Trump Is Right to Hammer Environmental Lawfare

President Donald Trump’s critics are right about one thing: The first few months of his second term have been a reckoning. Starting with the federal government’s pursuit of law firms and organizations that committed lawfare against the president to hobble his political comeback, Trump has now supercharged executive authority to stop the flood of ideologically based lawsuits targeting America’s energy providers. 

In an executive order signed last week, Trump empowered Attorney General Pam Bondi to turn up the heat on local prosecutors and state attorneys general abusing the legal system with lawsuits against energy companies. He is right to do so. “Making America Great Again” has to include energy dominance and eradicating the barriers to innovation and growth at all levels of government, including courtrooms.

Trump has directed Bondi to “expeditiously take all appropriate action to stop the enforcement of state laws and continuation of civil actions” that threaten American energy dominance, including restrictive rules and civil actions against oil, natural gas, hydroelectricity, and nuclear energy projects.

What Trump is specifically targeting here is the well-resourced cadre of state attorneys general and liability “lawfare” firms that have deployed creative legal strategies to try to extract money from companies by claiming they’ve committed “climate” crimes.

This genre of lawsuit relies on the alleged violation of state nuisance or consumer deception laws, and litigators argue that the energy companies actively strove to mislead the public about their products’ impact on the climate.

A local lawsuit in North Carolina against Duke Energy, one of the largest nuclear energy utilities in the nation, provides the most baffling case. Officials in the small suburb town of Carrboro want the company to pay for the “climate-related harm” caused by its electricity generation, even though Duke Energy’s carbon-free nuclear energy fleet powers half the homes in North and South Carolina, and the region’s use of natural gas is one of the lowest per capita in the country.

Climate lawfare has a direct impact on consumers who rely on affordable energy of all types by forcing these companies to beef up their legal departments rather than improving the delivery of their goods and services. The end result is higher prices for consumers who already live on tight budgets due to the rising cost of living in other areas of the economy.

Most, if not all, of these cases are filed in blue states and launched by attorneys on behalf of city governments such as Honolulu; Boulder, Colorado; and San Francisco. The states of Minnesota, Oregon, Vermont, Maine, New York, and California each have their own lawsuits aimed at recouping the “costs” of climate change on local communities and enforcing “net-zero” energy policies. 

Net-zero policies seek to rapidly choke off fossil fuel use in order to reach zero carbon emissions by reducing them as well as removing them from the atmosphere and relying on renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and sometimes, nuclear power.

Oil companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP get hit hardest, but like in the case of Duke Energy in North Carolina, electricity utility companies get dragged into the mess as well. 

But as far as messes go, it’s one carefully orchestrated by the climate litigation industry, armed with deep pockets and patience in its quest to pull the rug out from under Big Energy.

That’s why Trump’s revamp of federalism to review many of these laws and statutes is not only legal but deeply necessary. Consumers who need affordable energy and who rely on continued innovation from the companies that power their lives should not have their standard of living cut by greedy environmental lawyers jamming up district courts where judges are ideologically inclined to their side. 

In March, the Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the deluge of Democrat state-led climate lawsuits, denying the request by red states to put a halt to the lawfare. In their dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito made clear that the court was punting on a vital constitutional case “for policy reasons.”

When the Supreme Court refuses to address the obvious abuse of our litigation system for energy providers and the consumers that rely on them, the intervention of the executive branch becomes a necessity. The most likely unconstitutional state statutes that enable these costly lawsuits should meet the wrath of a president willing to exercise some federal authority.

Trump has answered that call, and at least on this specific issue, he’s proved that our government’s unique balancing act between state and federal power does make it possible to get important things done for Americans. 

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