Legislation making its way through the Louisiana Legislature, known as the Louisiana Energy Protection Act, would prohibit most lawsuits in Louisiana seeking damages for climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions, except in cases of clear statutory or regulatory violations, thereby protecting energy producers and users from such liability claims.
The Louisiana Energy Protection Act establishes a new chapter in Louisiana law aimed at limiting the liability of energy producers and related industries in these flawed, pointless lawsuits for damages attributed to climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions. The Act declares it is the public policy of Louisiana to promote energy production and to shield energy producers from claims alleging that emissions, including greenhouse gases, caused or contributed to climate change and subsequent damages such as personal injury, death, property damage, or economic loss.
The legislation prohibits any cause or right of action under Louisiana law for damages based on emissions originating outside the state. For claims based on emissions within Louisiana, the bill stipulates that such claims can only proceed if a court finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that the defendant violated a specific Louisiana or federal statutory emission limit or the terms of a valid permit.
The claimant must meet stringent requirements, including detailed pleadings, joining all potentially responsible parties, providing expert testimony, and proving that the defendant’s emissions caused more than 50 percent of the damages and that the claimant did not contribute to the emissions. Economic losses are only recoverable if accompanied by physical injury to the claimant or their property.
Additionally, if the state or any political subdivision seeks to bring an action under this Act, prior written approval is required from the Governor, Attorney General, and both the House and Senate Committees on Natural Resources. The Act aligns with the interests of Louisiana’s energy producers by significantly restricting the ability to bring climate change-related lawsuits against them, thereby supporting continued energy production here in the Pelican State.
By any reasonable legal standard, the current wave of climate lawsuits attempting to link specific local damages to specific fossil fuel companies rests on a deeply flawed premise: These cases attempt to impose precise liability for what is a diffuse and global phenomenon.
At the heart of these lawsuits is the claim that companies can be held legally responsible for discrete harms caused by climate change. But climate change is not a localized tort. It is the cumulative result of centuries of emissions from governments, industries, and billions of individual consumers worldwide. The diffuse nature of greenhouse gas emissions makes causation the central question in these cases.
That problem is not a minor technicality. Traditional tort law depends on a clear causal chain showing that a defendant’s actions caused an identifiable harm which resulted in a plaintiff’s injury. Climate litigation breaks that chain. Fossil fuel companies both here in Louisiana and all across the world do not directly emit most greenhouse gases. Their customers do, across many jurisdictions and often long after production. Attempting to assign liability in these cases requires courts to stretch causation doctrines beyond recognition.
There is also an unavoidable selectivity problem with these lawsuits as they typically target a handful of multinational companies while ignoring the broader system of global energy demand. Emissions are driven by collective societal behavior, not simply corporate supply. Holding a few firms liable for a system in which governments and consumers are deeply complicit risks turning litigation into a search for deep pockets rather than a principled application of law.
Attempts to retrofit traditional tort law onto an issue global in scale has the potential to undermine the integrity of the Pelican State’s legal system. The Louisiana Energy Protection Act would prevent most, if not all, of these frivolous and hypocritical lawsuits from ever being filed, would protect Louisiana companies from the massive expense in money and time that would have been spent defending themselves in court from these spurious claims, and would protect Louisiana taxpayers in municipalities who might have been foolish enough to consider such litigation from seeing millions of dollars in public funds being wasted on these quixotic quests.
Heartland Impact can send an expert to your state to testify or brief your caucus; host an event in your state; or send you further information on a topic. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can be of assistance! If you have any questions or comments, contact Cameron Sholty, at csholty@heartlandimpact.org or 312/377-4000.
