Posted on 11/03/2018 12:15:15 PM PDT by ETL
UPDATE: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday rejected government bids to block the start of the trial in the youth-led climate case, Juliana vs. United States. The trial had been scheduled to begin on 29 October. Here is our previous coverage of the case from 24 October:
Next week, barring a last-minute intervention by the Supreme Court, climate change will go to trial for just the second time in U.S. history. In a federal courtroom in Eugene, Oregon, 21 young people are scheduled to face off against the U.S. government, which they accuse of endangering their future by promoting policies that have increased emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other planet warming gases. The plaintiffs aren't asking for monetary damages. Instead, they want District Judge Ann Aiken to take the unprecedented step of ordering federal agencies to dramatically reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Government attorneys are not expected to challenge the scientific consensus that human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, cause global warming. But the outcome could hinge, in part, on how Aiken weighs other technical issues. Each side has recruited a roster of high-profile scientists and economists, including Nobel laureates, to bolster their argument. "It's clearly going to be a battle of the experts," says Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, who is not involved in the case.
The civil trial will be a milestone in a hard-fought legal battle that began in 2015, when environmental groups joined with youth activists and retired NASA scientist James Hansen to push for climate action. The lawsuit rests on the novel argument that the government has knowingly violated the plaintiffs' rights to a "safe" climate by taking actions—such as subsidizing fossil fuels—that cause warming. Government lawyers under both President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama have repeatedly tried and failed to have the case thrown out. Just last week, Aiken, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, denied a bid to stop the trial, which was set to open on 29 October. But the Supreme Court then froze the case while it considers the government's argument that the plaintiffs' lawsuit has fatal legal flaws.
If the trial proceeds, the youths' lawyers will have to persuade the judge that the government's actions have helped cause climate change; that the warming exacerbated storms, droughts, and wildfires; and that individual plaintiffs have suffered injuries as a result. One expert for the plaintiffs, climate scientist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, filed testimony based on his research that invokes principles of thermodynamics to explain how warming can amplify disasters. Hotter, dryer weather increases the risk of fires, he notes. And warmer air can hold more moisture, boosting rainfall by up to 20%—a factor he says worsened floods that affected plaintiffs living in Louisiana, Florida, and Colorado. "Once thresholds are crossed, things break, burn, or die!" he writes.
Defense expert John Weyant, a management scientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, disagrees that weather extremes can be pinned on climate change. Existing science is not precise enough to attribute individual events and injuries to climate, he writes in his testimony, and Trenberth's method ignores confounding factors. For example, he argues, poor forest management and human-sparked blazes also cause severe fires.
These confounding factors are "true but irrelevant" to whether warming contributed to a particular weather extreme, says climate scientist Drew Shindell of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. But Trenberth's approach is controversial, notes climate scientist Friederike Otto of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. (Neither scientist is involved in the case.) Researchers can now at least partly attribute extreme events to warming, Otto says, but Trenberth's method isn't able to rule out whether a particular event would have occurred even without climate change.
The two sides may also spar over health impacts. Some plaintiffs claim smoke from worsening wildfires has triggered their asthma attacks. Others say the ecological harm driven by warming has caused emotional distress. But doctors testifying for the defense say the plaintiffs can't point to medical evidence for these connections. Samantha Ahdoot, a pediatrician at Virginia Commonwealth University's Inova campus in Richmond who is not involved in the case, notes it's often impossible to determine the cause of specific ailments. But she says large-scale studies support claims that climate impacts can harm children's health.
Even if the youth prevail on scientific questions, Gerrard says, they'll have to persuade the judge that she can provide an effective remedy. In other recent (and so far unsuccessful) climate lawsuits, cities and allied plaintiffs have sought money from energy companies and others to help them address alleged harms. But the youth want Aiken to order the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies to revamp regulations, with the goal of reducing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to 350 parts per million (ppm), from about 410 ppm today.
The two sides disagree over whether the United States can reduce emissions as fast as the plaintiffs would like. But the government may also argue that any cuts would have a limited impact, because of the global nature of climate change. Other countries now produce roughly 88% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, David Victor, a climate policy expert at the University of California, San Diego, notes in his testimony for the defense. Therefore, the solution requires international cooperation, he writes.
Courts have rejected that argument as a rationale for inaction in previous cases, Gerrard says. In the only other climate lawsuit to get to the trial stage—a landmark 2007 case that challenged EPA's refusal to regulate CO2 from vehicles—the agency claimed doing so wouldn't matter because U.S. cars contributed just 6% of global emissions. But the Supreme Court disagreed.
Perhaps the biggest question at stake, observers say, is whether judges can—and should—set climate policy. The plaintiffs think so, calling the courts their "last resort," and Aiken appears open to the idea. "Federal courts too often have been cautious and overly deferential in the arena of environmental law, and the world has suffered for it," she wrote in a 2016 decision. But that could make the judge "essentially the carbon regulator of the entire United States economy," says attorney Justin Torres of King & Spalding in Washington, D.C., who handled the case as a government lawyer under Obama. That would be politically and practically unwise, he says, and the government has argued climate policy is best tackled by Congress and the White House.
