from CFACT
Paul Driessen
The Supreme Court may soon decide whether the far left or states can circumvent the legislative process and instead use our courts to impose a radical environmental agenda.
Failing to garner enough political support to minimize or eliminate carbon-based fuels, nearly three dozen progressive jurisdictions are turning to friendly state judges to circumvent the Constitution on national issues. They don’t want a debate, they don’t want a referendum, they don’t want a legislative process – just a like-minded judge who punishes energy companies for “causing climate change”.
There is nothing ethical or legal about this type of nepotistic forum shopping and backroom dealing, and the plaintiffs know it. That's why when the Supreme Court recently suggested it might hear these cases, people on the left panicked, insisting that state judges litigate the matter.
Progressives know that if the Supreme Court reviews these cases, their ridiculous political strategy will fail. It’s bad for them, but good for our system of checks and balances, common sense, and especially good for reliable, affordable energy, jobs, health care, and modern living standards.
Climate activists blame fossil fuels for heat waves, cold snaps, hurricanes, wildfires (including those caused by arsonists, power companies and mismanagement of forests), floods, droughts and abusive husbands. Vice President Kamala Harris has even blamed human-caused climate change for the millions of illegal immigrants crossing the border since 2021.
As a former Sierra Club activist, I once believed this statement. However, I eventually realized that the environmental movement often deliberately uses junk science to advance increasingly extreme agendas, particularly the movement to eliminate fossil fuels.
More than 80% of our energy still comes from oil, natural gas and coal. Wind and solar are notoriously unreliable, require expensive backup power, and require more than ten times the raw materials per unit of electricity as natural gas generators. They cannot supply petrochemical products, including clothing, cosmetics, fertilizers, paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals and wind turbine blades.
“Renewable” energy is not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. Making batteries for electric vehicles and grid backup involves mining vast amounts of metals and minerals in energy-intensive and environmentally damaging processes that lead to habitat destruction, pollution and increased greenhouse gas emissions.
Much of the mining occurs in countries with corrupt governments and extreme household poverty, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar, where child and slave labor are the rule rather than the exception. The ships are shipping these materials to China, the world’s largest polluter, which has a monopoly on the global battery production market and uses coal and more slave labor and pollution-intensive processes to produce the materials and parts for these green energy products.
Electric vehicles are then marketed as zero-emission vehicles because there are no exhaust fumes, and most people don't know this or realize that the electricity to charge the batteries comes primarily from coal or gas-fired power plants.
Wind turbines also rely on oil, natural gas and coal for the metals and minerals in their towers and generators, fiberglass and resin blades, and concrete and steel bases. Solar panels covering many square miles of former farmland and wildlife habitat have the same impact.
Damaged and worn batteries, solar panels and most components of wind turbines cannot be recycled and are dumped in landfills. Many contain harmful substances that can leach into soil, waterways and groundwater.
Offshore wind turbines harm or kill wildlife, including endangered whales; land-based turbines kill millions of birds.
Carefully selected pleadings and briefs in lawsuits filed in liberal state courts can omit such facts, often preventing judges and juries from considering them.
They can target a handful of U.S. oil companies over alleged climate catastrophes while ignoring other oil and coal companies around the world, as well as China, India and other countries that pump large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
These lawsuits are inherently ridiculous, asserting that the products sold by these oil companies are causing unprecedented climate change. This intentionally ignores the multiple ice ages, the Medieval Warm Period (950-1300), the Little Ice Age (1303-1850), and other periods of warm, cold, wet weather lasting tens, hundreds, even thousands or millions of years and dry gap years.
Scientists still debate what powerful combination of natural forces is causing these climate changes. Yet attorneys representing cities and states make essentially ridiculous claims that fossil fuel emissions have somehow replaced these natural forces.
Recent Supreme Court rulings reveal why the left is alarmed by its possible interference with their plans. West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency held that in the absence of clear legislative authority, a government agency cannot unilaterally promulgate regulations that have “significant” economic or political significance.
Loper Bright Enterprises Inc. v. Raimondo ended a 40-year era of Chevron deference, ruling that silent or ambiguous statutory text does not give administrative agencies unfettered power to interpret the law and thereby increase control over people's lives and livelihoods.
The Free State Court's rulings in these climate cases are sure to have huge consequences for oil companies and our environment, economy, and lives, and Congress has never given any such authority to any state or federal agency (or court).
The Supreme Court should intervene to ensure that these complex scientific, economic, and political issues are fully studied, debated, scrutinized, and voted on, rather than being sent to biased courts.
This article originally appeared in The Washington Times
Relevant
