smt1

From the first IPCC reports in 1990, to today, the IPCC's prognostications about the future became more and more clairvoyant. Yes, it wasn't till the early 2000s that there was enough observed multiple sources of information about man-made climate change that they could say that with 90% (later 99%) certainty, but they made clear the future risk. If you look at the early IPCC reports, they made it clear that CO2 was a greenhouse gas, but at least in the United States, the fossil fuel industry fought tooth and nail and spent huge amounts of money to fight a regulatory classification of it as such. It wasn't until 2009 that was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVz67cwmxTM

Even with "fully legal products", courts have taken a more expansive view of public nuisance laws recently.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-ene...

Also the SCOTUS effectively sent a number of these cases back to state courts this week, solving any jurisdictional issues for now. Of course, the newest wave of these cases are still very new (and more are likely coming soon) and have yet to be litigated outside of jurisdictional issues.

That type of case will most like be public nuisance suits under state tort laws, akin to for example, the recent Oklahoma opioid case against Johnson and Johnson, or say, lead paint lawsuits.

These types of laws tend to be much more pervasive than "blue sky laws" that enable securities fraud cases.

There was a Supreme Court ruling about a decade ago that under federal law (specifically the Clean Air Act), it is solely the job of the EPA to regulate energy companies in most aspects related to the environment.

That ruling does not cover state tort laws or state securities fraud laws. It's been a tactic by the fossil fuel industry to move nuisance cases to federal courts, but in many recent rulings, most of the federal courts have been throwing them back to state courts in jurisdictional rulings.

The Supreme Court just a few days ago declined to hear a number of cases related to nuisance suits, which threw them back to state courts: https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy...

A number of other nuisance suits are about to be filed soon, most notably by Washington DC and Honolulu. There may be a very large number of these lawsuits in the future, whether it be by cities, counties, or states.

Interesting, Bill Gates recently had an interview where he talks about new reactor designs, including the traveling wave reactor (commercialized in a prototype phase by a company he founded - TerraPower): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k

Some of that oil can at least be substituted with other sources of hydrocarbons, especially natural gas (just like coal->ng): https://www.bcg.com/en-au/publications/2017/energy-environme...