Eco-warriors want to turn up the heat on your wallet to fund their climate agenda

If you think your are high now, just wait until the climate activists get their way. Theyve launched a massive, nationwide campaign of lawfare which, if successful, would raise the average households annual energy bill by almost $1,500 per year and nearly $15,000 over a decade. The Supreme Court is currently hearing one such case (Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County).

The campaign essentially has three avenues of attack: tort litigation, state "climate superfund" statutes and federal legislation. Each category represents enormous charges on upstream suppliers which, of course, will then move downstream to households at the pump and the meter.

Over 30 lawsuits demand that energy companies pay for unproven impacts on global climate change, with filings by 11 states, D.C., and dozens of cities. New York and Vermont simply legislated this liability into existence through climate superfund laws — the former capped at $75 billion with the latter leaving liabilities uncapped.

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A dozen other states have tried similar penalties, as have members of Congress with the so-called Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, which would confiscate $1 trillion over 10 years. Supporters insist none of this will hit families wallets, that assessments target past production and that shareholders will pay for it. Those claims dont stand up to the facts.

Businesses must pass costs to consumers, and thats exactly what will happen here, regardless of whether some government bureaucrat decrees specific costs to be from yesteryear. Those same firms must also price future risk, which would increase dramatically if business could be retroactively punished for legal activity 30 years ago.

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For many power plants and energy infrastructure projects, which take decades to pay off and recoup initial investments, this additional risk means such projects may never even be undertaken. For those that do move forward, firms must charge consumers higher prices to counter the additional risk of fickle government potentially imposing massive fines.

And even if costs were confined to shareholders, as opposed to ratepayers or drivers filling up their tanks, those shareholders are still middle-class Americans. Energy stocks are held in of blue-collar workers like teachers, pipefitters, firefighters, electricians and police officers.

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"Making shareholders pay" means raiding retirement accounts to finance the pet projects of climate activists, like carbon taxes. In fact, one of the lawyers who helped launch this climate lawfare crusade, David Bookbinder, even admitted that the desired outcome is an indirect carbon tax, with companies passing costs to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Our analysis agrees, putting the tab for all these lawsuits and legislative efforts at roughly $194 billion annually. For context, thats an average of about 41 cents on a gallon of gasoline and 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, or a 9% jump in your electricity rate, while 41 cents per gallon is about f