Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Trump Solicitor General Noel Francisco has stepped up efforts to have the Juliana V.S. US climate court case dismissed.
Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to throw out landmark youth climate case
The landmark climate case has so far survived multiple attempts to block it.
KYLA MANDEL
JUL 18, 2018, 1:26 PMThe Trump administration has gone to the Supreme Court in an effort to stop a landmark climate case brought against the federal government by 21 children and young adults. The last-ditch effort comes ahead of a court hearing on the case scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
On Tuesday, Solicitor General Noel Francisco from the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the Court to block any further legal proceedings in what it calls an “ill-conceived suit” — including Wednesday’s hearing. The government is also seeking to stay discovery and trial in the U.S. District Court of Oregon where the case is scheduled for October.
In what legal experts have called a groundbreaking piece of climate litigation, the lawsuit seeks to hold the federal government accountable for its role in perpetuating climate change. The final decision could shape the future of climate litigation for years to come.
The government is “desperately trying to outrun the justice system,” Erika Lennon, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, said in an email to ThinkProgress. “The Supreme Court should see this as nothing more than the latest contortion by the Trump Administration to avoid facing these courageous youths in court, deny the government’s request, and allow this case to proceed using the normal judicial process.”
…
Below is a copy of the motion to dismiss (may take a few seconds to load):
View the full document here.
Behind the facade of optimism at least some greens seem to have accepted that the case has very little hope of success. James Hansen recently accused President Obama of failing to settle the lawsuit when he had the opportunity. Hansen claims that if Obama had done what Hansen asked, it would have been far more difficult for President Trump to unwind Obama’s climate policies.
… Hansen even accuses Obama of passing up the opportunity to thwart Donald Trump’s destruction of US climate action, by declining to settle a lawsuit the scientist, his granddaughter and 20 other young people are waging against the government, accusing it of unconstitutionally causing peril to their living environment.
“Near the end of his administration the US said it would reduce emissions 80% by 2050,” Hansen said.
“Our lawsuit demands a reduction of 6% a year so I thought, ‘That’s close enough, let’s settle the lawsuit.’ We got through to Obama’s office but he decided against it. It was a tremendous opportunity. This was after Trump’s election, so if we’d settled it quickly the US legally wouldn’t be able to do the absurd things Trump is doing now by opening up all sorts of fossil fuel sources.” …
In my opinion this hopeless lawsuit is an abuse of the trust and emotional well being of plaintiffs who are too young and inexperienced to properly understand how they are being used as pawns to advance a selfish political agenda.
And what, pray tell, have any of these “youths” done that is courageous?
Are we to believe they spent their future life savings on litigation? Or that if the case is dismissed, they would not be able to continue life as they have always done?
I’d feel a lot more sympathetic if the US had a law where those named as bringing suit were responsible for trial costs in the event they lost.
How do other children go about suing for policy damages done with advocacy-driven science and extreme use of the premise labeled ‘out of the abundance of caution.”
Yeah, that’s another thing progressives use a lot – human shields.
We need a lot more books, movies, and plays about the America First peace movement centered around Chicago in the 1930s and 40s. That earlier ThinkProgress-style movement and its high profile benefactors could have destroyed the world with one extra year of delay in confronting the tyrants and their weapons in final pre-production stages. That was a very close call in the arrow of time.
Lawyers to the rescue? Come on man.
The country is deeply in debt, program costs are growing faster than tax revenue. There is no CAGW to solve and regardless the green scams do not work.
The Democrat party is the party of angry CNN Zombies, not children. CNN Zombies live in their fantasy world. Constant angry and outrage, based on fake science, fake economics, and so on.
CNN isn’t a news channel. It is an echo chamber, a fake news generator to push Zombie causes.
Angry Zombies do not think about the unintentional consequences of their Zombie causes. CAGW is only one of the causes the Zombies push.
The forced wind and solar solution to AGW does not work, regardless of the amount of money that is spent on green scams.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-renewable-energy-fantasy-1436104555
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/22/shocker-top-google-engineers-say-renewable-energy-simply-wont-work/
This graph is over five years old. Where is the current version?
I would assume everyone has lost interest, as it appears it is a fact that there is no mid-tropospheric tropical warming.
Likely the cult of CAGW will also lose interest in discussing sea level rise.
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Sea-Level-Rise-Projected-2.png
I recall the Supreme court, sensibly, throwing out another case some years ago where the plaintiffs were asserting something about what should or shouldn’t be seen on television. The court ruled that the world is not run by children, nor should children’s sensibilities decide how the world is run. This is why all societies make the distinction between children and adults. Adults run the world, and make decisions according to what adults think is best. That includes making decisions on behalf of children as a normal day-to-day thing. If you have an issue, then sue a responsible adult on behalf of other adults. Children have no standing.
This is without doubt, child abuse. Period.
Just like those folks crossing borders knowing full well they will likely get caught and temporarily separated from their children while being detained. They care more about themselves than their children. This is equally disgusting. Unfortunately, it would likely do more harm to jail these parents and separate them from their children, so they can just get away with emotional child abuse. Talk about setting up your children for failure and unrealistic expectations in a cruel world. sheesh.
“… this hopeless lawsuit is an abuse of the trust and emotional well being of plaintiffs who are too young and inexperienced to properly understand how they are being used as pawns to advance a selfish political agenda.”
I don’t understand how the plaintiffs have been granted standing. They are not alleging damages for which they are seeking redress; instead, they are speculating that they will experience harm in the future. It seems to me that, unless it can be shown that they will suffer harm, beyond a reasonable doubt, they have no grounds to pursue the complaint. It is not unlike me claiming that that I will suffer some unspecified harm in the future and expect to be compensated before it happens!
Lastly, they are minors, meaning that they have no financial responsibilities commensurate with their claimed financial future harm. While their parents might sue on their behalf, based on their financial responsibility for providing for their children, they would still have the burden of proof that the harm will actually happen.
I just can’t understand why the courts have been allowing this to proceed! In most issues, children have protections, but not rights. That is, they can’t vote, they can’t own property, they can’t own firearms, they can’t marry, they can’t take on contractual obligations of adults.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority