Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Federal court Justice Thomas Coffin has ruled that child plaintiffs suing the Federal Government have a right to put their case, that the US Government has a constitutional obligation to reduce CO2 emissions. But the consequences of this case may go far beyond an economically damaging change to US internal policy. If the plaintiffs win, what will the USA be obligated to do, if the “harmful” CO2 is mostly emitted by other countries?
In the first lawsuit to involve a planet, Judge Thomas Coffin of the United States Federal District Court in Eugene, Oregon, ruled on Friday in favor of twenty-one plaintiffs, ages 8 to 19, on behalf of future generations of Americans in a landmark constitutional climate change case brought against the Federal Government and the Fossil FOSL -1.91% Fuel Industry.
The lawsuit alleges that the Federal Government is violating the Plaintiffs’ constitutional and public trust rights by promoting the use of fossil fuels. The Complaint explains that, for over fifty years, the United States Government and the Fossil Fuel Industry have known that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels causes global warming and dangerous climate change, and that continuing to burn fossil fuels destabilizes the climate system.
Judge Coffin wrote: “The debate about climate change and its impact has been before various political bodies for some time now. Plaintiffs give this debate justiciability by asserting harms that befall or will befall them personally and to a greater extent than older segments of society. It may be that eventually the alleged harms, assuming the correctness of plaintiffs’ analysis of the impacts of global climate change, will befall all of us. But the intractability of the debates before Congress and state legislatures and the alleged valuing of short-term economic interest despite the cost to human life, necessitates a need for the courts to evaluate the constitutional parameters of the action or inaction taken by the government. This is especially true when such harms have an alleged disparate impact on a discrete class of society.”
The full text of Judge Coffin’s finding is here.
There is still a long way to go for the plaintiffs to win their case – Judge Coffin simply ruled that the plaintiffs have a right to have their case heard, and rejected actions by the Federal Government and Fossil Fuel industry associations to immediately dismiss the case.
However, it is probably worth considering the horrifying possibilities if the plaintiffs win their case.
Given that, according to Judge Coffin’s finding, the plaintiffs posit that the USA only produces around 25% of global CO2 emissions, a figure which is falling rapidly, what would the courts require the US Government to do, if the courts find the US government has a constitutional duty to reduce CO2 emissions?
Would the federal government have discharged its obligations, if they force US controlled territories to abandon fossil fuels? Even though this would make very little difference in the long run to global CO2 emissions?
Or would the Federal Government be placed under a constitutional obligation to force other countries to reduce their CO2 emissions as well, in order to protect US citizens from the alleged harms of CO2?
What if the rest of the world says no, and rejects US requests to reduce CO2? Or if the rest of the world agrees to a US request to reduce CO2 emissions, but does not honour that agreement?
This is not the first time such a ridiculous situation has arisen. In an interview in 2013, while discussing the weaknesses of climate models, Hans Von Storch, one of the giants of German Climate Science, and very much an advocate of climate action, discussed a German push to create a constitutional obligation to reduce CO2 emissions.
SPIEGEL: Will the greenhouse effect be an issue in the upcoming German parliamentary elections? Singer Marius Müller-Westernhagen is leading a celebrity initiative calling for the addition of climate protection as a national policy objective in the German constitution.
Storch: It’s a strange idea. What state of the Earth’s atmosphere do we want to protect, and in what way? And what might happen as a result? Are we going to declare war on China if the country emits too much CO2 into the air and thereby violates our constitution?
SPIEGEL: Yet it was climate researchers, with their apocalyptic warnings, who gave people these ideas in the first place.
Storch: Unfortunately, some scientists behave like preachers, delivering sermons to people. What this approach ignores is the fact that there are many threats in our world that must be weighed against one another. If I’m driving my car and find myself speeding toward an obstacle, I can’t simple yank the wheel to the side without first checking to see if I’ll instead be driving straight into a crowd of people. Climate researchers cannot and should not take this process of weighing different factors out of the hands of politics and society.
