Tribe Appeals Global-Warming Case Against Duke Energy, Others
John Downey
Senior staff writer
Monday, November 23, 2009, 2:26pm EST | Modified: Monday, November 23, 2009, 3:10pm
A native Alaskan tribe has appealed an federal judge’s decision to dismiss a global-warming case the tribe filed against Duke Energy and more than 20 additional utilities and oil companies.
The Innupiat Tribe filed suit in U.S. District Court last year contending Duke, Exxon Mobil and other large carbon emitters are responsible for severe global warming. The warming of the seas near their native village, Kivalina, threatens to destroy the village of 400 residents, the tribe says.
The annual fall, winter and spring ice has diminished so severely that it no longer protects the town from winter storms, the suit said. The land is eroding away, crumbling underneath the homes and town buildings.
Lack of jurisdiction
They asked that the nearly two-dozen companies be required to pay the $95 million to $400 million federal officials estimate it would cost to move the village.
In late September, Judge Sandra Armstrong dismissed the case, which was filed in Oakland, Calif. She cited several grounds for the dismissal for lack of jurisdiction. But key among them was that determining who bore how much responsibility for global warming was beyond the court’s capacity.
The court, she wrote, would have to weigh “the energy-producing alternatives that were available in the past and consider their respective impact on far ranging issues such as their reliability as an energy source, safety considerations and the impact of the different alternatives on consumers and business at every level.” She wrote the court was not equipped to do that.
Political issues
She also ruled that questions of what to do about greenhouse-gas emissions were policy issues that did not belong in the federal courts. That mirrors the position taken by Duke, which has maintained from the outset that Congress should handle issues related to global warming.
Armstong did not rule on several state-law issues raised by the Innupiat. She said those issues could be addressed in state court.
The tribe filed its notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Nov. 5. It has not yet made detailed filings on the grounds for its appeal.
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Tuesday 24 November 2009 - 22:02:03
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