The Pickup Didn’t Fill Itself

Imagine a little girl sitting in a restaurant with her dad. They order lunch. She gets a soda. It’s enormous, like a bucket of coke. The city is worried about obesity, diabetes, and what all that sugar is doing to people.

In our history, New York City tried to limit the size of some sugary drinks. The courts eventually stopped the rule. But imagine the city had done something different. Imagine it looked at that little girl holding that giant soda and said, Coca-Cola did this.

Instead of restricting the size of the drink, telling restaurants what they could sell, or trying to convince people not to drink so much soda, the city sued Coca-Cola. Maybe Pepsi too.

The argument would be pretty simple. These companies sold sugary drinks. They knew drinking too much sugar was bad for people. People became obese. People developed diabetes. The city had to spend money dealing with the consequences. So, Coca-Cola should pay.

There’s something about that argument that bothers us. Not because Coca-Cola would have no responsibility. Maybe it advertised too aggressively. Maybe it knew things about its product that people didn’t know. Maybe it targeted kids. Those things would matter. But somebody still picked up the cup and drank it. And the government that later sued Coca-Cola had spent years allowing the product to be sold, taxing the businesses that sold it, licensing the restaurants that served it, and watching its citizens buy it.

That doesn’t make Coca-Cola innocent. It just makes the story more complicated.

Now let’s think about the lawsuit from Boulder, Colorado, against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy.

The case made its way to the Supreme Court last week. Boulder says the oil companies should pay part of the costs associated with climate change. Boulder also alleges the companies knew their products contributed to climate change while concealing or misleading people about those dangers. The oil companies, meanwhile, argue that this is fundamentally an interstate and international emissions problem and that federal law, not state law, should govern it.

The lawyers can fight about that. Underneath the legal argument there’s a more interesting question.

If Colorado is saying oil companies bear responsibility for the consequences of people burning oil and gas, how much responsibility does Colorado bear?

Because people in Colorado burned the oil and gas. They still do. They drive cars. They heat houses. They run tractors. They fly in airplanes. They move freight. They build roads. They use diesel equipment. They consume electricity generated from fossil fuels.

And I’m not saying that as some kind of gotcha. Of course they did. What was the alternative? To sit in the dirt?

That’s the part of this that gets lost. When somebody in Colorado filled up his truck in 1985, he probably wasn’t standing there thinking, I’d like to contribute to global climate change today. He was thinking, I need to get to work.

A rancher using diesel wasn’t choosing pollution. He was choosing to feed cattle. A family heating a house wasn’t choosing carbon emissions. They were choosing not to freeze. A construction company burning diesel wasn’t trying to destroy the atmosphere. It was trying to build something.

The oil and gas were useful. That’s why people bought them.

So we’re left with a very simple question: if everyone had known everything, would they really have stopped?

If an oil company executive had shown up at every gas station in Colorado forty years ago to scream, ‘Save Yourselves! This fuel contributes to climate change!”, would Coloradans have stopped buying gasoline? Would they have parked the cars? Stopped the tractors? Turned off the furnaces? Stopped building roads? Stopped flying?

Maybe some people would’ve changed some things. Maybe governments would’ve acted sooner. Maybe companies would’ve invested differently. Those are fair possibilities. But would society have simply chosen not to use the energy?

No. That’s ridiculous.

And that’s where the philosophy starts to get spicy. We tend to confuse causing something with being morally responsible for all of it. Oil companies were part of the cause. Consumers were part of the cause. Governments were part of the cause. Industry was part of the cause. Everybody participated in the same energy system.

That doesn’t mean everyone has equal responsibility, and it doesn’t mean the oil companies get a pass if they lied. If somebody sells you food and deliberately hides the fact that it’s dangerous, your decision to eat the food doesn’t make the seller innocent. Who knows what, and who can do something about it, matters.

A family trying to get to work doesn’t have the same choices as a multinational corporation deciding what to research, disclose, advertise, or invest in. But the family still has some agency. The state has agency too.

Colorado hasn’t been powerless. It has adopted stricter emissions rules. It has tried to reduce vehicle emissions. It has invested money in wildfire mitigation and forest management. That proves Colorado understands that governments have choices.

So if responsibility is the principle, the principle has to work in both directions.

That takes us to wildfires.

