Climate shakedown: How rogue lawyers built a backdoor tax on your energy

There is a quiet, coordinated campaign underway to reshape American energy policy. It is being waged not by voters or their elected representatives, but by a small network of activist lawyers, blue-state officials, and anonymous donors. They have figured out that what they cannot win at the ballot box, they might extract from a courtroom. And it is costing you already.

The vehicle is climate litigation. Across the country, about 40 nearly identical lawsuits have been filed by states, counties, and cities demanding that oil and gas companies pay billions of dollars for their alleged role in climate change.