Such questions will likely resurface during appeals no matter how this case turns out, Gerrard says. But even if the trial is halted, it has already forced the Trump administration to give ground on climate change. The case has required "the administration to make numerous admissions," he says, "and be much more specific in its scientific claims than it has had to be before."
A case similar to this was thrown out of court in California. I’m paraphrasing and adapting the judge’s quote to fit this case: “What will your future look like without electricity”.
Basically the judge in the other case said he cannot possibly say that human development has been bad for humankind. We live obviously better lives thanks to technologies that came before us; to complain about them now is regressive. Who wants to go back to living like people did in 1800? These kids claiming danger if things don’t change have to give thought to what life would be like if they get the change they demand. Higher taxes, higher food costs and fewer food choice, limited trade and limited access to goods and services, more expensive energy costs and costs of living in general, more expensive or even rationing of travel just a couple off the top of my head.
If we assume global warming is true, them someone - on behalf of generations yet unborn - should sue these smelly little Nazis for cooling down the world and hastening the end of all life on the planet.
Exactly. What judge could possibly rule on this. What about the interests of other people. If these kids are worried about life in 30-50 years, what about life over the next 10 or 20 years?
I still say that they go about this all wrong. But their true agenda is hidden. If they argued that we want cleaner air, most people would agree. They want to regress human advancement. Modern day Luddites, except it is in part a charade and they will actually stymie development if they institute some kinds of carbon credit currency - that will benefit the people in energy today and raise the cost of developing more efficient energy systems as newcomers have to buy carbon credits from someone. It will become hoarded and speculative, like BitCoin is. It’s partly a scheme to entrench certain industries - just as Obamacare was a boondoggle to make health insurers more entrenched and profitable.
Health insurance =/= health care and carbon credits =/= cleaner environment.
They have no standing, case closed.
The government has endangered my future by allowing uncontrolled mass immigration from third world countries.
The government has endangered my future by refusing to privatize Social Security, passing Obamacare, not adopting universal school choice, etc., etc., etc.
Golly. I always thought that people who think like I do needed to organize, persuade others and win elections. Now I find out that all we need is an activist judge. I'll ask around. It'd be nice to find a good one who would take my case, issue national injunctions on the above, and clear up all these issues by next Tuesday.
If there's nothing a district court judge can't do, why not?
Come to think of it, the government has endangered my future by allowing liberals to vote, allowing liberals to have children, and allowing liberals to speak and publish freely. This will get interesting before I get done.
“”Government attorneys are not expected to challenge the scientific consensus that human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, cause global warming. But the outcome could hinge, in part, on how Aiken weighs other technical issues. Each side has recruited a roster of high-profile scientists and economists, including Nobel laureates, to bolster their argument.””
“EACH side” must mean there will be a Pro and a Con argument, right? “government won’t challenge scientific consensus” - WHY NOT? Then why bother defending the lawsuit? What are they going to argue?
Where on earth is it written that EVERYONE must protest something today? What lives these pukes must lead! Their very personal appearance shows that they don’t give any thought to how they look or present themselves - fat, sloppy, dumpy, big mouths - nothing appealing about them that would make anyone want to spend any time listening to anything they have to say. How about if we protest the ugliness of those we must share the planet with?
In that the US has reduced C02 emissions by 28% since 1990 this is going to be tough to prove. It seems this phony lawsuit would do better against the UN instead.
In a civil suit a plaintiff must prove some sort of physical or financial injury. But in the new liberal world, just thinking you could be harmed is a cause for claiming emotional pain and suffering.
This action could open doors to some terrible consequences down the road.
“”Come to think of it, the government has endangered my future by allowing liberals to vote, allowing liberals to have children, and allowing liberals to speak and publish freely. This will get interesting before I get done.””
How true!! We’ll be here rooting for you - hoping for your success! But I really think you have to look like you haven’t had a bath in a month of Sundays, got your clothes out of a homeless person’s grocery cart, stink to high heaven - you get the picture!
“The Courts and Justice are largely a joke now.”
That’s not funny.
I can do that.
“Where on earth is it written that EVERYONE must protest something today?”
It is not just written but taught every day in almost every school in America.
I will say that you have much more logical arguments for court cases than any of the “global climate alarmists” do. The problem is that activist judges don’t seem to be interested in any logical complaints.
Putting the courts in charge of the climate, what could go wrong?
I am tired of hearing this B.S. that Roberts is “compromised”. It is nonsense from start to finish.
The federal courts are insane. They need to be eliminated.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS BEING WASTED.
My guess is Ginsberg, Breyer, Kagin, Soto Mayor and ROBERTS will side with these brats.
There are NO merits to this case whatsoever because there is ZERO evidence that the CO2 contributed by humans is in any way harmful, However there is a preponderance of evidence that CO2 is beneficial to plant life and filtering solar radiation.
The fact that a court would even consider a case like this is further evidence that our legal system has been hijacked as a socialist tool
not to mention the arrogance of progressive faith based false theories around climate change, which automatically assumes that Humans are not part of nature and that our activities and byproducts of our activities are somehow shameful and must be modified to fit socialist progressive ideals and coddle their falsifiable theories
You should get some rest. I wouldn't want you to get sick, too. As Doc Holliday said in Tombstone, that strain might be more than you, or we, could bear.
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