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boulder
Colorado Judge Rejects Exxon, Suncor Attempt to Kill Landmark Climate Lawsuit
"Courts across the country keep rejecting Big Oil's attempts to escape justice for their climate deception," said one advocate.
Jun 25, 2024
Advocates celebrated Monday after a Boulder, Colorado judge rejected attempts by ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy subsidiaries to dismiss a landmark lawsuit that seeks damages for the harms the fossil fuel companies have inflicted on the climate and local communities.
The lawsuit, brought in 2018 by the city and county of Boulder, argues that mounting climate costs "should be shared by the Suncor and Exxon defendants because they knowingly and substantially contributed to the climate crisis by producing, promoting, and selling a substantial portion of the fossil fuels that are causing and exacerbating climate change, while concealing and misrepresenting the dangers associated with their intended use."
Colorado Public Radionoted Monday that the lawsuit "cites the 2010 Fourmile Canyon fire and 2013 floods as examples of climate disasters in Boulder County."
"The case was filed before the Marshall fire swept through the area in the winter of 2021, incinerating more than 1,000 homes and causing more than $2 billion in damage in what is now considered the most destructive wildfire in state history," the outlet observed.
The legal challenge seeks relief under a Colorado consumer protection law and other local statutes, accusing the corporations of public and private nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment, and civil conspiracy.
In an 81-page decision, Boulder County District Court Judge Robert Gunning rejected the Exxon and Suncor subsidiaries' claim that the state court lacked jurisdiction and concluded that "the public nuisance, private nuisance, trespass, conspiracy, and unjust enrichment claims may proceed against ExxonMobil, Suncor Energy, and Suncor Sales."
Ashley Stolzmann, Boulder County's commissioner, said Monday that the decision "reaffirms our stance: We are suffering from the impacts and heavy costs of the climate crisis, right here, right now."
"Today, we take a meaningful step towards accountability and ensuring our voices and hardships are acknowledged," Stolzmann added.
"The people of Boulder are now one crucial step closer to having their day in court to hold Exxon and Suncor accountable for their climate lies and the massive damages they've caused."
Monday's ruling represents the latest blow Exxon and Suncor have suffered during the yearslong legal battle. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the companies' attempt to move the case to federal court.
"Since the beginning, defendants have been arguing against a case we did not plead," said Sean Powers, a senior attorney with EarthRights International, which is representing the plaintiffs.
"Plaintiffs are not trying to litigate a solution to the climate crisis, they are seeking redress for harms they have suffered and will continue to suffer," Powers continued. "The only conduct at issue is defendants' own: what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did with that knowledge."
Boulder is among the dozens of local governments that have sued oil and gas companies in recent years, aiming to hold the industry accountable for severely damaging the climate and deceiving the public about the dangers of its extractive business model.
Exxon has known for decades about the link between burning fossil fuels and planetary warming and has worked to cast doubt on the science as it continues to drill in the face of worsening climate extremes across the globe.
"The people of Boulder are now one crucial step closer to having their day in court to hold Exxon and Suncor accountable for their climate lies and the massive damages they've caused," Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said Monday. "Courts across the country keep rejecting Big Oil's attempts to escape justice for their climate deception, and sooner or later these companies will have to explain the evidence of their misconduct to a jury."
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Boulder: Is it Time to End the Second Amendment?
American mass murders are a remnant of our slave patrols; RBG was right that Heller was wrongly decided and needs to be overturned.
Mar 23, 2021
Another mass gun murder just happened in America, the seventh in 7 days, and already "Second Amendment legislators" are offering the 2021 version of thoughts and prayers. Lauren Boebert just tweeted, "May God be with them." Standing in front of her wall of assault weapons, most likely.
And, of course, today on rightwing talk radio and Fox News they've already begun lengthy bloviation about the Second Amendment. So, let's just clear a few things up.
The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the difference--see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, an action necessary to get Virginia's vote to ratify the Constitution.
It had nothing whatsoever to do with making sure mass murderers could shoot up public venues and schools. Founders including Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that, and we all should be too.
In today's America, you have the "right" to a gun, but no "right" to healthcare or education. In every other developed country in the world, the reality is the exact opposite.
In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South they were called "slave patrols," and were regulated by the states.
