued several major fossil fuel companies, including Exxon and Chevron, claiming the companies’ products cause greenhouse gas emissions and global warming without warning consumers about the risks. The city employed a series of state laws including public nuisance and trespass measures and said the companies should pay billions to the state to abate the effects of climate change like weather events, sea level rise, heat waves, flooding and global warming.
If the Supreme Court refuses to take up Hawaii’s climate activist driven lawsuit, the consequences could be *devastating* both for American energy independence and American families, more broadly.@DanaPerino and Alabama @AGSteveMarshall discuss: pic.twitter.com/r25lbSWCca
— Alliance For Consumers (@for_consumers) April 2, 2024
The success of the Hawaiian suit would set a precedent for Democrat run states across the nation, allowing them to essentially overwhelm energy companies with lawsuits until they are forced to accept Green New Deal-like parameters and apply them in every state in the US. Meaning, it won't matter if conservative states oppose the measures, they would be applied anyway.
The cost to the American public would be devastating, increasing energy expenses to levels that would make domestic manufacturing impossible and decreasing quality of life for the average citizen for decades to come.
Energy companies appealed to the Hawaii Supreme Court, arguing federal law prevents individual states from effectively shaping energy policies for all states. But that court disagreed and ruled that the case should advance to trial. At least 20 conservative states have opposed the furtherance of the Honolulu case and have asked the US Supreme Court to step in. The court is considering the case now, but if they refuse to intervene the implications for energy policy and inflation across America will be sweeping.
It should be noted that there is zero substantiated proof of a causational relationship between the oil industry, carbon emissions and global warming. All scientific evidence is based on correlation and assumption. There is also no proof whatsoever that "man-made climate change" has any effect on global weather patterns and "bad weather."
CO2 levels are actually far lower today than they have been for the majority of the Earth's history. Temperatures also deviate from CO2 levels constantly.
Beyond the lack of relationship between CO2 and temps in the past, global temps for hundreds of millions of years rose and fell without any human influence. The Earth has been far warmer than today, all without any input from oil based energy and human activity.
The climate change agenda is a farce based on faulty assumptions and faulty science. How can any serious court hold a company liable for the commission of a crime that doesn't exist?
