The most basic function of government is to protect people from harm. Two growing phenomena – the climate crisis and AI – pose escalating risks of extraordinary harm.

The climate crisis is already causing floods, wildfires, drought and record heat. AI agents are already escaping super-secure environments to hack into systems they’re supposed to avoid.

Yet Donald Trump and his Republican enablers, backed by big money from big oil and big AI, refuse to do a thing about either risk. In many ways, they’re worsening both.

But there’s another way to reduce these risks: through liability law.

I have no more faith in the supreme court than you do, but I was struck by the responses of at least half the justices who will be considering an important case that opened the supreme court’s new term, Suncor v Boulder.

The case was brought by several Colorado localities against Suncor and ExxonMobil – one of about three dozen filed around the country in which cities and states are demanding that big oil reimburse them for the escalating costs of climate disasters brought on by the burning of fossil fuels.

On Monday, at least four justices (Samuel Alito has recused himself) expressed skepticism about big oil’s argument that the Clean Air Act explicitly prevents such lawsuits against........

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