Posted on 07/29/2025 10:40:00 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The invaluable Mike Rowe pointed me to this article yesterday.
Well, not me, exactly. Mike doesn't know me from Adam, but he shared it online with 7 million other people, and I count myself among them.
It's a piece in The New York Times--for him, it was the international version with a different headline--that argues that several decisions by various international courts amount to outlawing the extraction and use of fossil fuels.
It's hard to argue with their conclusion because I am not an international lawyer, but let's assume that the claim is true, as it appears to be on its face.
Rulings by the International Court of Justice, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea all suggest that the climate harms resulting from the burning of fossil fuels violate international law.
Climate science is not the law: The UN's International Court of Justice has not buffed the climate science turd into any sort of popsicle, scientific or legal.
https://t.co/EehzXftUEj pic.twitter.com/U6eMPn0lsN— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) July 24, 2025
If so, there are a lot of lawbreakers in the world, most certainly including all the people involved in these legal cases. There is not a person in the Western world who does not somehow rely on the use of fossil fuels, save a few hermits whose living conditions mirror those of the pre-industrial age. And probably most of them, too.
The I.C.J.’s unanimous opinion reinforced these conclusions and broadened their reach, stating that countries must protect citizens from the “urgent and existential threat” of climate change. When a country fails to curb greenhouse gas emissions — whether by producing or consuming fossil fuels, approving new exploration to find them or subsidizing the industry — it may be held liable for “an internationally wrongful act,” the court’s 15 judges said.
This makes it much harder for any government or company to say that rules don’t apply to them or they don’t have to act. Read together, these three landmark legal rulings leave no doubt that continuing fossil fuel production and use, let alone expanding it, violates the law. It is a cease-and-desist notice to fossil fuel producers.
No doubt the judges made this ruling just before they got into their chauffeured limos to zip off to a resort somewhere to enjoy a nice lunch.
The case before the I.C.J. is part of a growing global movement that is turning to the courts to hold polluters accountable. From the lawsuits brought by a Belgian farmer against the French oil giant TotalEnergies and Indonesian villagers asking a Swiss cement company to pay climate damages to the dozens of cities and states across the United States that have accused the fossil fuel industry of climate deception and harm, a new wave of plaintiffs is edging closer to making polluters pay.
Leading fossil-fuel-producing nations, such as the United States and Saudi Arabia, will probably argue that this I.C.J. opinion is unenforceable and thus inconsequential. But no country is exempt from the obligations the court laid out. Their duties to prevent and remedy climate harm are rooted in multiple sources of law, including principles and treaties with which all countries must comply.
Ah, globalism. I remember the days of my youth when I was told that everybody should learn Esperanto, the United Nations should replace sovereign governments, and our biggest fears were overpopulation, depletion of resources, mass starvation, the next ice age, and nuclear war.
Thankfully, I didn't learn Esperanto. I don't even like the metric system, although that is mostly because I am lazy and learned Imperial units of measurement and hate snobby Europeans. No country that uses the Metric system has landed a man on the moon, so there.
As Rowe points out, the whole "science is settled" died a miserable death in 2020-21 (well, he didn't exactly say THAT, but it did), and the whole "we understand the climate" thing is total crap. But even assuming it were true, the criminalization of fossil fuels is about as cruel an act toward human beings as has ever been contemplated. I would condemn billions to permanent poverty, early deaths, and impoverish the world.
Even if climate change is here, fossil fuels are a necessary tool to adapt to changing circumstances. Climate resilience is predicated on abundant energy, as anybody who lives in Phoenix or Atlanta knows. Or even here in Minnesota, where summers can reach 100 degrees and winters -35 degrees. These places would be uninhabitable without abundant energy. The fastest-growing metro regions in America are in places people would flock from, not to, were energy scarce.
But forget the First World, for a moment. Billions of people less fortunate than we are use wood and dung to cook their food and stay warm at night. Forget cooling. There is none. Or lighting--it's hard to come by. Life is nasty, brutish, and short (kinda like Danny DeVito in many of his roles).
A Detour to Dachau
I was going to share some more photos of yesterday’s road trip through the German countryside, along with a few thoughts about my five-hour visit to Dachau, where it’s impossible not to reflect on just how easy it is to hurt so many by doing nothing at all.But then, as I was collecting my thoughts over another serving of unidentified breakfast meats, I saw this headline on the front page of The New York Times.
“Ignoring the Planet is Now Illegal.”
To which I replied to no one in particular, “Ignoring that Headline is Now Impossible!”
