Carrboro blames Duke Energy for driving up local government costs tied to climate change. That doesn’t mean the Orange County town can collect lawsuit damages from the utility company.
A North Carolina Business Court judge recently explained why.
The town filed suit in 2024, backed by left-of-center activist group and longtime Duke Energy antagonist NC WARN. Carrboro’s complaint alleged that heatwaves and increased precipitation linked to climate change led to cracks, potholes, and erosion of town-maintained roads. “Extreme” weather events increased upkeep costs for town buildings, parks, and infrastructure.
At the same time, Duke had “misled the public over the past six decades about the causes and consequences of climate change,” Carrboro argued. Misinformation slowed “the American public’s” transition away from fossil fuels.
The lawsuit called for Duke to pay the town for the impact of the utility’s actions.
Business Court Judge Mark Davis dismissed Carrboro’s lawsuit on Feb. 12. He ruled that the claims “are clearly nonjusticiable.” That means they have no place in a court of law.
“As an initial matter, it is clear that North Carolina’s energy policy is textually committed to branches of government other than the judiciary,” Davis wrote.
“Our General Assembly is, of course, tasked with setting public policy for North Carolina,” the judge explained. “It is clear” that state legislators have designated North Carolina’s Utilities Commission and Department of Environmental Quality to address issues that concern Carrboro.
The town’s claims “beg the question of what emission levels would have been appropriate during the time period at issue in order to avoid contributing to irreversible climate change,” Davis wrote. “That is precisely the sort of policy question that requires the exercise of discretion from other branches of our State’s government.”
Carrboro argued that courts often tackle complicated disputes.
“Carrboro’s assertion ignores the fact that many significant issues regarding climate change are not only the subject of complex scientific debate but also implicate political, economic, and moral choices made by governments and members of the public literally across the globe,” Davis wrote. “Although courts are generally capable of (and are regularly tasked with) adjudicating complex cases involving scientific issues, the present action is of an entirely different dimension — one for which the common law doctrines Carrboro seeks to invoke fail to provide the Court with a manageable framework within which to decide these claims.”
The town compared its case to an environmental pollution dispute, but “such analogies are inapt,” the judge explained. “In those lawsuits, distinct lines of causation can be discerned from specifically identified polluters to individual victims. Here, conversely, climate change is non-linear and is the result of the collective impact of acts by literally billions of unrelated emitters dispersed throughout the globe.”
“Moreover, it is simply impossible to quantify the vast swaths of information received (much less found credible) by these global actors concerning the potential dangers or benefits of fossil fuels and their link to climate change over the course of decades,” Davis wrote. “It is likewise impossible to determine the extent to which the presence — or absence — of such information would have tangibly affected the emission of greenhouse gases or the ensuing acceleration/deceleration of climate change (and its effects).”
Courts “lack the capacity” to resolve the town’s claims. “Carrboro’s theory in this case would require a factfinder to make decisions based on pure conjecture divorced from any clearly articulable or objective standards, necessarily requiring rank speculation as to the internal motivations of hundreds of millions of individuals in the United States and the cumulative effect of their actions on a global phenomenon,” Davis wrote.
The nature of carbon emissions “makes any attempt to attribute a specific source of emissions to a specific climate change-related impact a futile endeavor,” the judge added. The town’s claims are “fatally imprecise and lacking in concreteness.”
Carrboro claims Duke’s actions have hindered the town’s adoption of renewable energy alternatives.
“It is anything but clear how being ‘materially further along’ in transitioning to renewable energy sources as a general proposition would have prevented Carrboro from suffering storm-related property damage,” Davis wrote. “What is crystal clear, however, is the fact that a jury could not make such a determination without engaging in utter conjecture.”
Town officials and their NC WARN backers remain free to criticize Duke Energy. Carrboro can argue that Duke’s policies contribute to town residents’ infrastructure burden.
Yet it is “crystal clear” to the judge in this dispute that those complaints belong to the court of public opinion, not the legal system.
Mitch Kokai is senior political analyst for the John Locke Foundation.