Back Door Carbon Tax: Goal Of Climate Lawfare Movement To Drive Up Price Of Energy

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

The energy sector has long been a lightning rod for policy battles, but few moments crystallize the tension between environmental activism and economic reality quite like David Bookbinder’s recent admission. A veteran litigator who’s spent years spearheading lawsuits against major oil companies on behalf of Colorado municipalities — including Boulder — Bookbinder let the cat out of the bag during a recent Federalist Society panel.

In an all-too-rare acknowledgement of the lawfare campaign’s real goal, Bookbinder admitted that he views the lawsuits mainly as a proxy for a carbon tax. In other words, the winning or losing of any of the cases is irrelevant; in Bookbinder’s view, the process becomes the punishment as companies and ultimately consumers pay the price for using oil and gas and the industry’s refined products.

“Tort liability is an indirect carbon tax,” Bookbinder stated plainly. “You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable. The oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products … The people who buy those products are now going to be paying for the cost imposed by those products. … [This is] somewhat of a convoluted way to achieve the goals of a carbon tax.”

Dear Readers:

As a nonprofit, we are dependent on the generosity of our readers.

Please consider making a small donation of any amount here.

Thank you!

The cynicism is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

On one hand, the fact that winning is irrelevant to the plaintiff firms who bring the cases has become obvious over the last two years as case after case has been dismissed by judges in at least ten separate jurisdictions. The fact that almost every case has been dismissed on the same legal grounds only serves to illustrate that reality.

Bookbinder’s frank admission lands with particular force at a pivotal juncture. In late September, the Department of Justice, along with 26 state attorneys general and more than 100 members of Congress, urged the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in one of the few remaining active cases in this lawfare effort, in Boulder, Colorado.

Their briefs contend that allowing these suits to proceed unchecked would “upend the constitutional balance” between federal and state authority, potentially “bankrupt[ing] the U.S. energy sector” by empowering local courts to override national energy policy.

For the companies named in the suits, these cases represent not just a tiresome form of legal Kabuki Theater, but a financial and time sink that cuts profits and inhibits capital investments in more productive enterprises. You know, like producing oil and gas to meet America’s ravenous energy needs in an age of explosive artificial intelligence growth.

“I’d prefer an actual carbon tax, but if we can’t get one of those, and I don’t think anyone on this panel would [dis]agree Congress is likely to take on climate change anytime soon—so this is a rather convoluted way to achieve the goals of a carbon tax,” Bookbinder elaborated in his panel discussion.

John Yoo, the eminent UC Berkeley law professor and former Bush-era official, didn’t hold back in his analysis for National Review. He described the lawfare campaign as a “backdoor” assault on the energy industry, circumventing the federal government’s established role in environmental regulation.

“There are a variety of cities and states that don’t agree with the federal government, and they would like to see the energy companies taxed,” Yoo explained. “Some of them probably like to see them go out of business. Since they can’t persuade through the normal political process of elections and legislation like the rest of the country, they’re using this back door,” he added.

What we see in action here is the fact that, although the climate alarm industry that is largely funded by an array of dark money NGOs and billionaire foundations finds itself on the defensive amid the aggressive policy actions of the Trump 47 administration, it is far from dead. Like the Democrat party in which they play an integral role, the alarmists are fighting the battle in their last bastion of power: The courts.

As long as there are city and county officials willing to play the role of plaintiffs in this long running Kabuki dance, and a Supreme Court unwilling to intercede, no one should doubt that this stealth carbon tax lawfare effort will keep marching right along.

Up Next

Thousands protest UK government’s plans to introduce mandatory digital IDs

Don't Miss

Trump, Putin meeting in Hungary called off

Todayville

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Wisdom of Our Elders: The Contempt for Memory in Canadian Indigenous Policy

Automotive / 2 hours ago

The $50 Billion Question: EVs Never Delivered What Ottawa Promised

Business / 14 hours ago

Storm clouds of uncertainty as BC courts deal another blow to industry and investment

Business

Higher carbon taxes in pipeline MOU are a bad deal for taxpayers

Published on November 28, 2025

Todayville

By Franco Terrazzano

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is criticizing the Memorandum of Understanding between the federal and Alberta governments for including higher carbon taxes.

“Hidden carbon taxes will make it harder for Canadian businesses to compete and will push Canadian entrepreneurs to shift production south of the border,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Politicians should not be forcing carbon taxes on Canadians with the hope that maybe one day we will get a major project built.

“Politicians should be scrapping all carbon taxes.”

