The Oil Empire Strikes Back

Why the DOJ Now Works for Exxon, and What That Means for the Rest of Us

In a just world, it would be front-page news that four U.S. states—Hawaii, Michigan, New York, and Vermont—are trying to make fossil fuel corporations pay for the damage they’ve inflicted on our climate, on our homes, on our bodies. These aren’t radical demands. They’re attempts, however limited, to claw back some semblance of justice. Michigan wants to sue oil companies for climate-related harm. Hawaii is targeting Big Oil for its role in disasters like the Lahaina wildfire. New York and Vermont passed “climate superfund” laws to hold polluters financially accountable for historic emissions.

*Welcome to another #FierceFriday rant here at Collapse Curriculum.

But instead of supporting these basic steps toward responsibility, the federal government under the Trump administration is doing the opposite. The Department of Justice just filed lawsuits against those states. Why? Because apparently, holding corporations accountable is now seen as a threat to “American energy independence” and “national security.”

This is the story: States try to protect their land, their people, their future. The federal government—commandeered by fossil fuel interests—sues to stop them.

This Is Not Just Policy. This Is War.

Let’s not play polite anymore. The DOJ’s lawsuits are not legal disagreements—they’re acts of violence, carried out with pen and gavel instead of gun and bomb, but no less deadly. These are weapons in the hands of a regime that worships oil and treats air and water like collateral damage. When the government sues a state for trying to breathe, we have left the realm of reason and entered pure death cult logic.

And what do the Democrats offer in return? A handful of legal mechanisms, carefully threaded through the same industrial legal maze that is already rigged against life itself. They ask oil companies to pay for the damage, yes—but only after decades of inaction, after the glaciers have melted and the forests have burned. It's the bureaucratic equivalent of trying to replant a tree in the ashes of a wildfire—with a memo.

The Trump camp is worse, yes. They're not just ignoring the collapse—they're actively ensuring it. They’re fighting to make sure oil companies never pay a cent, even as coastlines drown and children cough through wildfire smoke. They’re dragging states into courtrooms for daring to resist the gods of capital.

The Mask Is Off

The Clean Air Act—the same law once hailed as a tool for protecting public health—is now being used to sue states who try to reduce emissions. Try to stop the destruction? You’re breaking the law. Try to defend your community? You’re an enemy of the state. This isn’t accidental. This is exactly how the system is built. Civilization is a hierarchy, and its laws serve the top—serve profit, not life.

It is not broken. It is functioning as intended—transforming mountains into money, rivers into risk portfolios, and your future into quarterly earnings. The courts exist to protect the delusions of billionaires. The EPA now serves to smother dissent in legal jargon. And your silence is the only thing they require to keep it going.

We’re Past Reform

We will not recycle our way out of this. We will not lobby our way out. We will not sue our way out. And we sure as hell won’t vote our way out when both parties are clinging to the same sinking ship. We are in an age of terminal denial, run by pyromaniacs and stenographers of empire. And they are betting you will stay afraid, stay obedient, stay hopeful that maybe, just maybe, this time the courts will be fair.

But the salmon are gone. The coral is dying. The lungs of the planet are on fire. There is no time left for hope detached from action. The question now is not how do we fix this system, but how do we stop it before it kills everything.

The Only Way Out

We cannot vote our way out of this. We cannot reform a death cult. The time for asking nicely is long gone. The earth does not need your petitions or bipartisan compromise. It needs defenders. It needs saboteurs of empire. It needs people willing to throw their bodies, their hearts, and their lives between what remains and the machine.

The question isn't whether this culture will fall. It's whether there's anything left when it does.