I’ve attached the whole article in two photos, since the link will take you behind a paywall. But the opening paragraph sums it up nicely. It reads:
“The science on climate change has long been settled. Now the law is, too. On Wednesday, the judicial branch of the United Nations, recognized for the first time that there is no way to solve the climate crisis or atone for its devastating consequences without confronting its root cause: the burning of fossil fuels.”
If you genuinely believe that the science is truly “settled,” or that the burning of fossil fuels will absolutely lead to “devastating consequences,” than you’re going to enjoy the certainty that informs the rest of this piece, including the assertion that our planet is entirely at the mercy of the people on it, that the current warming conditions now constitute a “global climate crisis,” and that such a climate crisis is nothing less than “a human rights emergency.”
You might not, however, be struck by the conspicuous lack of compassion for the billions of desperately impoverished people all over the world, whose daily misery is NOT a function of a warming climate, but rather, a consequence of being denied access to a reliable source of affordable energy. It would be understandable, I think, in an opinion piece brimming with so much certitude, to overlook the inconvenient fact that the climate has killed millions of people over the centuries, and that our best hope of surviving the elements still relies upon the burning of fossil fuels.
My first thought, over my second pot of German coffee, was to ask the authors if they ever had to burn wood or dung as their primary source of energy, as three billion people currently do. I then planned to suggest – with great respect - that the science around this issue is not in fact, “settled,” and that recent history is filled with examples of people who wind up looking exceedingly foolish for saying so, on a rich variety of topics. But then I thought, wait – why pick a fight with the New York Times from halfway around the world, (along with a sizeable chunk of the world wide web,) when I have in my possession the contact information of an actual expert – a man of far greater intelligence than me, who has dedicated his life to understanding our ever-changing climate, as well as the moral implications of enacting laws that deliberately harm humanity.
So, I texted the attached photos to Alex Epstein.
“Have you seen this,” I asked? “No,” said Alex. “I have not.” “Well, give it a look when you have a chance,” I said. “And then, if you're bored, tell me what you would say if The New York Times offered to print your response.” “Standby,” said Alex. An hour or so later, I received his reply. “Mind if I share this with 7 million people?” I asked. “Be my guest,” he said.
Here then, is a rejoinder that you won’t find in The New York Times. Feel free to share it, if you agree that both sides deserve to be heard. And especially if you do not.
Progress Is Not a Crime By @AlexEpstein
Recent international court rulings have declared that producing and using fossil fuels is now effectively illegal. Activists celebrate this as a victory for “the planet.” In reality, it is a declaration of war on human progress.
These decisions, which seek to criminalize the energy that powers our world, are based on a profoundly anti-human premise: that our goal should be to eliminate human impact on nature. But the proper standard for any policy is not an untouched world, but a thriving human one. By this moral standard, the campaign to eradicate fossil fuels is an attack on the lives and aspirations of billions. This is not justice; it is a sentence of perpetual poverty for the developing world and a crippling blow to the citizens of industrial nations.
A Sentence of Perpetual Poverty
The authors of "Ignoring the planet is now illegal" speak of an “urgent and existential threat” from human climate impact. But they ignore the truly urgent crisis facing billions today: energy deprivation. Three billion people use less electricity than an average American refrigerator. For them, a lack of affordable, reliable energy means hospitals without power, food that cannot be preserved, and no escape from poverty.
Fossil fuels, which still provide over 80% of the world’s energy, are the only source capable of lifting these billions into prosperity in the coming decades. Unreliable solar and wind are nowhere near ready to replace them. To use international law to deny developing nations this energy is to condemn them to a state of suffering that we in the developed world would never accept for ourselves.
The Power to Master Our Environment
The logic behind these court rulings dangerously misrepresents our relationship with the natural world. It assumes Earth is a delicate, nurturing entity that we are harming. The truth is that nature is dynamic, difficult, and often dangerous. Human flourishing requires that we *impact* our environment to make it safer and more livable.
Fossil fuels are the key to this mastery. They power the machines that irrigate deserts, build sturdy homes, and provide heating and air conditioning that make our climates livable. Thanks to this energy-powered resilience, deaths from climate-related disasters have fallen by 98% over the last century, even as CO2 emissions have risen. Banning fossil fuels would not save us from climate danger; it would strip us of our primary means of protection.
