I’ve wondered for a while how litigation might get going on global warming. There are an awful lot of nasty situations either here or on their way, and one wonders if some enterprising lawyers will figure out how to start suing the biggest corporations in the world.

One approach currently seems to be: Find a distinct entity having measurable damages plausibly caused by global warming, and then have that entity sue the largest carbon-emitting or carbon-selling companies for those exact measurable effects. That’s the approach of the 400 Inupiat villagers of Kivalina, Alaska, whose village will be washed away soon since its ice protection is all gone. With the help of Stephen Sussman (ironically, a lawyer for Philip Morris during the medicaid-cost-recovery lawsuits of the last 15 years), they are suing a bucket of oil, gas, and electric companies for recovery of the costs necessary to move their village. He calls it a “nuisance case.” Amy Goodman of Democracy Now discussed it with him on Thursday, July 3, 2008.

Conspiracy to deceive is part of this particular lawsuit. In other words, this bucket of companies is charged with misleading the public in general, through funding organizations which have obscured reality. I’m not sure how this helps the nuisance lawsuit, but something similar helped the states when suing tobacco companies, so maybe it helps.

We have to decide, however, how or why it is fair to go after oil, gas, and electric companies. We have to remember, at all times, that we, each of us, are buying the gasoline, using the electricity, and consuming the products fired by fossil fuels. The companies will argue, with some plausibility, that they were and are filling an ever-growing demand for energy, and that individual purchasers share responsibility for the effects of that purchase.

Maybe this is where the “conspiracy to deceive” comes in. If you deceive the consumers of your products about consumption’s effects, then the consumers are (plausibly) less responsible for those effects.

I urge readers with some legal expertise to chime in on this one.