A couple maybe three years ago I wrote about the strange contradiction in the way we manage forests and climate change. Wildfires release enormous amounts of carbon. We know many western forests have too much fuel in them: deadwood, overgrown stands, beetle-killed trees. We also know that reducing that fuel sometimes requires things people don’t like: mechanical thinning, logging, prescribed fire, disturbing habitat, cutting trees, spending taxpayer money.

There are legitimate environmental reasons to be cautious about all of those things. Protect the snowy owl. Protect habitat. Protect old-growth trees. Those concerns are real.

But fire is real too.

Our forests are going to burn. That’s how forests heal themselves. There is no scenario in the future that every acre of forest doesn’t eventually burn. Choosing to do nothing means there’s more fuel for them to burn hotter and longer. And when they burn, the carbon doesn’t stop at the Colorado border.

So now the philosophical question gets even stranger. Can Colorado say that emissions coming from oil companies outside Colorado helped damage Colorado, while emissions from a Colorado wildfire are just something that happened to Colorado?

If responsibility crosses borders, then responsibility crosses borders.

That doesn’t mean Colorado caused the beetles. It doesn’t mean Colorado caused the drought. It doesn’t mean Colorado caused climate change. It means that once the problem exists, choices still exist. How much do we thin? How much do we burn intentionally? How much do we log? How much money do we spend? How much environmental disruption do we tolerate today to avoid a larger environmental disruption tomorrow?

That’s responsibility too.

This is where I think we sometimes build a self-licking ice cream cone. Everyone uses the system. Everyone benefits from the system. Everyone contributes something to the consequences. Then everyone points at somebody else and says: you caused this.

The oil company says consumers demanded the fuel. Consumers say the oil company sold it. The state says the corporation knew more. The corporation says the state regulated us and collected taxes from the activity. The federal government blames industry. Industry blames regulation.

Everybody is somehow both participant and victim.

That doesn’t mean nobody is responsible. It means responsibility is shared.

That brings us back to something else. The International Court of Justice, sitting in The Hague, has said climate change threatens fundamental human rights and that states have obligations to address it.

There’s an irony there that I still can’t get over.

The Hague was badly damaged during World War II. After the war, Europe had to rebuild. American factories ran. We made steel and cement, moved ships and trucks, burned fuel. Smoke came pouring out of stacks. The industrial machine that rebuilt Europe produced huge amounts of pollution.

And now, generations later, from a city rebuilt with the help of that industrial system, a court can sit in a comfortable room and declare that humanity has obligations to reduce the environmental consequences of industrial activity.

That doesn’t make the court wrong. Standards should change. Technology should improve. We know things now that people didn’t know then.

But you still feel a stitch in your side with the irony.

Prosperity gives us the luxury to criticize the process that created prosperity.

A society lying in rubble doesn’t begin with the carbon footprint of the cement kiln. It asks whether there is cement. A freezing person doesn’t begin with the emissions profile of his furnace. He asks whether the furnace works.

Belief can tell us what kind of world we want, but biology keeps asking whether we can survive long enough to build it.

And that’s where we are with Colorado.

I’m not against Colorado trying to deal with climate change. I’m not necessarily on the side of the oil companies. If an oil company lied, prove it. If it concealed information, prove it. If it bears part of the cost, then make that case.

But I don’t understand the philosophy of treating the producer as though everyone else was the victim.

Colorado citizens consumed the fuel, its economy benefited, they regulated it. People from Colorado filled their vehicles with it. Its farms, construction sites, businesses, and homes depended on it. And when stricter alternatives became possible, Colorado made choices about how quickly to adopt them.

So maybe the question isn’t whether Exxon is responsible.

Maybe Exxon is responsible, at least partly.

The question is whether responsibility ends there.

I don’t think it does.

If we’re serious when we say environmental harm creates responsibility, then the responsibility has to follow the whole chain: producer, seller, government, consumer. All of us.

Maybe that’s uncomfortable. But shared responsibility isn’t the same thing as no responsibility.

It just means we don’t get to hold the giant cup in our own hands and pretend it was somebody else’s fault we drank the coke.

