Politicians in Boulder and Telluride are suing Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy “for the substantial role they played and continue to play in causing, contributing to and exacerbating climate change,” as explained in a complaint by Boulder County, the City of Boulder and San Miguel County.

Six years since the filing, the Colorado Supreme Court recently ordered plaintiffs to submit arguments against the defendants’ petition for judicial relief.

Activists fighting climate change should sue Boulder and Telluride. All indicators prove these communities have historically burned disproportionately high volumes of fossil fuels and emitted higher-than-average amounts of C02. Residents of these communities chose to consume and pollute at high levels. They paid energy companies to help them do so.

Their lawsuit makes perfectly clear they worry about what’s already done.

“Plaintiffs are not asking this Court to stop or regulate the production of fossil fuels in Colorado or elsewhere…” the suit explains.

Of course not. They can’t live without these fuels.

The complaint continues, “they (plaintiffs) ask only that Defendants help remediate the nuisance caused by their intentional, reckless and negligent conduct, specifically by paying their share of the Plaintiffs’ abatement costs.”

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In plain speak, this is all about cash. The plaintiffs want compensation for “heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and floods.”

That’s like two obese cities suing Hostess for a 50-year Twinkie binge.

Because Boulder and Telluride have historically polluted at high rates, by their logic, they have done more than their share to exacerbate climate change. They have done so for one simple reason: comfort.

“Higher-income households generate more greenhouse gases, on average, because wealthy Americans tend to buy more stuff — appliances, cars, furnishings, electronic gadgets — and travel more by car and plane, all of which come with related emissions,” explains a 2022 New York Times news article.

Boulder and Telluride are each in a frenzy to go green. Yet, as high-income communities they must take extraordinary measures to merely pollute like commoners.

By our calculations, the San Miguel County seat of Telluride — based on the town’s data — expends more than 20 metric tons of C02 for each resident annually. That means residents of Telluride emit 40% more greenhouse gasses than other Americans, who each generate 14.2 metric tons each year on average.

Until recently — throughout most of the post-industrial revolution — Boulder residents have generated more C02 than the national average. Only recently, after decades of clean-energy policies, has Boulder fallen a bit below the national average.

To The New York Times’ point, consider typical lifestyles in Boulder and Telluride.

Rocket Homes reports the median home price in Telluride is $4.9 million. In Boulder, the median price is just over $1 million. Those compare to the statewide median home price of about $560,000 and $421,000 nationwide.

Anyone can understand why a spacious, climate-controlled house pollutes more than a modest residence. But it does not stop there.

Exclusionary policies in each of these communities have driven home prices so high that working people haven’t lived in either for generations. Average doctors and lawyers, teachers, first responders, waiters and all variety of service workers commute — mostly in cars that emit greenhouse fumes — from distant, more affordable neighborhoods.

Electric cars aren’t rushing to the rescue. Even among wealthy residents of Boulder and San Miguel Counties, electric vehicles comprise fewer than 3% of cars on the road and are mostly charged by fossil fuels.

The state supreme court should laugh this out the door. If these plaintiffs really cared about climate change, they’d sue their constituents for lifestyles that generate massive amounts of C02 — not the companies they paid to help them live that way.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board