By David Wojick
Much ado is being made from the supposed win of a kid’s climate lawsuit in Montana. The alarmists call it a victory, the skeptics a tragedy, but it is neither. What was won is almost funny, while the big ask was in fact denied. The climate kids won a little, but lost a lot.
On the win side the judge merely ruled that the Montana law forbidding consideration of GHG emissions in permitting was unconstitutional. How it is considered is up to the agency or legislature. This need not slow down or stop any project.
The Montana constitution says there is a right to a healthful environment. Alarmism says emissions are harmful which all Courts to date have bought, including this one. So given the possible harm, one cannot simply ignore emissions which the law said to do. Hence the decision to kill the law.
I had no idea there was actually a law forbidding agencies from even talking about emissions. That kind of gag order strikes me as preposterous. Killing it merely takes us back to business as usual. For example an agency could simply say that the emissions associated with a project are too small to have a discernible impact.
This decision is in no way a victory for alarmism. There might be one pesky problem, however. The Court Order says that all actions taken under the unconstitutional law are themselves unconstitutional. Presumably this applies to every permit granted since the law went into effect. It might be interesting to see how Montana handles this, if at all.
Nor is this decision a precedent for other States, except those with similarly strange gag laws, which I doubt are many, if any. So by and large it is a very small win that goes nowhere. Works for me.
What is not reported is what was rejected. The kids asked the Court to require Montana to make and implement an emissions reduction plan, all under Court supervision. The Court properly rejected that monster request.
The reason given for the rejection is correct and becoming the standard. This is that emission reduction is a legislative decision, not a judicial one. As far as I know every failed kids climate suit has been thrown out on similar grounds.
This is the big loss that is not being reported. In realistic terms this suit went nowhere important.
Even the small win, killing the GHG gag law, is based on these two features of the Montana constitution:
Its A2 (Inalienable rights) §3 specifically includes “the right to a clean and healthful environment.”
Its A9 (Environment and natural resources) §1 states “The state shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment for present and future generations.”
These are very big hooks that the kids easily hung their suit on. Mind you I do see how the folks in Montana get an inalienable right to be free of large hail, damaging wind, lightning and drought, or grasshoppers and ticks, but I am not a student of their constitution.
That the judge opted for alarmism is no surprise and certainly not big news. If there is any Court that has rejected AGW I would love to hear about it. At the federal level all of the legal challenges to EPA’s ill conceived Endangerment Finding have been rejected.
Apparently Montana did not fight the claims of alarmism. Leading skeptical scientist Judy Curry was scheduled to be an expert witness, even undergoing 8 hours of adversarial deposition. Then the defense decided not to go that way. That interesting story is told here:
To sum up the kid’s lawsuit won a small victory over a strange law based on a wacky constitutional provision. They lost the big one, asking the Court to mandate and enforce emission reductions. Not much to see here.
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html
For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see
http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/
Available for confidential research and consulting.
What are the emissions from Montana fireplaces, construction of any kind, truck hauling, school buses, schools, hospitals, and state government offices? This is in addition to the state and local revenues generated by these taxable activities for the provision of services–that produce emissions.
Last I checked you could get terminated in Florida for talking about climate change while at work for the State even if your job was climate and environment. Its caused some interesting problems at the top level of government too.
We’re actually the most emissions/effluent sensitive state in the nation both environmentally and industrially with one of the broadest range of chemical and biochemical industries as well as natural and agricultural biological range on Earth down here. The main problem we face is incompetence not malfeasance.
I utterly agree that some law banning even the consideration of emissions from being a part of determining placement and permits is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of.
The bill discussed addressed: “ The version that passed the Legislature April 28 prohibits the state from analyzing the effects of greenhouse gas emissions and “corresponding impacts to the climate” — both within and outside the state’s borders — in its permitting decisions.” was passed this spring and was not a part of the original Held V Montana lawsuit. It must have been added at the last second for the judge to rule it unconstitutional. It was envisioned as a block to the lawfare that is used to disrupt many Montana projects. The discouraging part of the trial for me was the assumption of AGW and CAGW that was never challenged and the use of the term “Climate Event” by every prosecution witness with no definition.
Even if the state’s loss was a foregone conclusion, the public interest would have been better served if a full defense had been mounted, one which addressed each and every point of the lawsuit.
The countering information would then have been on the official public record for further use in any future public policy debates over the merits of proposed anti-carbon regulatory actions.
“the right to a clean and healthful environment”
appears to have nothing to do with climate crisis claims
CO2 emission is entirely consistent with this right.
CO2 is a harmless gas with no health impacts. It is completely clean.
We breathe it out quite naturally.
Plants depend on it. It is the “stuff of life”
The question then becomes whether this small win for alarmists will give weight to other lawfare being brought in US states and other countries?
The actual decision may not mean much but, don’t dismiss the symbolism. Symbols can have a powerful affect.
The right to a clean and healthful environment is a weird thing to put in a constitution. A constitution is best thought of as rules that grant and restrict government powers. Nebulous happy-happy, joy-joy phrases like “clean and healthful environment” are the kinds of mantras that hippies chanted on communes. The problem is that it’s not clearly defined and open to interpretation as we’ve just witnessed. Keep your constitutions clear, concise, and focused on what government can and can’t do.
the writing is on the wall people.
the coming generations will not listen to you. or vote fr your agenda.
David, you said, “Mind you I do see how the folks in Montana get an inalienable right to be free of …, but I am not a student of their constitution.”
Did you mean, “… I do not see how …?”
The Montana Constitution does NOT state: “The state shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment for present and future generations.”, as stated in this posting. The Montana Constitution, Article lX (Section 1), in it’s entirety, is as follows:
Section 1. Protection and improvement.
(1) The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.
(2) The legislature shall provide for the administration and enforcement of this duty.
(3) The legislature shall provide adequate remedies for the protection of the environmental life support system from degradation and provide adequate remedies to prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources.
The legislature is to provide for the administration & enforcement that ensures “the state and each person shall … (do stuff ) … in Montana for present and future generations.”
The legislature, through it’s administrative discretion, is to manage this stuff. The stuff that the legislature requires, “in Montana”, will be binding on both the State and Each Person.
That is exactly what the legislature did. They looked at the trade-offs relating to livelihood of the people in the state and the potential impact of CO2 (and other GHG’s) on the environment and implicitly said ‘It is a waste of time, capital, & resources to review permits with respect to a parameter that presents a known incidental and negligible impact within our State … we are not doing that’.
(If they are forced to ‘do that’, that which strictly assess and regulates CO2 across the board with respect ‘Each Person’ and ‘the State’, they will be left with a lonely hope in the bottom of the jar. But they don’t have the Pandora excuse of curiosity, simply bored useful idiots looking for fame).
A “clean and healthful environment for present and future generations” would include abundant plants and trees. What enviro-activist advocates for the opposite, plants and trees starved of nutrition? CO2 provides a major part of that nutrition. If these kids had any basic knowledge of science, they would demand Montana industries to put out more CO2.
Just remove all fossil fuels from Montana – 24 hours later, they’ll be screaming for them back