Litigation without legislation-A carbon war of all-against-all
Dionysus
HEAD: The New Climate Litigation
SUB-HEAD: How about if we sue you for breathing?
Fresh from the fiasco in Copenhagen and with a failure in the U.S. Senate
looming this coming year, the climate-change lobby is already shifting to
Plan B, or is it already Plan D? Meet the carbon tort.
Across the country, trial lawyers and green pressure groups�if that's not
redundant�are teaming up to sue electric utilities for carbon emissions
under "nuisance" laws.
A group of 12 Gulf Coast residents whose homes were damaged by Katrina are
suing 33 energy companies for greenhouse gas emissions that allegedly
contributed to the global warming that allegedly made the hurricane worse.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and seven state AG allies
plus New York City are suing American Electric Power and other utilities for
a host of supposed eco-maladies. A native village in Alaska is suing Exxon
and 23 oil and energy companies for coastal erosion.
What unites these cases is the creativity of their legal chain of causation
and their naked attempts at political intimidation. "My hope is that the
court case will provide a powerful incentive for polluters to be reasonable
and come to the table and seek affordable and reasonable reductions," Mr.
Blumenthal told the trade publication Carbon Control News. "We're trying to
compel measures that will stem global warming regardless of what happens in
the legislature."
Mull over that one for a moment. Mr. Blumenthal isn't suing to right a
wrong. He admits that he's suing to coerce a change in policy no matter what
the public's elected representatives choose.
Cap and trade or a global treaty like the one that collapsed in Copenhagen
would be destructive�but at least either would need the assent of a
politically accountable Congress. The Obama Administration's antidemocratic
decision to impose carbon regulation via the Environmental Protection Agency
would be even more destructive�but at least it would be grounded in an
existing law, the 1977 Clean Air Act, however misinterpreted. The nuisance
suits ask the courts to make such fundamentally political decisions
themselves, with judges substituting their views for those of the elected
branches.
And now that you mention it, the U.S. appeals courts seem more than ready to
arrogate to themselves this power. In September, the Second Circuit allowed
Mr. Blumenthal's suit to proceed, while a three-judge panel of the Fifth
Circuit reversed a lower court's dismissal of the Katrina case in October.
An en banc hearing is now under consideration.
But global warming is, well, global: It doesn't matter whether ubiquitous
CO2 emissions come from American Electric Power or Exxon�or China. "There is
no logical reason to draw the line at 30 defendants as opposed to 150, or
500, or even 10,000 defendants," says David Rivkin, an attorney at Baker
Hostetler and a contributor to our pages, in an amicus brief in the Katrina
case. "These plaintiffs�and any others alleging injury by climatic
phenomena�would have standing to assert a damages claim against virtually
every entity and individual on the planet, since each 'contributes' to
global concentrations of carbon dioxide."
In other words, the courts would become a venue for a carbon war of all
against all. Not only might businesses sue to shackle their
competitors�could we sue the New York Times for deforestation?�but judges
would decide the remedies against specific defendants. In practice this
would mean ad hoc command-and-control regulation against any industries that
happen to catch the green lobby's eye.
Carbon litigation without legislation is one more way to harm the economy,
and the rule of law. We hope the Fifth Circuit will have the good sense to
deflect this damaging legal theory before it crash-lands at the Supreme
Court.
****************
Dammit, if only you lib loons would stop exhaling all over my planet.
Happy New Year.
No Surrender!
Dionysus
Neolibertarian
"Dionysus" <no.sur...@never.net> wrote:
> Carbon litigation without legislation is one more way to harm the economy,
> and the rule of law. We hope the Fifth Circuit will have the good sense to
> deflect this damaging legal theory before it crash-lands at the Supreme
> Court.
> ****************
> Dammit, if only you lib loons would stop exhaling all over my planet.
It's the old Yamamato conundrum. In other words, you can't make your big
move without also waking the Sleeping Giant.
Pearl Harbor was designed to hamstring him before he woke up. Maybe
Copenhagen was designed to do the same thing.
In the first case, all three US aircraft carriers, by sheer luck, were
not in port on December 7th. The Pearl Harbor attacks proved to be
fatally ill-timed. In the latter case, Copenhagen was likewise
ill-timed, coming on the heels of a solar minimum and the release of the
East Anglia emails.
One shudders to think what would have happened had the US fleet been
completely destroyed in 1941, leaving the Japanese free to take
strategic control of the Pacific in 1942.
Because of the public emails, the decidedly unscientific American public
finally has grounds for condemning the anthropogenic warming alarmists
for the silly frauds that they are.
These litigations in the American court system are doomed. The
Environmental Protection Agency is likewise doomed, by its own
overreaching. The long term damage that might have been done is
frightening to contemplate.
As it is, America still has her work cut out for here to dismantle the
giant Ponzi Scheme. Just as she still had her work cut out for her after
Pearl Harbor and Midway.
But in both cases, the final outcome is/was all but assured.
Wasn't it Shakespeare who first claimed, "the truth will out?"
--
Neolibertarian
"Nobody inherits civilisation.
� You inherit the /ruins/ of civilisation.
� Beginning with yourself.
� And you can't even afford its heating bill."
---Dennnis M. Hammes
Dionysus
"Neolibertarian" <cogn...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:96f71$4b3a4195$18f55223$10...@allthenewsgroups.com...
I suspect none of the lib loons 'round here will understand your "sleeping
giant" reference.
Happy New Year.
No Surrender!
Dionysus
Neolibertarian
<chine.bleu-18D5B...@news.eternal-september.org>,
My China Blue Heaven <chine...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> In article <96f71$4b3a4195$18f55223$10...@allthenewsgroups.com>,
> Neolibertarian <cogn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Pearl Harbor was designed to hamstring him before he woke up. Maybe
> > Copenhagen was designed to do the same thing.
>
> Interesting. So going green is treason against the US.
There's no such thing as "going green." That's about as silly as it gets.
Neolibertarian
<chine.bleu-37C45...@news.eternal-september.org>,
The China Blue Syndrome <chine...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> In article <4934$4b3bc8f0$18f55223$19...@allthenewsgroups.com>,
> Neolibertarian <cogn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In article
> > <chine.bleu-18D5B...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> > My China Blue Heaven <chine...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > In article <96f71$4b3a4195$18f55223$10...@allthenewsgroups.com>,
> > > Neolibertarian <cogn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Pearl Harbor was designed to hamstring him before he woke up. Maybe
> > > > Copenhagen was designed to do the same thing.
> > >
> > > Interesting. So going green is treason against the US.
> >
> > There's no such thing as "going green." That's about as silly as it gets.
>
> Yes, of course. Let's engage in lengthy discussion on what the meaning of
> 'is'
> is.
"Going green" isn't subject to discussion. It's a sorites paradox, and
intentionally so.
Demagogic nonsense like "so going green is treason against the US" never
really requires an answer.
Except, you seemed to be in need of a challenge on your unreasoned
beliefs.
Dionysus
Zing-g-g-g. Good on you, Neo. Happy New Year.
Dionysus