The plaintiffs are being advised by ex NASA GISS Director James Hansen, who appears to seriously believe that the world is on the brink of catastrophic runaway global warming. In this context, perhaps the plaintiffs and their advisor are aware of the terrifying potential of creating a constitutional obligation to wage global warfare, but believe that a bit of geopolitical brinkmanship is a risk worth taking, in order to “save the planet”.
But the effect of warming the higher latitudes has decreased the meridional temperature gradient and reduced many types of extreme weather(heavy rains are an exception).
And the increase in CO2 is greening the planet and massively increasing crop yields and world food production.
What will they sue over………….climate model projections which have proven to have very little skill?
Just another marketing scheme based on the politics, not science of climate science.
This needs to be in court. Let’s prove this right or wrong as soon as possible.
We are in deep, deep trouble as a society if this sort of magical thinking by climate true believers continues to prevail. The climate obsessed will come for us all before this is finished. The sun is setting on the age of enlightenment.
Nothing demonstrates more clearly the crucial nature of the next SCOTUS appointment than this lunacy.
The kiddees are of course being manipulated by the adults of course; Adults with a political and ideological agenda.
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They should really be concerned about the level of Fed government debt, the projected looming deficits, and the ensuing federal govt debt increase they will be expected to pay once they are in the middle working productive years of lives in about 25 years.
Forecast of the gross federal debt of the United States for fiscal years 2015 to 2026 (in billion U.S. dollars)
http://i64.tinypic.com/r1c2so.jpg
This graph shows a forecast of the outstanding gross federal debt of the United States of America from 2015 to 2026. The gross federal debt comprises the federal debt held by the public plus Treasury securities held by federal trust funds and other governmental accounts. This forecast projects the gross federal debt to increase from 18.14 trillion U.S. dollars in 2015 to 29.31 trillion U.S. dollars in 2026.
The maturity date of US Treasury issuance has also been steadily increasing:
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2014/10/TBAC-weighted-average-maturity.png
The Federal Reserve holds about $2.5T of the total US govt debt, a state that will have serious consequences for the central bank’s monetary policy when outside lenders begin to demand more interest in return for loaning money to the US government.
Together these two factors will likely force a scenario called “fiscal dominance,” whereby the government is locked out of the bond market because of high interest demands from lenders. The Federal Reserve bank must be the purchaser of last resort for US Treasuries. This is the scenario whereby dollars are simply printed to pay off dollar denominated debts, when borrowing from the bond market is too costly.
Is it any wonder the Progressives need to keep the children focused on non-problems like Climate Change while they steal from their future?
Also, this is the underlying reason Progressives are desparate to find new tax revenue streams in the near future, such as so called “carbon taxes.”
It really is just not that far away from the day we’ll all pay taxes on the air we breathe.
Finally, this opens the door to me becoming a multi-millionaire! Too hot? I sue the government. Too cold? Too dry? Too wet? Too much or too little of anything? Sue ’em.
It seems to work well for the climate alarmists, the “Too” strategy where no matter what happens, it’s evidence of CAGW – it’s about time the law got on board! Kudos to this forward-thinking judge whose, ah, creative advocacy and disregard for common sense and established law has made this possible.
Next: I sue God for all sorts of things. I may even be able to use this judge’s court! I expect to collect bazillions.
Uh, you must have meant “multi-billionaire”. A million ain’t enough to retire on nowadays. Where’ve you been, chum?
Their concern for the unplanned children is touching.
It is impossible for the United States to reach President Obama’s GHG reduction targets of 28% by 2025, 32% by 2030, and 80% by 2050 without using existing environmental law to its maximum possible effectiveness, something which the President and the EPA have so far refused to do.
The US Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA has authority to regulate all sources of US carbon emissions. However, the Clean Power Plan (CPP) targets only coal-fired power plants and achieves less than one-quarter of the President’s 80% by 2050 GHG reduction goal. More to the point, the CPP is in jeopardy of being thrown out because it unfairly targets the US coal industry for major GHG reductions while leaving other major sources of US carbon emissions alone.
