On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a climate case that could make or break efforts to stop rising temperatures before they reach the point of no return.
Our planet is hotter than it has ever been, at any time, in the entire history of modern civilization.The six warmest years on record have all been within the last 10, and world scientists agree unequivocally that fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, is the cause.
In assessing whether the world will shift to renewables before much of the planet becomes uninhabitable, timing is everything. The non-political Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report gives only until 2030 to cap global warming at an increase of 1.5°C before climate shifts accelerate to a point that can’t be reversed. The goals of the Paris Treaty, which Trump pulled the U.S. out of because his Democratic predecessors supported it, are also to cap global temperatures at 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Americans of both parties largely support government efforts to reduce carbon emissions. But Trump’s embrace of fossil fuels is science-free: his hatred of wind turbines came from spoiled views at a golf course.
The Legal Question
Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) v. County Commissioners of Boulder County pits local government officials paying billions to rebuild from climate impacts — buildings, bridges, streets, powerlines, etc.— against major fossil-fuel companies causing those damages.
Boulder County and the City of Boulder originally sued Suncor entities and ExxonMobil in April 2018, and the lawsuit has survived repeated attempts to defeat it. In May 2025, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that federal law does not preempt Boulder’s claims, allowing state claims to proceed under nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment, and civil conspiracy laws. The fossil fuel companies have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for relief from that ruling.
Boulder officials assert that fossil fuel corporate leaders knew their product was damaging the environment, but hid the causal link between their activities and climate damage for years. Evidence is unequivocal that fossil fuel executives knew their products were causing climate change beginning in the late 1950s but lied about it. Boulder wants fossil fuel companies to reimburse them for the costs of climate impacts, instead of leaving taxpayers to bear the costs alone.
Fossil fuel petitioners in the pending case do not dispute scientific evidence linking rising temperatures to fossil fuels. Instead, they argue that federal law preempts state damage claims, that federal law shields them from all accountability for harm to the climate, and that no state law can apply because the problem is global, not local. Even though they admittedly release greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, they argue that since those gases mix with other gases released by other companies, damages can't be traced to particular sources or states.
Tobacco companies tried the same argument, claiming that specific brands or individual cigarettes could not be tied directly to a specific patient's cancer. They eventually paid out to 46 states under a Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, but that was in 1998, and the Rehnquist Supreme Court was considered balanced and fair — if conservative.
Blaming God for their own malfeasance
In 2024, Trump promised oil and gas executives that if they contributed $1 billion to his reelection campaign, he would roll back environmental regulations that cut into their profits.
He kept his promise. He and his supporters often mock scientists and accuse Democrats of “playing God” for trying to regulate climate. But data about intensifying weather patterns don’t lie, and evidence gets harder to reject when it’s your house floating down the river.
The warmer the atmosphere becomes, the more energy and moisture it holds. For every degree Celsius of warming, the air holds about 7% more water vapor. Increased moisture in the air then fuels heavier downpours and flooding, as residents living in the Northeast and Midwest keep experiencing. In western regions of the U.S., higher temperatures dry out soils and vegetation, which extends wildfires and worsens droughts. Along the coasts, warmer ocean waters contribute to intensifying hurricanes and storms that produce greater rainfall while rising sea levels push storm surges further inland.
Aside from intensifying weather, heat alone is getting harder to endure. Heat waves are becoming longer, hotter, and more common in nearly every region of the U.S. Excessive heat is now the nation's leading weather-related cause of death.
The lemming defense
Despite rising death tolls from rising temperatures, Republicans have indulged Trump’s whims of aggressive deregulation and death-spiral fossil fuel expansion. Fossil fuel companies who will tell the Supreme Court on Monday that state law cannot stop a global problem would formally dismantle the legal framework for federal climate action as well.
The pro-fossil fuel industry spends $150 million annually on federal lobbying in the U.S. alone, plus hundreds of millions more on campaign contributions, state-level advocacy, and global policy influence. Blinded by greed and entitlement to staggering ROIs, they will continue funding candidates who protect fossil fuels over human life until it is too late.
Petitioners’ argument about not knowing which fossil fuel caused which storm is a misnomer; the tobacco cases taught us the limits of that argument. Their claim that climate change is a global problem, therefore no state can make anyone pay for damage, amounts to a lemming’s dream: “Everyone is doing it.”
July 1, 2024 was the day I abandoned hope that this lopsided court would rule based on law instead of their personal beliefs. But at least this case will make the 5 federalists on the court with deep fossil fuel ties (Alito recused) choose between two deep but competing loyalties: their parents, and their children. Lets hope they rule for once to protect their children’s lives instead of their parents’ wealth.
Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.
