Climate deadlines collide with politics as Dem-led states chase Big Oil in court but spare local refiners

Several Democrat-led states are facing conflicting forces in their efforts to transition to 100% green power, as leaders try to shore up the power grid while other officials sue fossil fuel companies in the same light activists did to tobacco firms in the 1990s.In that decade, dozens of states sued tobacco giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, alleging they knowingly endangered public health and misled consumers about nicotine’s addictiveness. The cases culminated in a $200 billion "master settlement" in 1998 that banned billboard advertising and reshaped corporate liability in the industry.