Judges should not write laws that anti-fossil fuel factions in Congress and the people cannot force to pass
Paul Driessen
The Earth's climate has changed several times in the last half a billion years. However, activists claim that any recent or future changes are due to fossil fuel use and agricultural practices.
These activities still increase tiny amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (0.04, 0.0002 and 0.00003 percent of the atmosphere, respectively) and are said to be altering the climate and weather. Water vapor, Earth's complex and chaotic climate system, and powerful solar and cosmic forces that together produced the Carboniferous (Coal Age), ice ages, a Little Ice Age, interglacial periods, and fluctuations in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are supposedly no longer relevant.
Climate activists, politicians and bureaucrats at the UN, US and EU then blame fossil fuels for heatwaves, cold spells, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, droughts and even abusive husbands. Kamala Harris says human-caused climate change has forced millions of illegal migrants to cross our borders since 2021.
Despite all this, the Climate Consortium has failed to achieve enforceable and implementable international treaties that require all countries to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It has failed to get the U.S. Congress to pass national legislation — or to make a convincing and hotly debated argument that reducing some greenhouse gases can stabilize temperatures and climate conditions on the planet that have never been stable.
So the consortium employs other underhanded strategies: regulating fossil fuel technologies and agricultural practices so that they are forgotten; ignores the 63% of global greenhouse gases that come from China, India and a hundred other developing countries; and the censorship and silencing of experts and talk show hosts who present inconvenient facts, data and analysis.
Climate activists are also filing lawsuits in state court against eight U.S. oil companies whose products together account for a tiny fraction of the United States' 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Nearly three dozen ultra-progressive jurisdictions want friendly local judges to decide complex matters that arise from and affect every family, business, city, state and country on earth. Instead of scientific and legislative debates and trials, they want a judge to punish energy companies for causing “dangerous climate change.”
The litigants claim they are trying to save our planet from climate disasters. Their real goal is to reduce our driving, flying, household heating and cooling, red meat consumption, living standards and free speech rights, even if this has minimal or no impact on emissions or the climate.
They want to avoid higher-level federal courts that would be more likely to examine their far-fetched claims from a national, international, scientific and economic perspective. They fear that the U.S. Supreme Court could decide whether far-left cities or states can bypass legislative processes and instead use state courts to push through radical environmental and social agendas.
There is nothing ethical, legal or constitutional about this forum shopping and backroom dealings. This is another reason why plaintiffs panicked about the Supremes' possible intervention, arguing that state judges could competently litigate the matter.
To ensure the “competence of the judiciary,” the Environmental Law Institute launched a parallel initiative, the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), to ensure that judges receive “authoritative, objective, and trustworthy training on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the impacts “Climate science emerges in law.”
Of course, as Humpty Dumpty Alice would have said, the CJP's use of a word (such as authoritative, objective, trustworthy, science or justice) means exactly what they want it to mean, no more, no less, because the ultimate question is who shall be the master – activist litigators and judges or we, the people and our elected representatives.
What raises even more questions is that the CJP is funded by the same organizations that are funding these climate lawsuits. The JPB Foundation donated $1 million to the CJP and $1.15 million to the far-left Tides Foundation's Collective Action Fund, which pays law firm Sher Edling to file such lawsuits. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation donated $500,000 to the CJP and $150,000 to the Action Fund. And so forth.
The left knows that their political plan will fail if the highest court in the land reviews the cases. That would be bad for them, but good for our system of separation of powers, for common sense and especially for reliable, affordable energy, jobs, health care and modern living standards.
Over 80% of our energy still comes from oil, gas and coal. Wind and solar power are notoriously unreliable, require expensive backup power, and require a dozen times more raw materials per unit of electricity than natural gas generators. They cannot supply petrochemical products such as clothing, cosmetics, fertilizers, paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals and wind turbine blades.
“Renewable” energy is not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. In the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles and to secure the grid, numerous metals and minerals are mined in energy-intensive processes that destroy habitats, pollute air and water, and injure and poison miners and their families.
Much of this mining takes place in countries with corrupt governments and desperately poor families, such as Congo and Myanmar, where child and slave labor are widespread. Ships are transporting the materials to China, the world's biggest polluter, which is monopolizing the global battery production market and using more coal, slave labor and polluting processes to produce “clean, green” energy products.
The electric vehicles are marketed as “zero emissions” vehicles because they have no emissions – and people don't know about this sordid history or that the electricity that charges their batteries comes largely from coal or gas-fired power plants. And battery fires are angry and toxic.
Wind turbines also rely on oil, gas and coal for the metals and minerals in their towers and generators, the fiberglass and epoxy resin rotor blades, and the concrete and reinforcing steel bases. Solar panels covering hundreds of square miles of former farmland and wildlife habitat are causing similar impacts. Ocean-based wind turbines harm and kill wildlife, including endangered whales; Land turbines kill millions of birds.
Briefs and pleadings in lawsuits filed in carefully selected liberal state courts can ignore inconvenient facts like these and often prevent judges and juries from considering them.
They can target some American oil companies for alleged climate catastrophes while ignoring all other oil and coal companies worldwide and countries that emit 89% of greenhouse gases. The lawsuits in state courts essentially and absurdly allege that the production and refining processes used by these few oil companies, as well as the products they sell, are causing climate change that is unprecedented in Earth's and human history.
Recent Supreme Court decisions show why climate alarmists and rent seekers are concerned that the Court might intervene. West Virginia v. EPA ruled that government agencies without clear legislative authority cannot unilaterally adopt regulations that have “significant” economic or political significance.
Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo struck down the “chevron reference” rule. Silent or ambiguous legal texts no longer give administrative authorities the unfettered power to interpret laws in ways that can increase control over people's lives and livelihoods.
Liberal state court decisions in these climate cases would have enormous consequences – for our environment, economy, our lives and our nation – even though Congress has never given any agency or court such authority.
The Supreme Court should definitely step in here – to ensure that these complex scientific, economic and political questions are fully studied, debated, reviewed and voted on – and not relegated to biased courtrooms.
Paul Driessen is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and the author of books and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.
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