In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American Revolution, laws were passed in 1755 and 1757 that required all plantation owners or their male white employees to be members of the Georgia Militia, and for those armed militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of all slaves in the state. The law defined which counties had which armed militias and required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings.
As Dr. Carl T. Bogus wrote for the University of California Law Review in 1998, "The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."
It's the answer to the question raised by the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained when he asks, "Why don't they just rise up and kill the whites?" It was a largely rhetorical question, because every southerner of the era knew the answer: Well-regulated militias kept enslaved people in chains.
Sally E. Haden, in her brilliant and essential book Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas, notes that, "Although eligibility for the Militia seemed all-encompassing, not every middle-aged white male Virginian or Carolinian became a slave patroller." There were exemptions so "men in critical professions" like judges, legislators and students could stay at their work. Generally, though, she documents how most southern men between ages 18 and 45--including physicians and ministers--had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.
And slave rebellions were keeping the slave patrols busy.
By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down uprisings by enslaved men and women. As I detail in my book The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment, slavery can only exist in a police state, which the South had become by the early 1700s, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.
Southerners worried that if the anti-slavery folks in the North could figure out a way to disband--or even move out of the state--those southern militias, the police state of the South would collapse. And, similarly, if the North were to invite into military service enslaved men from the South, then they could be emancipated, which would collapse the institution of slavery, along with the southern economic and social "ways of life."
These two possibilities worried southerners like slaveholder James Monroe, George Mason (who owned over 300 enslaved humans) and the southern Christian evangelical, Patrick "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death" Henry (Virginia's largest slaveholder).
Their main concern was that Article 1, Section 8 of the newly-proposed Constitution, which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise an army, could also allow that federal army to subsume their state militias and change them from slavery-enforcing institutions into something that could even, one day, free their enslaved men, women and children.
This was not an imagined threat. Famously, 12 years earlier, during the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, Lord Dunsmore offered freedom to slaves who could escape and join his forces. "Liberty to Slaves" was stitched onto their jacket pocket flaps. During the War, British General Henry Clinton extended the practice in 1779. And numerous freed slaves served in General Washington's army.
Thus, southern legislators and plantation owners lived not just in fear of their own slaves rebelling, but also in fear that their slaves could be emancipated through the newly-forming United States offering them military service.
At the ratifying convention in Virginia in 1788, Henry laid it out:
"Let me here call your attention to that part [Article 1, Section 8 of the proposed Constitution] which gives the Congress power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States. . . .
"By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither ... this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory."
George Mason expressed a similar fear:
"The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless, by disarming them. Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them [under this proposed Constitution]..."
Henry then bluntly laid it out:
"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia."
And why was that such a concern for Patrick Henry?
"In this state," he said, "there are 236,000 Blacks, and there are many in several other states. But there are few or none in the Northern States. ... May Congress not say, that every Black man must fight? Did we not see a little of this last war? We were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general; but acts of Assembly passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free."
Patrick Henry was also convinced that the power over the various state militias given the federal government in the new Constitution could be used to strip the slave states of their slave-patrol militias. He knew the majority attitude in the North opposed slavery, and he worried they'd use the new Constitution they were then debating ratifying to free the South's slaves (a process then called "Manumission").
The abolitionists would, he was certain, use that power (and, ironically, this is pretty much what Abraham Lincoln ended up doing):
"[T]hey will search that paper [the Constitution], and see if they have power of manumission," said Henry. "And have they not, sir? Have they not power to provide for the 'general defence and welfare'? May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power?
"This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper [the Constitution] speaks to the point: they have the power in clear, unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it."
He added: "This is a local [Southern] matter, and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress."
James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution" and a slaveholder himself, basically called Patrick Henry paranoid.
"I was struck with surprise," Madison said, "when I heard him express himself alarmed with respect to the emancipation of slaves. . . . There is no power to warrant it, in that paper [the Constitution]. If there be, I know it not."
But the southern slavemasters' fears wouldn't go away.
Patrick Henry even argued that southerner's "property" (enslaved humans) would be lost under the new Constitution, and the resulting slave uprising would be less than peaceful or tranquil:
"In this situation," Henry said to Madison, "I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone."
So Madison, who had (at Jefferson's insistence) already begun to prepare proposed amendments to the Constitution, changed his first draft of one that addressed the militia issue to make sure it was unambiguous that the southern states could maintain their slave patrol militias.
