Killer beetles, tinderbox forests: Climate change costs center stage at Supreme Court
ABC News · LC · trust 50/100
Share BOULDER, Colo. -- To walk deep into the mountain forests at the doorstep of the Rocky Mountains, is to encounter the fragrant majesty of century-old ponderosa pine trees famous for lining ski slopes, National Park trails and residential neighborhoods.
Now, those iconic Colorado trees -- already under strain from record heat and prolonged drought -- are threatened by a rapidly growing outbreak of silent killers: the mountain pine beetle .
The size of a grain of rice, the native forest insect can attack a tree in a matter of weeks, feeding upon its critical tissues and effectively strangling it from within.
The mountain pine beetle is the size of a grain of rice but can inflict colossal harm to forests. ABC News "Once a tree has been attacked, it's likely to die," said Sarah Hart, a forest ecologist with Colorado State University. "For managing large landscapes, we really don't have particularly effective strategies to stop it."
More than 700,000 acres in Colorado are affected, officials say. Climate change is blamed for supercharging the emerging outbreak, with no end in sight.
Some state officials have called them "zombie forests": ponderosa that appear to be healthy but are under existential threats from a changing climate that may result in extinction in some areas.
"We've had this dearth of precipitation, above-average temperatures -- It's kind of like attacking the bank when there's no security guard," said Dan West, an entomologist with the Colorado State Forest Service. "These trees are standing there with not a lot of defenses."
Dan West, left, an entomologist with the Colorado State Forest Service, and Dan Gibbs, right, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, are leading a statewide response to the pine beetle outbreak across the state. ABC News The cost of responding to the pine beetle outbreak, along with the financial impacts from other climate-change influenced environmental threats, are at the heart of a major Supreme Court case being argued Monday in Washington.
The City of Boulder and Boulder County, Colorado, in 2018 sued major fossil-fuel producers Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy, seeking financial damages under state public nuisance law.
The City of Boulder and Boulder County in Colorado have sued energy companies seeking financial damages for the impacts of climate change. ABC News Their complaint alleges the companies "knowingly caused and contributed" to climate change by promoting fossil fuels "while concealing and/or misrepresenting the dangers," including "devastation" to forests from an "epidemic" of mountain pine beetles.
Exxon and Suncor, which declined interviews for this story, argue in court papers that the Boulder lawsuit is based on a "dubious theory," insisting local harms from the global phenomenon of climate change cannot be pinned on individual companies.
Suncor Energy, a Canadian company, purchased the Commerce City, Colo., refinery in 2005. ABC News They're asking the U.S. Supreme Court to toss the case out.
"National issues should be decided at the national stage, and that means Congress needs to be the one to decide what are the rules for who pays, who ultimately pays, what are standards for imposing those costs," said Michael Williams, solicitor general of West Virginia, which has joined 25 other states backing Exxon and Suncor.
Michael Williams, Solicitor General of West Virginia, speaks with ABC's Devin Dwyer. The state is among a group of 26 backing Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy in a legal battle with Boulder, Colo. ABC News "If these suits go forward, higher gas prices are maybe the smallest consequence. I think it's even bigger than that and you're going to see some of these industries potentially shutter entirely," Williams said.
Boulder city and county officials declined interview requests about the case.
The Commerce City refinery in Colorado is the state's largest processor of gasoline and jet fuel. ABC News Longtime Boulder resident Paul Chinowsky, a civil engineer specializing in climate impacts, said he doesn't want the oil companies to go bankrupt but agrees they should chip in for alleged harms from their product.
"Let's be real. We can't live today without some level of fossil fuels, but we need regulation," Chinowsky said in an interview in his neighborhood on the outskirts of Boulder.
Paul Chinowsky, a longtime Boulder resident and civil engineer specializing in climate impacts, lost his home during the historic Marshall Fire that devastated Colorado in 2021. ABC News "We see streets getting resurfaced. We see drainage systems getting updated, and we think of it all as, well, this is just a part of regular maintenance. Climate change is putting an accelerator on that," he said.
Boulder and Boulder County say in court documents that they've spent millions on road repairs, storm drainage improvements and utility upgrades to keep pace with other environmental threats amplified by climate change.
John Tayer, CEO of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, says the impacts of climate change have hit local government budgets hard. ABC News "It's become a significant element of the city's budget," said John Tayer, CEO of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. "There are direct costs associated with the change in climate. Just everything from rising heat, which leads to greater air conditioning costs. It can slow down outdoor work because of the risk to the workforce from heat exposure. It's across the board."
Mountain pine beetles that attack ponderosa pine trees burrow into the bark to lay eggs which develop into larvae that feed on critical tree tissues. ABC News Driving from Boulder along Interstate 70 into the Front Range, rust-colored clusters of dead ponderosa pine streak the mountainsides. From above, the scale of the crisis is even more dramatic.
Bark beetles killed more than 54 million acres of pines across the West in the early 2000s, an area the size of the state of Utah. The new…
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