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A massive climate lawsuit that could land before the Supreme Court is an attempt at a back-door “carbon tax,” a climate attorney previously involved in the case said during a recent legal forum.
“Woke lawfare is finally being exposed for what it really is: a radical attempt to impose Progressive Lifestyle Choices on the American people via the court room,” O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance For Consumers, a nonprofit focused on preserving consumer protection efforts, told Fox News Digital.
“Whether it’s dark money left-wing nonprofits lying about their efforts to indoctrinate judges or climate lawyers telling the truth about their desire to take over the energy industry and impose a carbon tax via judicial edict, the result is an economy the American people don’t want—increased costs and reduced choices.”
The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether to pick up a case originating in Boulder, Colorado, claiming Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil had for years downplayed risks surrounding burning oil and gas, seeking damages from the companies under Colorado law. Conservative lawmakers have warned the case could bankrupt the American oil industry and put the U.S. national security and the economy in dire straits.
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A massive climate lawsuit that could land before the Supreme Court is an attempt at a back-door “carbon tax,” a climate attorney involved in the case divulged during a legal forum. (Brian A. Jackson/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
David Bookbinder, who was the counsel of record in Boulder’s lawsuit but is no longer actively involved in the case, joined a Federalist Society forum in October called “Can State Courts Set Global Climate Policy,” where he identified the case as part of an effort to impose an indirect carbon tax. In other words, the case is intended to increase costs on oil companies that are then passed down to consumers as part of the broader effort to decrease the use of oil across the board. He joined the forum in a personal capacity, he told Fox Digital.
“Essentially, the tort liability is an indirect carbon tax,” Bookbinder said during the forum. “You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable, the oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products. In some sense it is the most efficient way — the people who buy those products are now going to be paying for the cost imposed by those products. I’d prefer an actual carbon tax, but if we can’t get one of those, and I don’t think anyone on this panel would agree that Congress is likely to take on climate change anytime soon. So this is a rather convoluted way to achieve the goals of a carbon tax. The people who use the products pay for the damage that they cause.”
A climate protester scales the Wilson Building as part of an Earth Day rally against fossil fuels April 22, 2022. (Getty Images)
Bookbinder suggested that climate litigation is aimed at taking over the energy industry.
“It’s job is to make sure that the assets are then used for the benefit of the creditors,” he said. “Those assets will continue to produce. Oil and gas will not suddenly stop coming on the market. They’ll be marketed in different ways.”
Bookbinder told Fox News Digital that his remarks “were meant to describe the way the oil and gas industry operates, not to endorse the way it operates,” adding that his comments were made in a personal capacity as a longtime “watchdog of the industry.”
He argued that “fake outrage over these comments from oil and gas lobbyists” was similar to tactics used by the old tobacco lobby to “deny, spin, and overcharge customers, then blame the whistleblowers who say there’s a problem.”
“Big Oil CEOs, along with their business partners in the states, know that their product is harmful to the public and to the health of the American people. And those Big Oil CEOs and their agents in the states should pay the price for that, not the average American consumer at the pump. American consumers know it’s a cold hard fact that multinational oil companies look for any excuse they can find to stick it to the public at the gas pump with high prices,” he told Fox News Digital in an emailed statement.
“These Big Oil CEOs are opportunistic and ruthless, and that means pain for consumers and our planet, no matter how many advertisements they run trying to whitewash the damage their product causes, and the costs to taxpayers and the public result from that damage.”
Bookbinder continued that he “was not saying that tort liability should actually be an indirect carbon tax.”
“I was lamenting the fact that multinational oil CEO’s and their counterparts in the states will always double down against the interests of the American consumer by hitting consumers with a harmful product and high prices, unless Congress takes action, which it has not,” he continued.
“That’s a problem for both parties. Gas prices become a political football because neither party has found the courage to stand up to the oil and gas lobby. I don’t think American consumers should pay the price twice for the damage being done to our health and our planet by oil and gas companies, but sadly, that’s the way it happens right now in America. And that’s the way it will continue to happen unless members of both parties in Congress get back to work and figure this out.”
The forum came as the legal case itself has been presented as one protecting the environment and holding companies to account for allegedly misleading the public on risks surrounding their oil practices.
