We’re heading for a world where the Supreme Court decrees fossil fuels can’t be regulated, but they can’t be sued either. That would leave you paying every cent of the tab for climate damages.

From Bloomberg Opinion (gift link above):

“When we talk about someone wanting to both eat their cake and still have it, we’re using a logical impossibility to highlight the cake-haver’s delusional mental state. When it comes to the fossil-fuel industry’s cake and its treatment by President Donald Trump’s administration and possibly the Supreme Court, almost anything is literally possible, logic be damned.

“Earlier this week, at the urging of Trump’s Justice Department, the Supreme Court [agreed to consider](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-23/oil-companies-get-supreme-court-hearing-on-climate-change-suits?sref=ZtdQlmKR) an appeal by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc. to throw out a lawsuit brought by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, that seeks to recoup climate-change damage from the oil giants. It’s not clear whether the high court will ultimately take the case because it also asked the two sides to present arguments on whether the case is truly ready to be heard. Those are expected in the fall.

“But the mere fact that the Supreme Court, which has passed on many similar cases before, has finally turned its gaze in Boulder’s direction is not reassuring to Boulder nor to the many other local and state governments taking legal action to help pay for the environmental chaos caused by global heating. The Supreme Court’s attention creates the very real possibility that conservative justices will find a way to give fossil-fuel companies a legal defense against all such actions.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, ***Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.*** Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. ***But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.***”

You may be right. The Supreme Court will start treating oil like guns – with Jesus like reverence and protections.

If only human rights were protected as dearly as fossil fuel profits, we might live in a decent society.