It is impossible for emerging market forces and for emerging technologies to drive fossil fuels from the energy marketplace in the relatively short space of time the President’s schedule calls for. Direct, highly-aggressive government intervention in the energy marketplace is necessary if the President’s GHG reduction targets are to be met.
So the question must be asked, how can the President and the EPA legally and constitutionally accelerate the process of largely decarbonizing America’s economy without further legislative action on the part of the US Congress?
The answer is simple in concept but politically very tough to put into place.
Existing environmental law in the form of the Clean Air Act can be invoked to declare a carbon pollution emergency, then to set a NAAQS for carbon dioxide, and then to develop an EPA-managed, state-enforced regulatory framework for carbon which can limit the supply and availability of all fossil fuels and which can directly or indirectly raise the price of those fossil fuels.
All the laws that climate activists would need to enforce steep reductions in America’s carbon emissions are already on the books today, waiting to be picked up and used. Why aren’t President Obama, the EPA, and the climate activists making full use of the environmental laws that already exist?
“Why aren’t President Obama, the EPA, and the climate activists making full use of the environmental laws that already exist?”
Simple, politics.
Doing what you suggest would be economic suicide. Most GHGs imminate from China and India, not the US. Thus the People would give Obama and his party even bigger “shellackings” they got when they lost control of the House of Representative in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. And Once the socialist-Democratic Party loses the Presidency, the lunacy and scientific nonsense of the EPA’s CO2 endangerment finding under the overly broad CAA wil be restricted by the GOP Congress and President by rewriting the CAA.
They,re after gas companies using fracing as their excuse to stop a regional pipeline in new england.
Maybe then I can finally have standing to sue the federal government for the horrendous damage to our health, safety and prosperity by progressives.
Yes, it will be interesting when these young plaintiffs sue over the management of the Social Security and Medicare programs.
It doesn’t require any dodgy modeling to show the looming disasters there.
This is the sort of hyperbole I would expect from a CAGW alarmist. A good article except for this bit of exaggeration.
And people think adolescent rebellion is at worst, terrible, and at best an annoyance. Actions like this demonstrate precisely why adolescent rebellion occurs. I certainly hope that the adolescents (and children when they reach their adolescent years) involved in this disgrace engage in an extraordinarily hard to live with version of that phenomenon. They’re being used by their parents and ‘trusted’ caregivers. Payback should come. And hard.
“United States Federal District Court in Eugene, Oregon”
That would make it the 9th Circuit court.
There’s a reason why this court holds the record for the most over ruled court in the country. By a long, long, margin.
There are reasons why courts are supposed to rule on issues of law, and leave the politics to the political bodies.
But that was before the socialists took over.
Since the Plaintiffs are aged 8 – 19, all we have to do is tell them is if they win, they’ll have to charge their Iphones by peddling a stationary bike hooked up to a generator.
So would it throw a spanner in the works if these same plaintiffs were found to be willfully using fossil fuels or purchasing things made from it?
Of course, these twenty-one plaintiffs, ages 8 to 19, would have to lead the first troops in our battle with the Chinese.
Hey, I’m too old to be in the military, except possibly at the end of the war.
Go for the big payoff and claim nitrogen is bad. I hear there is a lot of it.
I think it would have the effect of destroying the United States because the economic effects would bring about a civil war.
They still have to scientifically prove that CO2 emissions are a detriment to the environment. So far, that has not been done. No one can separate the effects of CO2 from humans from natural releases.
Some alarmist are probably applauding this court ruling allowing the BS to proceed.
I wonder how many of them applauded the ruling in the UK that said “An Inconvenient Truth” was BS?
I thought that judges were here to stop people who are to immature to use their own brains from wasting everyone’s time and money. Sigh…
In addition to it’s other problems, this case smacks of ageism. It is tantamount to bratty, whiny, know-nothing kids attacking their parents simply as a way of getting their money.
What about your ever expanding blowout of national debt, can the younger generation sue the government about that ?
I can imagine Thomas Jefferson rolling over in his grave.