Multnomah County’s experimental climate lawsuit keeps getting weirder. After years of pressure from climate activists to add gas utilities to the list of industries targeted by lawfare, the Oregon County finally granted their wish by adding a local utility company to its complaint, which already features over a dozen defendants.

It’s a déjà vu moment on several counts – after all, #UtilitiesKnew is kind of a “been there, done that” concept in the climate litigation space. Years before the campaign began targeting oil and gas companies with climate lawsuits over their production of fossil fuels, utilities were targeted for their greenhouse gas emissions.

Utilities Already had their Day in Court… And They Won.

In 2004, eight state attorneys general and the City of New York sued several of America’s largest electric utilities, alleging the companies’ greenhouse gas emissions created a public nuisance of climate change. Seven years later, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the seminal climate case – AEP v. Connecticut – ruling that the regulation of emissions is covered under the Clean Air Act.

One year later, leaders in the climate litigation movement regrouped in La Jolla, California to strategize how they could craft a new legal campaign against energy companies, and weighed the merits of focusing on oil companies versus gas utilities. This convening ultimately resulted in a rebranded campaign that focused on taking down producers instead of utilities.

Nevertheless, some persisted. The dark-money funded Energy and Policy Institute published a “#UtilitiesKnew“ report in 2017 that received little fanfare. Other groups followed on with “automakers knew” and “coal knew, too” reports, which, ironically, reinforce the point that everybody knew about climate change.

Climate plaintiffs from California to New York have largely ignored these copycat claims, until Multnomah County amended its kitchen-sink complaint with even more new defendants and novel claims.

CCI and Activists Celebrate Their Recycled Effort and Hint Next Steps

Now that the first gas utility has finally been named in a climate lawsuit, activists are eager for other jurisdictions to follow suit. Unsurprisingly, the Rockefeller-funded Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) hinted that more utilities could be next:

“Gas utilities have been significant players in the historic and ongoing deception campaigns to mislead the public about the dangers of fossil fuels…NW Natural is now the first to be named as a defendant in a climate deception lawsuit, but it likely won’t be the last.” (emphasis added)

Activists likely have their eyes on the Michigan Attorney General, who plans on filing a climate lawsuit, and has not ruled out including utilities in her upcoming complaint. Never satisfied, the activists also encouraged the MI AG to include automotive companies – the center of the state’s economy – in her upcoming lawsuit.

O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance For Consumers, recently emphasized this point when speaking to the Daily Caller:

“The same types of officials who are pursuing meatpacking companies because cows contribute to climate change aren’t going to stop at oil producers, they’re going to go after everyone who has a substantial carbon footprint. There is no way that the auto industry can somehow avoid that fate in the eyes of the Left and its progressive allies…

“If the oil producers are liable, then the utilities that built electric generating facilities that can only run on fossil fuels are also liable. The logic then tracks to automakers just the same.” (emphasis added)

Bottom Line: This is yet another example of activists grasping at straws to wage a politically motivated litigation campaign against the American energy industry, no matter the evidence showing that natural gas plays a key role in helping the United States reduce emissions and improve overall air quality. The rollout of Multnomah County’s amended complaint just goes to show that litigation proponents are desperate for attention after facing defeats in New York, Baltimore, and Delaware.