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Four years after the climate lawsuit pushed by the New York Attorney
General’s office was dealt a comprehensive defeat, California is putting forward its own case based on the same debunked theory that completely
fell apart for Eric Schneiderman all those years ago – ironically, on New York’s turf and apparently ignorant that the Empire State’s loss even
happened.

California’s lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Rob Bonta, follows a pump
fake by former AG Kamala Harris and a decade-long pressure campaign from wealthy donors, academics, and fringe activist groups to file litigation. Ironically, the lawsuit filing comes against a backdrop of Californians
paying some of the highest prices in the country for gasoline and
electricity.

Now, with California joining the flailing nationally-coordinated climate litigation campaign, and Gov. Gavin Newsom set to discuss the case during
the opening ceremony of NYC Climate Week, here’s what you need to know:

California’s case is a repeat of the failed and “hyperbolic” New York
climate lawsuit, based on a legal premise that went nowhere in a case that
was wholly defeated by the New York State Supreme Court.
California is the birthplace of the nationally coordinated, Hollywood-and- foreign-billionaire-funded litigation campaign. Sher Edling, the law firm
that bases its entire business around representing plaintiffs in lawsuits against the oil and gas industry, including the three California
municipalities that filed the very first climate suits in 2017, is based
in San Francisco.
Litigation would only worsen the state’s already backwards energy policies
– the energy-starved state already pays 88 percent more for a kilowatt
hour of electricity than the national average and almost $2 more for a
gallon of gasoline.
California is literally biting the hand that feeds it: from enabling agriculture, to fueling drivers on the freeway, to powering the state’s
fragile grid, California relies on oil and natural gas to stay afloat. In
fact, it is the largest consumer of jet fuel and second-largest consumer
of motor gasoline in the nation. The state also decided to expand a large natural gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon just a few weeks ago.
Governor Gavin Newsom has praised the climate lawsuit and is set to speak
more about it tomorrow. However, he’s previously acknowledged the irony of restricting oil production in the United States while increasing reliance
on foreign imports, stating: “we’re making up for a lack of domestic
production from Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, and Colombia, and that’s hardly an environmental solution when you look globally.”
Catch up more below:

New York’s Case Defeated and Widely Ridiculed

California Attorney General Bonta’s complaint alleges that the U.S. oil
and natural gas industry “misled consumers and the public about climate change.” However, that’s the same theory that former New York Attorney
General Eric Schneiderman used all the way back in 2015 as the basis for a years-long investigation that he was eventually forced to abandon after
several high-profile shifts in legal strategy.

At the start of his failed climate lawsuit, AG Schneiderman first alleged
that the defendant had failed to disclose the risk that some of its assets
may become “stranded,” or uneconomical to produce under possible future
climate policies. Then, in 2017, Schneiderman changed the state’s
complaint to examine whether the company misled investors by failing to
apply a “proxy cost of carbon” to its business operations.

The complete departure from the original theory even prompted the
Washington Post to declare, “New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman
has gotten very far away from where he started in his office’s
investigation.”

By the time the case finally went to trial in 2019, Schneiderman was long
gone, and his predecessor was handed a total defeat in what New York State Supreme Court Judge Barry Ostrager called a “hyperbolic” lawsuit.

It All Goes Back to La Jolla

California’s lawsuit, New York’s failed case, and the entire climate
litigation campaign, were born in the small Pacific beach town of La
Jolla, which in 2012 hosted an infamous gathering of academics, attorneys,
and activists that plotted the legal, political, and PR playbook for these lawsuits.

The conference was sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rockefeller-funded Climate Accountability Institute, and Harvard
researcher Naomi Oreskes, who the New York Times reported to have
“conceived” the meeting and was later revealed to be on retainer with Sher Edling, the plaintiffs’ law firm representing climate cases around the
country.

One of the key developments from the La Jolla conference was the
conclusion that recruiting a “single sympathetic attorney general” would
be a key goal of the climate litigation campaign. To that end, activists
found their sympathetic chief enforcement officer in then-New York
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who launched the first climate change investigation in 2015.

Schneiderman and the activists propping up his case recruited other
attorneys general to join the cause. In 2016, Schneiderman held a press conference with Vice President Al Gore and other attorneys general
announcing the “AGs United for Clean Power” coalition, of which then- California Attorney General Kamala Harris was a member.

Through this group – termed the “Green 20” – state attorneys general
including AG Harris strategized about how to investigate and ultimately
sue energy companies for damages attributed to the effects of climate
change.

The coalition conducted backdoor strategy sessions with activists leading
up to the launch. Public records showed that attorney Matt Pawa, who
worked hand-in-hand with activists and donors to launch several climate lawsuits against oil and gas producers, briefed the members of the Green
20 the day before the coalition was publicly announced and then was
instructed to conceal his involvement from journalists. Pawa also gave an
April 2016 presentation to Attorney General Harris and other state
attorneys general in April 2016 on “What Exxon Knew – And What It Did
Anyway.”

