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Climate Activists Ready Lawfare Blitz on Big Oil


Well-funded litigation would throw a monkey wrench into industry that makes modern life possible.


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BY JONATHAN DRAEGER AND CARL M. CANNON


ast september, tens of thousands of climate change true believers marched to protest President Joe Biden’s


appearance before the United Nations. Although the Biden administration


ushered into law sweeping legislation aimed at combatting global warming and earmarked tens of billions of dol- lars for alternative energy ventures, the demonstrators were not appeased. Their objective, spelled out in plac-


ards, is as specific as it is drastic: “End Fossil Fuels.” The demand is for West- ern nations to immediately ban any new oil and gas extraction projects. In Europe and the United States,


these ecoactivists have issued apoca- lyptic warnings about global warming while leveling threats against elec- tion officials, corporations, and entire industries. Some of them commit uncon-


nected acts of vandalism ranging from desecrating priceless Europe- an works of art and smashing the Magna Carta to storming the court during the finals of the U.S. Open tennis tournament and disrupting professional golf tournaments. Other actions are more on point —


and more disruptive and dangerous. Protesters have chained them-


selves to the White House gates, tied up traffic in New York City, London, and Washington, blocked bridges, and sabotaged oil pipelines. But RealClearInvestigations has learned that a far more potent weap-


8 NEWSMAX | DECEMBER 2024


DISRUPTIVE Critics call them ecoterrorists — groups like these protesters who stalled trafic on New York’s Brooklyn Bridge in September demanding a ban on fossil fuels. They usually serve to alienate the public.


on is being deployed against energy companies: A cadre of liberal lawyers, environmental activists, and attor- neys general from Democrat states and municipalities are systematically suing energy companies and demand- ing multibillion-dollar payouts. Their efforts have not risen to a


top-tier concern in American politics, but that is about to change: The lat- est iteration of “lawfare” is now fully deployed and expected to reach criti- cal mass in 2025. These well-funded lawsuits — and


there are now more than 30 of them — are not equivalent to throwing a can of soup at an art masterpiece. The coordinated litigation strat-


egy is nothing less than an attempt to throw a monkey wrench into the industry that makes modern life possi- ble — that heats and cools Americans’ homes and offices, supplies gasoline for transportation and agriculture, and powers the nation’s electrical grid. “In politics, it’s all about who can


tell the best story — and the envi- ronmental movement tells a compel-


ling story about the costs of climate change,” says Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, a think tank that supports free market solutions to global warm- ing and other environmental issues. “But the hope that we can run the


economy on solar and wind is delu- sional. We simply don’t have an econ- omy without oil.” “And it’s not just energy,” Winegar-


den adds. “Some 6,000 different prod- ucts are oil derivatives, many of them essential to everyday life.” Those commodities range from


solvents, motor oil, antifreeze, house- paint, linoleum, and synthetic rubber to heart valves, dentures, eyeglasses, cortisone, artificial limbs, car battery cases, vinyl records (and anything else made of vinyl), and basically all plastic products.


MONEY TALKS The first spate of lawsuits against oil companies for offering their products on the open market was filed in 2017 in California state courts.


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