The Path Forward Is Energy Freedom
Instead of allowing unelected international bodies to dictate our energy future, we must fight for energy freedom. This means defending the right of individuals and companies to produce and use all forms of energy—including fossil fuels, nuclear, and any evolving alternatives that can prove their worth on a free market.
The campaign to make progress a crime must be rejected. The real work is not to “cease and desist” from producing the energy that improves lives, but to unleash the human ingenuity that will allow all 8 billion of us to flourish. We must demand policies that empower people, not impoverish them.
*** I think it was Edmund Burke who famously said, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I thought a lot about that quote yesterday, as I toured the concentration camp at Dachau. More specifically, as I drove through the surrounding countryside, where a lot of civilians who saw themselves as “good,” chose to ignore the evil unfolding just down the road, behind all that barbed wire.
Years from now, when The Great Climate Debate is no longer a debate, and the science has been well and truly settled, I suspect we’ll look back at those who got it right, and those who got it wrong, and all the "good men" who stood by and did nothing to save the planet from the people, or the people from the planet.
Time will tell, as it always does, which needed saving.
PS. Alex has written extensively on this subject. All of his books are excellent. His personal webpage is here, and worth a visit. https://alexepstein.com
pic.twitter.com/ok2X85TySs— The Real Mike Rowe (@mikeroweworks) July 28, 2025
Rowe asked Alex Epstein his opinion on the Times article, and I will excerpt a few choice paragraphs:
The logic behind these court rulings dangerously misrepresents our relationship with the natural world. It assumes Earth is a delicate, nurturing entity that we are harming. The truth is that nature is dynamic, difficult, and often dangerous. Human flourishing requires that we *impact* our environment to make it safer and more livable.
Fossil fuels are the key to this mastery. They power the machines that irrigate deserts, build sturdy homes, and provide heating and air conditioning that make our climates livable. Thanks to this energy-powered resilience, deaths from climate-related disasters have fallen by 98% over the last century, even as CO2 emissions have risen. Banning fossil fuels would not save us from climate danger; it would strip us of our primary means of protection.
Most people don't know this, but deaths from climate-related disasters have been dropping faster than Stephen Colbert's ratings--and that is because modern societies are resilient, whereas poorer ones are not. A magnitude 7.5 earthquake hitting in America is a problem that can kill hundreds; elsewhere in the world, the same quake might kill tens of thousands. Same with hurricanes, floods, and most climate disasters.
If you look at the roster of disasters by number of deaths--even in absolute terms and not adjusted for population increases--the drop has been around 99%, and that is attributable to our increasing wealth. With wealth comes resilience.
Instead of allowing unelected international bodies to dictate our energy future, we must fight for energy freedom. This means defending the right of individuals and companies to produce and use all forms of energy—including fossil fuels, nuclear, and any evolving alternatives that can prove their worth on a free market.
The campaign to make progress a crime must be rejected. The real work is not to “cease and desist” from producing the energy that improves lives, but to unleash the human ingenuity that will allow all 8 billion of us to flourish. We must demand policies that empower people, not impoverish them.
This point is so obvious that only a globalist technocrat or a communist who admires dictators who starve their populations to death couldn't see it.
Yet here we are, with The New York Times printing this idiocy, and international courts imagining they can eforce their dictates on the entire world.
What garbage. Gotta be fake news.
Not so Civil War coming.
Let’s see these asswipes at the ICJ live without fossil fuels first. Go ahead jerks, give it a try.
OMG!!!!
A barely mustached bureaucrat in the VHague is going to raise his ugly head out of his netherlands and publish asinine sternly worded letter to the industrial world to stop …....
To stop living, stop driving, stop using boats, ships, trains, planes – to stop using electricity and use inappropriate inadequate energy producing technology that kills birds and other wild life on the land, sea and in the air and that only works when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.
Yeah Right...............!!!!!!
Ab absurdo!
Ignoring leftist/globalist filth is now mandatory - if a nation and/or culture wants to survive
phukem
The case before the I.C.J. is part of a growing Globull movement
There, fixed it.
Dear International Courts,
It’s almost 2AM.
I’m about to get on my motorcycle and head to work, using, “Fossil Fuels,” as I do so.
Gonna use ‘em again when I get off work 15 hours later.
Come arrest me. See how that works out for you.
Please.
R. F.
Nuts.
But oil doesn’t come from fossils, so this “law” doesn’t really apply
I don’t believe that it is fossil fuel.
I don’t believe that it is fossil fuel.
BINGO!
I am so sick of these brutally evil sycophants.
Exactly.
We all are.
Neither do I.
Neither do I.
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