Courts as Battlefields in Climate Fights
By John Schwartz
The New York Times
January 26, 2010
Tiny Kivalina, Alaska, does not have a hotel, a restaurant or a movie theater. But it has a very big lawsuit that might affect the way the nation deals with climate change...
In recent months, two federal appeals courts reversed decisions by federal district courts to dismiss climate-change lawsuits, allowing the cases to go forward. In Connecticut, environmental lawyers joined forces with attorneys general of eight states and the City of New York seeking a court order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions...
The cases need not even get that far to have an impact, said James E. Tierney, the director of the National State Attorneys General program at Columbia Law School. Kivalina alleged in its complaint that the industry conspired “to suppress the awareness of the link” between emissions and climate change through “front groups, fake citizens organizations and bogus scientific bodies.”
That claim echoes those in suits against the tobacco industry that ultimately led to industry settlements and increased government regulation.
If the climate-change cases even get to the discovery stage, and if the energy industry possesses embarrassing e-mail messages and memorandums similar to those that proved devastating to tobacco companies, Mr. Tierney said, “it’s a hammer” that could drive industries to the negotiating table.
