Climate indoctrination has taken root in unlikely soil: your local courtroom.
Climate indoctrination has taken root in unlikely soil: your local courtroom.
A recent initiative by the Environmental Law Institute, the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), has sought to shape the opinion of justices across the nation on topics of climate and the law. Over 2,000 judges have been reached via the seminars, conferences, and programming of CJP, “is a first-of-its-kind effort that provides judges with authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.”
Perhaps the biggest problem with CJP is its claim to neutrality and objectivity. I’ve read through heaps of CJP materials, and there is no denying that they view environmentalist plaintiffs as the good guys and fossil-fuel companies as the big, mean, bad guys. They have received millions in funding from Left-leaning foundations, including the JPB Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation — the same entities who are funding the climate lawsuits in the first place.
The U.S. Judicial Conference has warned judges of seminars where they may be “influenced inappropriately.” The Conference describes such influence as that which “may be exerted through program content, contact between judges and those who litigate before them, and prerequisites provided to program attendees.”
The Alliance for Consumers, a legal watchdog organization, sent a letter to Republican governors across the country this morning, warning them of the growing tentacles of CJP. The letter, obtained by National Review, notes that “the Climate Judiciary Project at ELI is (1) funded by the same entities bankrolling the climate cases, (2) providing educational materials prepared by plaintiff-advisors and pro-plaintiff amicus filers, and (3) using their meetings with judges to preview arguments from plaintiffs in climate change cases in ex parte settings.”
In short, CJP is laying the groundwork for the future success of environmentalist plaintiffs, who are bringing a rising number of lawsuits against energy producers that demand sweeping reparations for climate change.
These lawsuits usually allege public nuisance claims — a burgeoning arena of Leftist judicial activism. On the major climate cases, plaintiffs usually argue that “the fossil fuel industry has known for decades that its products contribute to global climate change, while simultaneously foiling government action through misrepresentation, deceit, and aggressive lobbying tactics.”
The question of attribution — whether the responsibility for negative effects of fossil fuels falls on the producer or the consumer, or the government that allows such production and consumption — is central to these public nuisance cases. Can a major energy producer be held accountable for this flood? This storm? This heat wave? And further, is a fossil fuel company responsible for the emissions from a commercial air liner? From your car?
According to CJP, all “indirect emissions occurring along a company’s value chain are considered Scope 3 emissions, including those releases that occur when an end-user burns coal to run their power plant or gas to drive their car. For fossil-fuel companies, Scope 3 emissions are especially significant since the vast majority of their total related emissions fall into this category.” In other words — these lawsuits seek to hold energy companies responsible for the emission that we all collectively produce.
In order for a plaintiff to win a public nuisance claim, he must demonstrate “that defendants unreasonably interfered with a right common to the general public via instrumentalities controlled by the defendants.” In other words, the general public must be shown to have a right to a safe and stable “climate system” — i.e., in CJP’s own framework, the general public has a right to avoid the environmental consequences of the energy which they consume.
Because it is nearly impossible to establish that the general public has a “right” not to experience rising sea levels or heat waves, plaintiffs usually have to find another route to sue major energy producers with any hope of success: the allegation of fraudulent deception. The model method? The Big Tobacco’s Master Settlement Agreement of 1998.
According to the CJP, “Just as smokers may be seen as less responsible for the health hazards of tobacco use in light of industry efforts to manipulate public awareness and government policy, carbon majors plaintiffs hope to portray Scope 3 emissions as the natural and proximate effect of manipulative behavior by the fossil fuel industry.”
Essentially, environmentalist plaintiffs must demonstrate that fossil-fuel companies bamboozled everyone into consuming fossil fuels. For, surely, if consumers were aware of the environmental effects of burning fossil fuels, they would cease and desist from all direct and indirect consumption of them! (No?)
Undoubtedly, major energy corporations like Exxon have spent billions in lobbying, marketing, and public relations — putting a spin on the truth to make their products as desirable as possible. Is that serpentine? Yes. Illegal? Generally, no.
Like the public nuisance complaint filed by the attorney general of Minnesota, plaintiffs typically argue that fossil-fuel companies have always known the harmful environmental effects of their actions and intentionally defrauded the public, via a campaign of deceit that goes back to the 1970s. However, even CJP acknowledges that the advances in “attribution science” required to attribute “X “ climate event to “Y” cause have emerged only in the last decade or so — and are still in a neophyte phase. And so, these cases often rely on the retroactive application of burgeoning scientific methods on 1970s corporate strategy.
While these lawsuits supposedly aim to “protect the planet and people,” they often result in court stagnation — or with states lining their pockets with the “don’t bother me” cash from fossil-fuel companies.
If energy producers are hammered with more and more lawsuits demanding reparations from the state and federal levels, that cost will be shifted onto consumers. An increase in energy costs raises the price of just about everything. Americans know all too well that an increase in something as mundane as gas prices can tank the economy and throw an entire election.
Of course there are clear harms caused by the burning of fossil fuels — one need not make such grand claims like “it’s Exxon’s fault that the world is two degrees warmer” for this to be true. Pollution of land, air, and sea is a clear and serious consequence. Smog and acid rain pose immediate threats to human health.
But there are also clear benefits to burning fossil fuels. It is no overstatement to say that the near elimination of starvation globally, the increase in life expectancy in developed nations, and most advances in science, medicine, and technology were possible due to the energy provided by fossil fuels.
The market is an arena of tradeoffs.
Pumping an exponentially increasing amount of toxins into air, land, and sea is, of course, an unsustainable operation. Exxon knows this as well as anyone. They also know that windmills can’t power the world. Advances in energy technology and efficiency have nearly halved America’s per capita CO2 emissions since 1970, and that trend can continue if energy innovation is given precedence over emissions retribution.
Everyone wants cheap, clean, reliable energy — unfortunately, reality demands that those three qualities conflict with each other.
Yes, energy producers and other industrial companies should be held accountable when they break the law. No, they should not pay the state of Minnesota (or any other state) reparations for global temperature shifts. And, no, judges across America should not be trained to assume that environmentalist plaintiffs are backed by “authoritative, objective, and trusted” climate science — and nothing else.