Importantly, AG Harris and many of the other Green 20 members also signed
a Common Interest Agreement to keep their legal strategy secret and hide
their conversations about climate change litigation from the public.
Reuters called it a “previously unknown level of coordination with outside advisers” before the arrangement was revealed through an open records
request.

Despite the heavy-handed support from activists, the Green 20 fell apart
within months, and subpoenas were quickly withdrawn. In 2016, the Los
Angeles Times reported that AG Harris’ office had launched an #ExxonKnew investigation, though her office never confirmed it and nothing seemingly
came from the investigation. Three years later, at a Democratic
presidential debate, Harris tried to out-activist other candidates on the
stage by falsely stating, “I have sued ExxonMobil,” revealing that her investigation was nothing more than a political gesture all along.

In the end, Schneiderman was the only Green 20 AG to have actually filed a lawsuit – which decisively failed – although the office spent over three
years rifling through more than four million pages of corporate internal documents.

The State Remains a Hotbed of Litigation Activity

Beyond La Jolla, academics, activists, and plaintiffs’ attorneys have long
used California as a home base to finance and coordinate climate lawsuits
in the state and across the country.

It was the Los Angeles Times that helped kick start the climate litigation campaign back in 2015 with a series of articles on the energy industry’s understanding of climate change. Later, a funding trail revealed that the newspaper had failed to disclose that the stories were paid for by the Rockefeller Family Fund, presumably to bolster attorney generals’ investigations, prompting a scolding on journalistic ethics from the
Columbia Journalism Review.

While the New York Attorney General’s investigation floundered and the
Green 20 collapsed, activists honed in on several California
municipalities, which became the very first plaintiffs to file public
nuisance lawsuits against energy companies in July 2017. Reporting from
the Daily Mail later revealed that the strategy behind the San Francisco
and Oakland lawsuits was authored and pitched by activist attorney Matt
Pawa and paid for by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer.

The California municipalities ended up switching attorneys from Pawa’s
firm to Sher Edling, a San Francisco based law firm now representing more
than a dozen states and municipalities around the country in their climate lawsuits. Although Sher Edling represents states and municipalities on a contingency fee basis where it stands to make tens of millions on any
given suit, it also has received millions in dark-money grants to fund its lawsuits against energy companies.

Last year, reporting from Fox News Digital revealed that Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio and other wealthy left-wing donors have been funneling
money to Sher Edling through non-profit pass-throughs since at least 2017.
This funding system was partially orchestrated by Ann Carlson, former UCLA
law professor and Biden administration official, and Dan Emmett, a Los
Angeles real estate mogul who funds the UCLA program that employed
Carlson. News of Carlson’s role in the scheme and her support for radical climate policies ultimately forced the White House to pull her nomination
to lead the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

A Blow to Californian Workers and Consumers, But a Gift to OPEC

By attacking American energy companies, California AG Bonta’s new lawsuit
adds to the slew of policies enacted by California’s legislature that
literally starve the state of energy and hamper the economy. Californians already pay 88 percent more for a kilowatt hour of electricity than the national average and almost $2 more for a gallon of gasoline.
Additionally, the oil and gas industry provides approximately 366,000 jobs
in the state and contributes $152.3 billion in total economic output.
Lawsuits like California’s will just diminish the role of American energy
on the national and global stage and raise costs for consumers.

Shrinking the role of American energy doesn’t hurt everyone, though; OPEC+ should be thrilled. Because California will still need oil and natural
gas, exemplified by the state’s decision to expand a large natural gas
storage facility in Aliso Canyon just a few weeks ago, it will simply
continue to rely on foreign imports, primarily from OPEC+ nations. Over
the past 40 years, California’s oil consumption has remained steady, but
the state has gone from relying primarily on U.S. production to depending
on foreign imports from state-owned oil companies. Governor Newsom, who
has praised AG Bonta’s climate lawsuit, has previously acknowledged the
irony of cutting oil production in the United States while increasing
reliance on foreign imports:

“We’re making up for a lack of domestic production from Saudi Arabia,
Ecuador, and Colombia, and that’s hardly an environmental solution when
you look globally.” (emphasis added)

To the Governor’s point, climate litigation does nothing to promote environmental progress. Phil Goldberg, Special Counsel to the
Manufacturers Accountability Project pointed out this contradiction in
response to California’s filing:

“The challenge of our time is developing technologies and public policies
so that the world can produce and use energy in ways that are affordable
for people and sustainable for the planet. It should not be figuring out
how to creatively plead lawsuits that seek to monetize climate change and provide no solutions.” (emphasis added)

Bottom line: As California continues to be the largest consumer of jet
fuel and second-largest consumer of motor gasoline in the nation, this new lawsuit couldn’t be more hypocritical. Rather than giving in to activist
groups behind these lawsuits and shaming the industry that powers homes
and vehicles, policymakers in the state should be reversing their slew of policies that impede on consumers’ ability to access reliable and safe
energy.

https://eidclimate.org/energy-starved-california-files-climate-lawsuit- against-u-s-oil-and-natural-gas-companies-heres-what-to-know/

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