The Alaska Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit claiming the state’s young residents had a constitutional right to block oil and gas development in the state in order to reduce human-induced global warming, saying the elected branches, not the courts, were the place to decide energy policy.
Ruling for the second time in less than a decade against climate activists who want to drive changes in energy policy through the courts, the Supreme Court said the judiciary branch had neither the authority nor the expertise to decide how the state should exploit its extensive oil and natural gas deposits.
The lawyers who recruited young Alaskans to sue, including members of indigenous communities, argued the Alaska Constitution requires the state to develop its resources “in the public interest” and “for the maximum benefit of its people.”
They sought a court ruling enforcing their right to “a stable climate system” and an injunction halting the state’s current policy of encouraging the development of oil and gas resources.
The state Supreme Court rejected their reasoning, saying the Alaska Constitution also commands legislators to “provide for the utilization, development, and conservation of all natural resources of belonging to the State.”
While the court majority expressed sympathy for activists who are concerned about rising sea levels and destruction of the Alaskan permafrost, the court said the job of balancing climate risks against economic development must be left to legislators and the executive branch.
“Having a majority of elected legislators disagree with or lack the political will to enact or implement plaintiffs’ preferred policies does not justify an unconstitutional judicial remedy,” the court ruled. “Plaintiffs essentially seek to impose ad hoc judicial natural resources management based on case-by-case adjudications of individual fundamental rights.”
The lawsuit on behalf of Summer Sagoonick was filed by Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon nonprofit that also was behind Juliana v. U.S., another lawsuit claiming climate damages to children that was shot down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020.
Lawyers for Children’s Trust announced efforts to craft a settlement with the Biden administration ended last November after 17 states filed a brief opposing any such agreement with the government.
The Alaska lawsuit was an attempt to retool arguments that failed in 2014 after a decision called Kanuk v. State, which the state’s high court rejected as unjusticiable political questions the attempt to halt oil and gas development.
This time, the lawyers for Children’s Trust sought a judicial ruling that Alaska minors had a constitutional right to be free of climate change-induced risks and an injunction requiring the state to revise its energy policy, prepare a statewide accounting of carbon emissions, and work with the state to produce a “climate recovery plan” that would “stabilize the climate system.”
The lawyers hoped to get around the key problem with Kanuk, which was that before any court could get to a remedy for the damages claimed by climate change, it had to make a legislative policy decision on how to address the problem.
This time, lawyers argued they were merely asking the court to interpret the Alaska Constitution in a way that forced the state to change the policies the elected branches had already established.
Nice try, the majority ruled, but the same flaw doomed this case as in 2014.
Read rest at Legal Newsline
I guess my question to this nonsense is when has there ever been a stable climate. If there was then either the earth would still be in an ice age or we’d never have had one. Even more recently, why was there a Little Ice Age which we had just two centuries ago?
I wonder what kind of lies they have been filling the youth heads full of this time if its not Evolution or Revisionists History its the New Age Enviromentalism and Go Green insanity