Sources

The original 2018 Boulder County, City of Boulder, and San Miguel County complaint against ExxonMobil and Suncor, including the allegations concerning fossil-fuel production, promotion, climate harms, and the companies’ knowledge of climate risks: Boulder County District Court, “Complaint and Jury Demand,” April 17, 2018

Boulder County’s description of the lawsuit, including its position that the case seeks compensation for climate-related harms rather than regulation of fossil-fuel production or emissions: Boulder County, “Climate Lawsuit”

The official U.S. Supreme Court docket for Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, including the Court’s grant of review and the October 5, 2026 oral argument: Supreme Court of the United States, Docket No. 25-170 Supreme Court

The official transcript of the October 5, 2026 Supreme Court oral argument, including Suncor’s argument that Colorado law is being applied to alleged harms resulting from global fossil-fuel use and greenhouse-gas emissions: Supreme Court of the United States, “Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. Commissioners of Boulder County,” Oral Argument Transcript, October 5, 2026 Supreme Court

The official Supreme Court audio of the October 5, 2026 oral argument: Supreme Court of the United States, “Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. Commissioners of Boulder County,” Oral Argument Audio Supreme Court

Colorado’s argument in support of allowing state courts to hear Boulder’s state-law claims against ExxonMobil and Suncor: Colorado Attorney General, “Attorney General Phil Weiser Defends State Courts’ Role in Climate Case Before U.S. Supreme Court” Colorado Attorney General

New York City’s sugary-drink Portion Cap Rule, which prohibited covered food-service establishments from selling sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces, and the New York Court of Appeals decision holding that the Board of Health exceeded its regulatory authority: New York Official Reports, “New York Statewide Coalition of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce v. New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene,” 2014 Westlaw

Colorado’s adoption of the California Low Emission Vehicle standard in 2018 and subsequent consideration and adoption of a Zero Emission Vehicle program: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, “Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate Proposal” cdphe.colorado.gov

Colorado’s current Zero Emission Vehicle requirements, including requirements applying to model-year 2023 and later vehicles: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, “Zero Emission Vehicles Program” cdphe.colorado.gov

Colorado state spending and projects intended to reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health, including Forest Restoration and Wildfire Risk Mitigation grants for fuels treatment and forest-management work: Colorado State Forest Service, “Governor Polis, Colorado State Forest Service Announce 31 Wildfire Mitigation Grants,” April 2, 2024 Colorado State Forest Service

Colorado’s broader wildfire and forest-management efforts, including more than $40 million awarded through the Colorado Strategic Wildfire Action Program from 2022 through 2025 and treatment of thousands of acres through state wildfire-risk programs: Colorado State Forest Service, “Living With Wildfire” Colorado State Forest Service

The Forest Service’s analysis of mechanical thinning, prescribed fire, sensitive-species habitat, wilderness restrictions, road access, and other practical or administrative constraints on hazardous-fuel reduction: U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, “Mechanical Fuel Reduction Treatments: Constraints and Opportunities for Wildfire Crisis Strategy Landscapes” USFS Research & Development

Research estimating that California’s 2020 wildfires emitted approximately 127 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent and could rank as the state’s second-largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions for that year, offsetting years of emissions reductions elsewhere: Environmental Pollution, “Up in Smoke: California’s Greenhouse Gas Reductions Could Be Wiped Out by 2020 Wildfires,” 2022 ScienceDirect

The International Court of Justice’s 2025 advisory opinion and underlying proceedings concerning states’ obligations under international law regarding climate change: International Court of Justice, “Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change,” Case No. 187 International Court of Justice

The destruction, evacuation, and wartime disruption of large portions of The Hague, including the forced displacement of roughly 135,000 residents for construction of the Atlantic Wall and the 1945 bombing of the Bezuidenhout district: The Hague Municipal Archives, “Den Haag in WO II (1940–1945)” Haags Gemeentearchief

Postwar reconstruction of The Hague’s Atlantic Wall zone, including reconstruction planning begun immediately after the German capitulation: Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency, “Den Haag Atlantikwallzone Kijkduin-Zorgvliet: een toonbeeld van wederopbouw” Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed

Marshall Plan assistance to the Netherlands, including approximately $1.0835 billion in European Recovery Program aid between 1948 and 1952. This is the replacement for the broken USAID link: Congressional Research Service, “The Marshall Plan: Design, Accomplishments, and Significance,” R45079 Congress.gov

Contemporary U.S. diplomatic records concerning the European Recovery Program and American assistance to the Netherlands during implementation of the Marshall Plan: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Western Europe, Volume III

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