Tort Actions a Path to Reducing Carbon Emissions? Bad Idea Says The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page

Despite the lack of real progress at the UN Climate Change Conference recently in Copenhagen and "with a failure in the U.S. Senate looming this coming year," trial lawyers and green pressure groups have joined forces to try to reduce carbon emissions by filing "nuisance" law suits against major carbon emitters, The Wall Street Journal editorial page has opined ("The New Climate Litigation," Dec. 28, 2009).

The editorial said in part:

What unites these cases is the creativity of their legal chain of causation and their naked attempts at political intimidation. "My hope is that the court case will provide a powerful incentive for polluters to be reasonable and come to the table and seek affordable and reasonable reductions," [Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal] told the trade publication Carbon Control News. "We're trying to compel measures that will stem global warming regardless of what happens in the legislature."

Mull over than one for a moment. Mr. Blumenthal isn't suing to right a wrong. He admits that he's suing to coerce a change in policy no matter what the public's elected representatives choose.

The editorial goes on to worry that:

The courts would become a venue for a carbon war against all. Not only might businesses sue to shackle their competitors...but judges would decide the remedies against specific defendants. In practice this would mean ad hoc command-and-control regulation against any industries that happen to catch the green lobby's eye.

Well that's certainly one side of the "climate litigation" argument. The trial bar (and some states' attorneys general for that matter) undoubtedly has another. This is an issue that is not going away anytime soon (in the absence of strong federal action on the matter), and will undoubtedly make for some interesting posturing by all sides of the carbon issue.