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The massive energy companies argued that the case focuses on cross-border emissions, making the matter a federal issue and not a state issue. Exxon and Suncor requested the U.S. Supreme Court take the case up after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in May that it could move forward within state courts.
“This ruling affirms what we’ve known all along: corporations cannot mislead the public and avoid accountability for the damages they have caused,” Boulder, Colorado, Mayor Aaron Brockett said in a statement at the time celebrating the state Supreme Court’s decision. “Our community has suffered significantly from the consequences of climate change, and today’s decision brings us one step closer to justice and the resources we need to protect our future.”
The Supreme Court is soon expected to determine whether to grant cert in the case and review the case.
The Supreme Court building is seen in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a Tennessee law banning transgender medical procedures for adolescents in the state is not discriminatory, ruling 6-3 to uphold the law. (AP/Jon Elswick)
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Dozens of Republican House lawmakers wrote in an amicus brief in October that the case is one steeped in national security and stability concerns, arguing it could throttle the American energy industry, “if not bankrupt it altogether.”
Climate suits and litigation have been heating up in the U.S. in recent years, with conservative lawmakers and experts railing that left-wing activists are carrying out “lawfare” to potentially bankrupt the industry.
The Climate Judiciary Project, for example, repeatedly has come under the ire of lawmakers such as Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as influencing judges presiding over climate cases, with Cruz previously arguing the group is “pressuring judges to set aside the rule of law, and rule instead according to a predetermined political narrative.”
The Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), founded in 2018 by the left-wing Environmental Law Institute, describes itself as providing judges with “authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law,” according to its website.
Sunrise light hits the U.S. Capitol dome on Thursday, January 2, 2025, as the 119th Congress is set to begin Friday. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
CJP doubled down in a press release in September that it explicitly does not work to “influence the outcome of any case,” but instead operates as an educational resource.
“CJP does not seek to influence the outcome of any case, but rather to present factual information about the science arising in the law and the related claims and defenses made by all parties. Accusations that have been directed at CJP suggesting that its purpose is to influence the outcome of a few dozen cases that have been filed against fossil fuel companies are false,” the September press release states.
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Fox News Digital has previously reported on CJP’s curricula, including lessons that were preparing judges for global warming cases, including a module dedicated to discussing “climate justice,” which states that low-income communities have historically been exposed to more environmental harms like “elevated exposure to heat, flooding, vehicular traffic, hazardous materials and pollutants, decaying civic infrastructure, poverty, and crime.”
Fox News Digital obtained the archived chat history of the now-defunct chat forum between CJP and jurists back in July 2025, which detailed numerous messages between at least five judges and CJP employees trading links on climate studies, congratulating one another on hosting recent environmental events, sharing updates on recent climate cases that were remanded to state courts, and encouraging each other to participate in other CJP meet-ups.
CJP said at the time that the forum was established to facilitate communications between members of its Judicial Leaders in Climate Science program, adding that CJP’s programs are “no different than the work of other continuing judicial education organizations that address important complex topics, including medicine, tech and neuroscience.”
Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, a conservative pro-U.S. energy production policy group, wrote a letter to Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan in September pointing to evidence from a Sept. 12 Multnomah County v. ExxonMobil et al. court filing that he said suggests “covert coordination and judicial manipulation” on CJP’s part. The letter called on Jordan to subpoena records from the group.
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Climate activists attend a rally to end fossil fuels, in New York, Sunday, Sept. 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)
CJP and Environmental Law Institute have repeatedly denied that their work influences judges or support litigation, instead serving an educational resource for the legal community.
“CJP does not participate in or provide support for litigation. Rather, CJP provides evidence-based continuing education to judges about climate science and how it arises in the law. Our curriculum is fact-based and science-first, grounded in consensus reports and developed with a robust peer review process that meets the highest scholarly standards,” Environmental Law Institute spokesman Nick Collins told Fox News Digital in September, denying that ELI did not fund the nature study at the heart of Isaac’s letter that month.
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Fox News Digital reached out to CJP and ELI for additional comment on Friday but did not immediately receive a reply.
Fox News Digital’s Deirdre Heavey and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.
