NC town sues Duke Energy over climate change. Yes, the tactic could work | Opinion

Deep in tobacco country, a North Carolina town is seeking to expose a scandal it says is far broader than the corporate cover-up of the link between cigarette smoking and cancer.

In a lawsuit filed this week in Orange County Superior Court, the town of Carrboro claims that Duke Energy – one of the nation’s largest electric utilities with a near monopoly in North Carolina – ignored evidence that greenhouse gas emissions were contributing to climate change in order to reap higher profits from burning fossil fuels.

The lawsuit alleges that, “Duke participated in a conspiracy of deception about the causes and consequences of climate change that has materially delayed the transition away from fossil energy sources and thereby significantly worsened the climate emergency.”

It’s a dramatic claim magnified by the gap between the plaintiff and defendant. Carrboro is a town of 21,000 just west of Chapel Hill that’s known for its progressive politics. Duke energy is a Charlotte-based utility behemoth with an army of lawyers ready to defeat legal challenges.

Carrboro Mayor Barbara Foushee said at a Wednesday news conference that her town takes on issues no matter how big the obstacle or the opponent. “Bold action is our middle name,” she said.

A Duke Energy spokesman said, “We are in the process of reviewing the complaint.”

The lawsuit won’t be supported. by taxpayers. It’s being paid for by NC WARN, an advocacy group for utility customers and the environment. The lawsuit presents a history of Duke and its affiliates downplaying or denying climate change as the utility continued to release carbon and methane into the atmosphere.

To establish Carrboro’s standing to sue, the lawsuit details the infrastructure repairs and other town expenses it attributes to warmer temperatures and heavier rainfall caused by climate change.

“As a direct and proximate result of Duke’s campaign of deception,” the lawsuit says, “the transition to renewable energy has been slowed by decades, reliance upon fossil fuels has been unreasonably and unnecessarily widespread, the climate crisis has been materially exacerbated, and therefore, Carrboro has incurred substantial damages.”

Jim Warren, executive director NC WARN, said that lawsuit represents a David versus Goliath scenario, but this legal challenge is “the biggest rock we’ve been able to fling.”

Warren said forcing a major utility to more aggressively reduce its emissions could have a broad effect. ”If we can change Duke Energy,” he said, “it could be a very positive tipping point, even as the hour is extremely late of the global climate crisis.”

The New York Times noted that Carrboro’s complaint joins more than two dozen lawsuits filed by state and local governments alleging that energy companies hid their knowledge of the connection between burning fossil fuels and climate change. Those lawsuits have yet to produce results, but that doesn’t mean Carrboro’s claim can’t break through.

The similarity to the tobacco manufacturers scandal and the potential liability for spewing hazardous gases into the atmosphere is an apt one. Attaching culpability to cigarette manufacturers was slow and then sudden. The same could happen with those who continued to fuel global warming at the expense of the public’s general welfare.

Skeptics will say you can’t blame the world’s climate-related problems on one utility, no matter how large it is. This injury to public health does not have a clear culprit, such as the cigarette makers and promoters Philip Morris or R. J. Reynolds.

But the liability Carrboro’s lawsuit asserts is not about the cause of climate change. It is about Duke’s alleged dismissal of the danger combined with efforts to hold back the development of clean energy alternatives.

In that regard, Duke could face a risk from the lawsuit. It has moved away from burning coal but has expanded the use of natural gas obtained through fracking, a process that releases large amounts of methane, one of the most harmful greenhouse gasses. At the same time, Duke has discouraged the expansion of rooftop solar energy. It advertises its own solar energy projects, but clean energy advocates say the utility’s investing too heavily in gas-fueled plants and should be doing more to promote solar and offshore wind energy and the battery storage of that energy.

“This transition is moving far too slowly, which Duke has known for decades, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that communities are fed up and taking action to protect themselves,” said Mikaela Curry, campaign manager with Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

It is not a question of what did Duke Energy know about its emissions and climate change and when did it know it. It’s a question of whether Duke chose to reduce the hazard or profit from staying its course.

The Carrboro lawsuit provides a persuasive answer. The denial and deceptions that prolonged the dangers of smoking are much the same as what’s being revealed about corporate behavior and the hazards of climate change.

Now maybe the liability will be similar, too.

This story was originally published December 5, 2024 at 2:28 PM.