The Supreme Court’s term opens with the Boulder case, and the headline in every outlet is some variation of “Big Oil asks justices to toss climate suits.” Exxon’s Houston paper adds the local angle: a win could shield Houston oil from climate claims. I find the framing a little odd. The case is mostly about venue, whether a state court can hear this at all or whether it belongs to federal law. It’s less about whether the climate is changing.

Put it next to the other story from the same morning. Chicago, Denver and New York City just joined multistate suits against the EPA for erasing power plant carbon limits. So cities are in court asking a federal agency to regulate emissions, while the energy companies are in a different court asking that cities and counties not be allowed to sue them under state law. Squint and the two arguments fit together uncomfortably. If the federal government declines to regulate, and states can’t sue, then the question of who answers for the emissions has no address.

I’m not saying that’s the plan. Lawsuits take years, and the people filing them mostly want the most immediate thing they can get. But a month ago I was reading about a federal court halting New York’s Climate Superfund law, and a second decision blocking it came through on the first of this month. Three separate rooms, and each one has a lawyer saying some version of “not here.”

There’s a small, nice counterweight further down the feed: a new Colorado neighborhood being treated as a test bed for home energy. Same state as Boulder, as it happens. Houses with their own batteries and heat pumps don’t need a ruling to work.

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