A federal appeals court has rejected an Alaskan native village's appeal of a U.S. district court's dismissal of its lawsuit against a group of oil, energy and utility companies.

The initial suit claimed the energy producers' greenhouse gas emissions caused global warming, prompting erosion of the land on which their coastal village sits and threatening the village's survival.

Ruling in the case of Village of Kivalina et al. vs. ExxonMobil Corp. et al., the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Friday that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that federal common law addressing domestic greenhouse gas emissions has been displaced by congressional action through the Clean Air Act and the act's authorization of the Environmental Protection Agency, displacing the Alaskan villagers' claims.

“That determination displaces federal common law public nuisance actions seeking damages, as well as those actions seeking injunctive relief,” the court said in its opinion.

The Native Village of Kivalina and the City of Kivalina filed their suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2008. The city, which sits at the tip of a barrier reef on the Alaska coast, has been threatened by erosion resulting from wave action and sea storms.

With sea ice forming later in the year, breaking up earlier and being thinner in recent years, it has provided less protection of the coast from storms, according to the suit.

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Kivalina blamed the destruction of their land on global warming, charging that the energy producers were responsible for the damages they were experiencing. The district court dismissed the claim in 2009, and the villagers appealed.

“Our conclusion obviously does not aid Kivalina, which itself is being displaced by the rising sea,” the appeals court said in its ruling. “But the solution to Kivalina's dire circumstance must rest in the hands of the legislative and executive branches of our government, not the federal common law.”

The Kivalina case prompted a ruling earlier this year in which the Virginia Supreme Court upheld its earlier ruling that Steadfast Insurance Co. has no obligation to defend or indemnify Arlington, Va.-based AES Corp., one of the defendants in the Kivalina suit.

Many consider AES vs. Steadfast to be the first insurance coverage case involving climate change litigation.