The federal and Alberta governments released a memorandum of understanding. It includes an agreement that the industrial carbon tax “will ramp up to a minimum effective credit price of $130/tonne.”

“It means more than a six times increase in the industrial price on carbon,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said while speaking to the press today.

Carney previously said that by “changing the carbon tax … We are making the large companies pay for everybody.”

A Leger poll shows 70 per cent of Canadians believe businesses pass most or some of the cost of the industrial carbon tax on to consumers. Meanwhile, just nine per cent believe businesses pay most of the cost.

“It doesn’t matter what politicians label their carbon taxes, all carbon taxes make life more expensive and don’t work,” Terrazzano said. “Carbon taxes on refineries make gas more expensive, carbon taxes on utilities make home heating more expensive and carbon taxes on fertilizer plants increase costs for farmers and that makes groceries more expensive.

“The hidden carbon tax on business is the worst of all worlds: Higher prices and fewer Canadian jobs.”

Alberta

Carney forces Alberta to pay a steep price for the West Coast Pipeline MOU

Published on November 27, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green

The stiffer carbon tax will make Alberta’s oil sector more expensive and thus less competitive at a time when many analysts expect a surge in oil production. The costs of mandated carbon capture will similarly increase costs in the oilsands and make the province less cost competitive.

As we enter the final days of 2025, a “deal” has been struck between Carney government and the Alberta government over the province’s ability to produce and interprovincially transport its massive oil reserves (the world’s 4th-largest). The agreement is a step forward and likely a net positive for Alberta and its citizens. However, it’s not a second- or even third-best option, but rather a fourth-best option.

The agreement is deeply rooted in the development of a particular technology—the Pathways carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) project, in exchange for relief from the counterproductive regulations and rules put in place by the Trudeau government. That relief, however, is attached to a requirement that Alberta commit to significant spending and support for Ottawa’s activist industrial policies. Also, on the critical issue of a new pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia’s coast, there are commitments but nothing approaching a guarantee.

Specifically, the agreement—or Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)—between the two parties gives Alberta exemptions from certain federal environmental laws and offers the prospect of a potential pathway to a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast. The federal cap on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the oil and gas sector will not be instituted; Alberta will be exempt from the federal “Clean Electricity Regulations”; a path to a million-barrel-per day pipeline to the BC coast for export to Asia will be facilitated and established as a priority of both governments, and the B.C. tanker ban may be adjusted to allow for limited oil transportation. Alberta’s energy sector will also likely gain some relief from the “greenwashing” speech controls emplaced by the Trudeau government.

In exchange, Alberta has agreed to implement a stricter (higher) industrial carbon-pricing regime; contribute to new infrastructure for electricity transmission to both B.C. and Saskatchewan; support through tax measures the building of a massive “sovereign” data centre; significantly increase collaboration and profit-sharing with Alberta’s Indigenous peoples; and support the massive multibillion-dollar Pathways project. Underpinning the entire MOU is an explicit agreement by Alberta with the federal government’s “net-zero 2050” GHG emissions agenda.

The MOU is probably good for Alberta and Canada’s oil industry. However, Alberta’s oil sector will be required to go to significantly greater—and much more expensive—lengths than it has in the past to meet the MOU’s conditions so Ottawa supports a west coast pipeline.

The stiffer carbon tax will make Alberta’s oil sector more expensive and thus less competitive at a time when many analysts expect a surge in oil production. The costs of mandated carbon capture will similarly increase costs in the oilsands and make the province less cost competitive. There’s additional complexity with respect to carbon capture since it’s very feasibility at the scale and time-frame stipulated in the MOU is questionable, as the historical experience with carbon capture, utilization and storage for storing GHG gases sustainably has not been promising.

These additional costs and requirements are why the agreement is the not the best possible solution. The ideal would have been for the federal government to genuinely review existing laws and regulations on a cost-benefit basis to help achieve its goal to become an “energy superpower.” If that had been done, the government would have eliminated a host of Trudeau-era regulations and laws, or at least massively overhauled them.

Instead, the Carney government, and now with the Alberta government, has chosen workarounds and special exemptions to the laws and regulations that still apply to everyone else.

Again, it’s very likely the MOU will benefit Alberta and the rest of the country economically. It’s no panacea, however, and will leave Alberta’s oil sector (and Alberta energy consumers) on the hook to pay more for the right to move its export products across Canada to reach other non-U.S. markets. It also forces Alberta to align itself with Ottawa’s activist industrial policy—picking winning and losing technologies in the oil-production marketplace, and cementing them in place for decades. A very mixed bag indeed.