Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided a case that could go a long way toward determining whether people and their communities can sue American energy producers over harms allegedly caused by global climate change. In this case, Kivalina v. ExxonMobil, a small Alaskan village alleged that American energy companies, through their emissions, caused global climate change, and in turn, should be responsible for the melting polar ice wall that had protected their arctic village. They sought hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
The Ninth Circuit dismissed the claim. In doing so, it closed one of two escape hatches plaintiffs have argued still existed for this litigation since the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a similar case last year. In that case, several state attorneys general sought to enjoin, under federal tort law, the emissions of greenhouse gases from six of America’s largest utilities for causing global climate change. The Supreme Court held that Congress, in enacting the Clean Air Act, displaced all federal common law tort actions over GHG emissions.
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