Activist-led attempts to hold the government and oil companies responsible for climate change through the court system are hitting a brick wall as judges argue such efforts are unlikely to gain traction.
A panel of judges knocked down a lawsuit on Jan. 17 in which a large group of young people sued the Trump administration for not doing more to tackle global warming.
One of the judges in that case strenuously dissented, suggesting that the court might curse the day it nixed the argument.
Children do not have standing to sue the federal government for not adequately addressing climate change, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled in the case.
The 21 young people argued the government had a constitutional responsibility to cut support for fossil fuels.
SEE ALSO: Ninth Circuit Tosses Climate Lawsuit Filed By Kids
President Donald Trump has made headway in recent months changing the makeup of the 9th Circuit Court.
He nominated Patrick Bumatay and Lawrence VanDyke to the court in September 2019. They would raise the number of Trump’s 9th Circuit appointees to nine.
The panel did not buy the argument. “Reluctantly, we conclude that such relief is beyond our constitutional power.
Rather, the plaintiffs’ impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government,” the panel wrote in their decision.
Judge Andrew Hurwitz ruled that it was “beyond the power” of his court to mandate the federal government to set climate policy, writing that the case “must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large.”
The panel argued the government had competing interests, including “economic or defense considerations.”
One judge dissented, arguing that the climate case was a matter of “social justice” and that delaying the matter further could have a negative impact on the plaintiff’s lives.
“The denial of an individual, constitutional right— though grievous and harmful—can be corrected in the future, even if it takes 91 years. And that possibility provides hope for future generations. Where is the hope in today’s decision?” Judge Josephine Staton wrote in her dissent.
She added: “Plaintiffs’ claims are based on science, specifically, an impending point of no return.”
“From the outset, it was a big ask,” Michael Burger, executive director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Courts simply do not have it in their power in the United States to command the entire energy system.”
This is the second climate lawsuit judges have nixed in a matter of months. New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, argued in a 2018 lawsuit that ExxonMobil deceived customers, exposing “the company to greater risk from climate change regulation than investors were led to believe.”
New York’s Supreme Court cleared the company in November 2019, effectively ending New York’s nearly four-year-long crusade against the company, which began in 2015 with an investigation and ended with a lawsuit lodged in New York.
Former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman initially led the effort before resigning under disgrace.
Judge Barry Ostrager appeared to treat James’s concerns seriously before eventually dismissing the case outright.
“Nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve ExxonMobil from responsibility for contributing to climate change,” he wrote in his opinion.
Ostrager found James’s case fell short in demonstrating that the oil company violated an anti-fraud law.
“The Court finds that the Office of Attorney General failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that ExxonMobil made any material misrepresentations that ‘would have been viewed by a reasonable investor as having significantly altered the “total mix” of information made available,’” Ostrager wrote in a memo.
Activist-led lawsuits are still in the offing.
The U.S. Supreme Court, for instance, rejected in October 2019 a request from several energy companies to block a Baltimore lawsuit seeking to hold Exxon and other oil producers responsible for producing carbon emissions.
Read more at Daily Caller
Kids, go get a real education, not an indoctrination before approaching the courts…….courts are not to be used to indoctrinate …….that is the domain of left wing so called academics who are really not academics but one world order welfare recipients.
Let me know when a Doomer actually wins a lawsuit.
Their worthless cause has the vainness of pushing a rope.
Courts in the EU are already siding with the doomers. In the Netherlands the supreme court there has ordered the government ‘take action’ on climate change or face lawsuits from citizens. It really is a mess over there.
These mislead youth thought they could hop on their bicycles and knock down a brick wall and end up with wrecked bike and the painful truth Global Warming/Climate Change is a Scam This is a victory for Common Sense over the political grandstanding of the back to nature wackos
Wow, seems right out of Michael Crichton book State of Fear
Everyone should buy this book about eco terrorists trying to scare everyone with Global Warming and Climate Change and file a law suit similar to the above.
Four more years!
Four more years!
“hold Exxon and other oil producers responsible for producing carbon emissions.” It is the consumer that is causing carbon emissions, not the oil companies. They are simply supplying what consumers demand, just like cell phones or smart TV’s or SUV’s or veggie fake meat or internet. Bloody hell some people are ignorant.