His first draft for what became the Second Amendment had said: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country [emphasis mine]: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."
But Henry, Mason and others wanted southern states to preserve their slave-patrol militias independent of the federal government. So Madison changed the word "country" to the word "state," and redrafted the Second Amendment into today's form:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State [emphasis mine], the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Little did Madison realize that one day in the future weapons-manufacturing corporations would use his slave patrol militia amendment to protect their "right" to manufacture and sell assault weapons used to murder people in schools, theaters and stores, and use the profits to own their own political party.
In today's America, you have the "right" to a gun, but no "right" to healthcare or education. In every other developed country in the world, the reality is the exact opposite.
Pointing out how ludicrous this has become, David Sirota (and colleagues) writes in his Daily Poster newsletter today: "Last week, the National Rifle Association publicly celebrated its success in striking down an assault weapons ban in Boulder, Colorado. Five days later, Boulder was the scene of a mass shooting, reportedly with the same kind of weapon that the city tried to ban."
The Second Amendment was never meant to make it easier for mass shooters to get assault weapons, and America needs rational gun policy to join the other civilized nations of this planet who aren't the victims of daily mass killings.
It's long past time to overturn Heller, which Ruth Bader Ginsberg repeatedly argued the Court should do, and abolish today's bizarre interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
This post originally appeared at hartmannreport.com, but is published here with permission of the author.
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Boulder's 100-Year Flood & Weather Weirding
Humanity is in for a rough ride. Brace yourself.
Sep 16, 2013
I have lived in Boulder for nearly 30 years and have never seen anything -- weatherwise -- like what I've witnessed these past two years.
Last summer, standing in the front yard of my friends' home in east Boulder, I watched pine trees near the iconic Flatirons burst into flames like matchsticks. We were in the midst of a severe drought, which had sparked a spate of deadly wildfires. Slurry bombers managed to extinguish that particular wildfire, but not before the National Center for Atmospheric Research -- nestled on a bluff below the advancing flames -- was evacuated. Consider the irony of the world's leading climate research facility being evacuated due to climate-induced wildfires. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.
Last night, standing in the front yard of that same east Boulder home, I watched something else I never thought I would see here: a river of water flowing down a suburban street strong enough to carry away a child. Only an hour before, I had traversed this street effortlessly with just the gutters overflowing. Now water was lapping at the front yard and running swift like a river.
Earlier in the day, I stuck out on foot to see Boulder's 100-year flood with my own eyes. It was a humbling sight. Here's a dramatic video I captured of raging Boulder Creek:
Boulder's 100-Year Flood & Weather Weirding: Raging Boulder CreekAs I gear up for the fourth, and final, Ride for Renewables here in Boulder, Colorado, I want to report on Boulder's 100-year flood ...
After spending more time near the creek than one should, I headed to higher ground, only to discover that even on The Hill, one of Boulder's higher neighborhoods, water was raging like a river down streets and into homes. Driveways had morphed into streams and steps into waterfalls. It was here that I stumbled upon a desperate effort at the intersection of University & 7th to reinforce a sand wall holding back the torrent of water and picked up a shovel. Here's a video I took of the scene:
Boulder's 100-Year Flood & Weather Weirding: Rivers In The StreetsAs I gear up for the fourth, and final, Ride for Renewables here in Boulder, Colorado, I want to report on Boulder's 100-year flood ...
As a bunch of us worked to reinforce the wall with makeshift sandbags on our side of the street -- ever cognizant of the possibility of cars upstream being washed down into our path -- we watched the sand wall on the other side of the street completely wash away. When I left, our stopgap levee was still holding.
This is just what I saw. Elsewhere, precious lives have been tragically lost, and others have been dramatically saved. The National Guard is evacuating the nearby town of Lyons, which has become an island surrounded by floodwaters. And I fear worse news is yet to come from the vulnerable canyon communities upstream from Boulder.
Here's what I think about what I've seen over the past two years in my home town: we have altered the climate so dramatically with polluting emissions that all bets are off as far as knowing what the weather will do from here on in. The age of weather weirding has arrived. If the weather-related disasters in Boulder, across America, and around the world are telling us anything, it's that humanity is in for a rough ride. Brace yourself.
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