{"id":1538,"date":"2026-06-08T12:40:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T12:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=1538"},"modified":"2026-06-08T12:40:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T12:40:31","slug":"sneaky-leftist-lawsuits-are-taking-aim-at-us-energy-dominance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=1538","title":{"rendered":"Sneaky leftist lawsuits are taking aim at US energy dominance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Midway through 2026, energy is the issue of the moment.<\/p>\n

The standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, soaring gas prices, the race to build AI data centers, and intensifying competition with China all point to the same question: Who will produce the energy that powers the modern world?<\/p>\n

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That question is now headed to the US Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

In a few months, the justices will hear arguments in one of the most consequential energy cases in decades, Suncor v. Boulder County.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of dozens of lawsuits brought by progressive state and local governments seeking to make oil and gas companies pay for global warming.<\/p>\n

The high court\u2019s decision could determine not only the future of climate litigation, but whether the United States remains an energy superpower.<\/p>\n

If the justices greenlight Boulder\u2019s climate claims, the sky\u2019s the limit on the liability costs the energy industry could face.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit\u00a0cites damages \u201cin the billions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just a starting point \u2014<\/strong>\u00a0in an identical case, a single Oregon county is seeking more than\u00a0$50 billion\u00a0in climate damages.<\/p>\n

Together, these cases threaten to extract hundreds of billions of dollars from America\u2019s energy sector.<\/p>\n

And make no mistake, these costs would be passed on to consumers, just as green mandates have spiked gas prices and electricity bills in\u00a0California, New York,\u00a0Europe, and\u00a0elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The architects of these lawsuits openly admit what\u2019s going on: One of the legal strategists behind the Boulder case has said that the goal is to impose a de facto \u201ccarbon tax\u201d through the courts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a rather convoluted way to achieve the goals of a carbon tax,\u201d David Bookbinder of the Environmental Integrity Project said last year. \u201cThe people who use the products pay for the damage that they cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since carbon-emitting fuels still make up\u00a0over 80%\u00a0of US energy consumption, pretty much every American would be forced to pay up.<\/p>\n

Strip away the legalese, and the core dispute at the center of the climate cases is simple: Does the federal government set US energy policy, or a patchwork of states and localities?<\/p>\n

As we wrote in our friend of the court\u00a0brief last month, the answer will have dramatic consequences on both the domestic economy and US foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Start with a simple fact: Global energy demand is\u00a0surging. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s a good thing. Billions of people in developing nations still consume less energy per capita than Europeans did in the 19th century. Their path to modern living standards will require the same products the developed world used to get there: steel, cement, fertilizers, plastics \u2014 all of which require carbon-intensive production.<\/p>\n

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Their soaring energy needs help explain why fossil fuels made up the same sizable share of global energy usage last year \u2014 87% \u2014 as they did in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe post-oil world remains far in the future,\u201d\u00a0admits David Sandalow, an environmental bureaucrat in the Clinton and Obama administrations.<\/p>\n

So if global demand for oil and gas won\u2019t vanish anytime soon, the question is who will supply that energy: the United States, or unstable foreign petrostates.<\/p>\n

Not long ago, Europe was\u00a0dependent\u00a0on natural gas piped in from Russia; today, it\u00a0leans on\u00a0American energy exports to keep the lights on.<\/p>\n

That shift would have been impossible without US companies like Houston-based Cheniere Energy, which sent approximately\u00a070%\u00a0of its total liquefied natural gas cargoes to Europe during the first year of the Ukraine war.<\/p>\n

Yet the Boulder-style lawsuits would effectively slap a global surcharge on US energy by forcing companies like Cheniere to price in massive liability for worldwide emissions.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an international carbon tax by another name.<\/p>\n

However labeled, it would make US exports less competitive overnight \u2014 to the benefit of foreign suppliers like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Iran, which would gladly undercut US energy exports.<\/p>\n

American energy independence didn\u2019t begin with President Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

For decades, the federal government has prevented environmental policy from requiring American energy self-surrender.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The Senate unanimously rejected the 1997 Kyoto Protocol\u2019s carbon-emissions targets over\u00a0concerns\u00a0that uneven global obligations would make US businesses carry an unfair share of the costs.<\/p>\n

Even President Barack Obama opposed\u00a0schemes to impose international climate liability on the United States.<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s the Supreme Court\u2019s turn.<\/p>\n

The justices should shut down Boulder\u2019s end-run on the Constitution and reaffirm the basic principle that the nation\u2019s energy policy can\u2019t be dictated by local lawsuits.<\/p>\n

Sarah Harbison is general counsel for the Pelican Institute for Public Policy. Michael Toth is director of research at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The leftist architects of these lawsuits openly admit what\u2019s going on: A key legal strategist has said that the goal is to impose a de facto \u201ccarbon tax\u201d through the courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nSneaky leftist lawsuits are taking aim at US energy dominance - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=1538\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sneaky leftist lawsuits are taking aim at US energy dominance - 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