People’s Republik of Michigan Trying Novel Approach In “Make Polluters Pay”

Will Michigan also shut down all their airports? Ports? Fossil fueled vehicle plants?

Michigan Wants to Make Big Oil Pay for Climate Change

We’ve known for a while now that Big Oil is freaking out about climate change lawsuits. For months, their lobbyists have been urging Congress to pass a liability waiver so they can’t be sued for climate damages. Recently, the American Petroleum Institute, or API, the industry’s largest and most powerful fossil fuel trade association, declared that ending “abusive state climate lawsuits” is one of its top priorities for 2026.

But if Big Oil was nervous before, they should be feeling absolutely terrified now, following the filing of a new lawsuit last week by Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel. This one uses a different approach, alleging that the fossil fuel industry engaged in anticompetitive conduct, in violation of state and federal antitrust laws.

Most of the climate accountability cases to date have been filed under state consumer protection laws; antitrust is not yet a central part of how people understand our climate crisis. But over the last four years, there has been a revolution in the antitrust field. We’ve seen antitrust laws, long semidormant, applied in areas ranging from pharmaceuticals to fast-food wages to housing costs to health insurance—issues that hadn’t been the focus of antitrust challenges before. Michigan’s complaint demonstrates that Big Oil’s climate conspiracy also fits this framework remarkably well.

Um, ok, but, they can only sue using state law, not federal, and only in so much if they can prove fossil fuels companies, which the state of Michigan uses heavily for its operations, engaged in anticompetitive behavior per the law. Because any attempt to look outside the state could see the suit killed off just like the New Jersey one.

A key purpose of federal and state antitrust laws is to stop businesses from combining “in restraint of trade” to unfairly shut out competitors and deprive society of the benefits of competition. Antitrust laws were designed to protect open, thriving markets. They prevent existing companies from colluding against new entrants in the market, a practice that serves to slow down innovation and freeze technologies in place.

What if it’s government combining to stop the competition of fossil fuels companies and those who sell them and those that use them in their products?

Michigan’s lawsuit argues that Big Oil engaged in exactly this kind of shut-out-the-upstarts collusion against renewable energies—a decades-long conspiracy to, according to the initial filing, “forestall meaningful competition from renewable energy and maintain their dominance in the energy market.”

Can they prove it as it would apply against Michigan companies? Anyhow, blah blah in the article, but, none of the Warmists are giving up their own use of fossil fuels.