On: US supreme court to hear big oil’s bid to block climate damage lawsuits

6 October 2026

The highest bench in that republic across the sea opens its term this morning, and what does it hear first? Not a question of liberty, not a dispute over the constitution itself, but the plea of the oil magnates - Suncor, ExxonMobil - begging to be spared the judgment of the counties they have flooded and scorched. Boulder County dares to sue for its damaged lands, and the corporations reply: not in your courts, not in your state, not anywhere.

Let me play the advocate for these companies before I prosecute them. They will say: climate is a matter for nations, not counties; that a patchwork of local judgments would chaos make of a global question; that the proper forum is the legislature, where the people’s representatives may weigh such things. There is a surface of reason to this. I grant it freely.

But mark what the argument conceals. The legislature they commend us to is the very legislature their gold has purchased. They flee to the forum they have already corrupted, and call the flight respect for institutions. The county that watched its summers burn and its winters starve is told it has no standing to speak - while the men who lit the fire hold standing everywhere their money travels. This is not procedure. This is the purchase of immunity, dressed in the robe of jurisdiction.

And the court, that tribunal which was built to stand above faction - how long will it pretend that hearing this plea first is neutrality? To give the strongest ear to the powerful seeking escape from accountability is itself a judgment. The Republic does not ask whether the suit is inconvenient to industry. It asks whether the injured may be heard. If the answer is no, the pillars have cracked a little more.

Verdict pending. But I know which way the wind of money blows.