WILLIAM RAU

The despair of climate scientists over failure to counter global warming — a theme in my last two columns — is buttressed by the on-again/off-again policies of our government. Remember the renewable energy initiatives of the Carter Administration? Ronald Reagan rapidly scuttled them as signified by his immediate removal of the solar panels Jimmy Carter had placed on the White House roof. And, if Donald Trump is elected this fall, he will outdo Reagan by reversing Joe Biden’s extensive climate initiatives. Lavish fossil fuel industry contributions to the GOP will ensure this outcome.

While there are numerous grounds for despair should Trump win, climate angst may be premature. Why? Because there are other ways to address global warming that might compensate for weak federal legislation or regulation. Tort law is one of them. Going back to the Romans, tort law empowers courts to impose compensatory and punitive damages on defendants that negligently or intentionally cause injury or financial loss to plaintiffs. Rather than jailing wrongdoers, courts order full compensation for plaintiffs’ losses.

Until recently, climate science lacked the precision to link global warming to, say, a specific hurricane or heat wave or to towns or counties. Now, however, climate models have become so precise that they can connect effects of greenhouse gas emissions to areas as small as 2-kilometer grids. Next, the development of extreme weather attribution science can determine the likelihood that fossil fuel emissions are responsible for a specific heat wave or hurricane (Zeng 2021). As a result, lawyers now believe that the connection between emissions and particular extreme events is strong enough for tort law contests (St. Martin 2024).

One of the stronger contests will involve the Great Pacific Northwest Heat wave of June 2021, which Heather White (2023) notes, “was one of the most anomalous regional extreme heat events to occur anywhere on Earth since temperature records began.” And its link to fossil fuel emissions is extraordinarily strong. According to attribution scientists, this heat wave “would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change” (Philip et al 2022).

The list of damage is grim: 800 excess deaths in Canada plus another 600 in Washington and Oregon, 651,000 dead farm animals, large losses of grain production, billions of clams, crabs, mussels, oysters, etc. boiled alive, 175 wildfires with the complete destruction of some towns, post heat wave landslides from flooding caused by excessive glacier and snow melt leading to extensive damage to highways, railways, and bridges.

As a result, Multnomah County, Portland, Ore., has filed a tort claim agains 15 fossil fuel companies and two efforts by defendants to move the case from state to federal court have failed. Appeal to the Supreme Court is likely to fail also because the Supremes have already denied three other efforts by oil companies to change jurisdiction due to a bedrock principle of federalism: “violations of state laws belong in state court” (Brown 2024).

It is therefore likely that a jury of Oregonians could eventually decide Exxon and its many compatriots owe the County of Multnomah $51.5 billion for acts of public nuisance, negligence, fraud & deceit, and trespass. That raises an interesting possibility. Given the scale of damages that lie ahead, city, county, and state governments may have the legal means to bankrupt the most profitable, powerful, and destructive industry on planet Earth.

References

• Brown, Alex. 2024 (Jul 14). After a long slog, climate change lawsuits will finally put Big Oil on trial. Daily Montanan; https://dailymontanan.com/2024/07/14/after-a-long-slog-climate-change-lawsuits-will-finally-put-big-oil-on-trial/
• Philip, Sjoukje Y., et al. 2022 (Dec 8). Rapid attribution analysis of the extraordinary heat wave on the Pacific coast of the US and Canada in June 2021. Earth System Dynamics; https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/13/1689/2022/
• St. Martin, Victoria. 2024 (Jul 9). Oregon Suit Blaming Oil Firms for 2021 Heat Dome Disaster May Have a Shot. Mother Jones; https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/07/oregon-suit-blaming-oil-firms-for-2021-heat-dome-disaster-may-have-a-shot/
• White, Rachel, et al. 2023 (Feb 9). The unprecedented Pacific Northwest heat wave of June 2021. Nature Communications; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36289-3
• Zeng, Xubin. 2021 (Aug 25). Is climate change to blame for extreme weather events? Attribution science says yes, for some – here’s how it works. Conversation; https://theconversation.com/is-climate-change-to-blame-for-extreme-weather-events-attribution-science-says-yes-for-some-heres-how-it-works-164941