This is why all Americans should be grateful for President Trump’s judicial nominees.
In 2015, a group of 21 children (<cough> I’m sure this was the children’s idea, aren’t you? Sure you are) filed a lawsuit that came to be known as Juliana vs. the United States. This pure abuse of the legal system to engage in climate change hysteria grandstanding asserted that the government was violating their constitutional rights by not sufficiently addressing the climate change crisis. The case should have been thrown out years ago, but last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals finally did it.
Well, good. The fact that it took this long was a disgrace, and the result of “Think of the children!” pandering. The 9th Circuit being the residue of judicial activism and liberal bias that it has long been, however, it couldn’t restrain itself from writing, “The panel reluctantly concluded that the plaintiffs’ case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large,.”
panel concluded. Whoever one the three judge decided that the word “reluctantly” belonged there should be forceably retired. “The panel reluctantly concluded that the United States Constitution does not permit courts to dictate national policy, nor citizens, especially those without voting privileges, to bypass our system of governance because they disagree with its policies” is what that word is telling us, and a judge who regrets how the separation of powers operates to that extent does not belong on the bench. Maybe they belong in President Elizabeth Warren’s cabinet, as she announced this week that she would eliminate student loan debt “on day one.” Lord, this woman is a shameless liar!
But I digress. Sorry. Warren’s name is becoming like “Niagara Falls” to me in the old vaudeville skit….
Back to the case…
However, that ill-omened word “reluctantly” is nothing compared to the incompetent emotional drivel registered by Judge Josephine Laura Staton. I think I’ll use her from now on to metaphorically shake in the face of those who cite Trump’s less qualified judicial appointments, of whom there have been, alas, too many. She dissented from the panel’s decision, which literally, though reluctantly, did nothing but follow black letter law. Go ahead, read it, and by all means, have your most fanatic climate change-addled friends read it too. Then explain to them why it shows either ignorance or disrespect for democracy, the law, AND science.
“Waiting is not an option,” the judge writes. “Those alive today are at perhaps the singular point in history where society (1) is scientifically aware of the impending climate crisis, and (2) can avoid the point of no return.”
This isn’t a statement of fact, nor is it informed opinion. This judge, like the vast majority of climate hysterics, only knows what she has been told by activists from groups whose politics she admires, and can’t possibly understand the technical data and projections underlying them. Society is not “aware” of the impending climate crisis with any specificity, and if the judge thinks she is, she’s an idiot. We know this, because one doomsday prediction after another has proven hyperbolic. What will this crisis be, judge? When will it occur? What measures are you so certain will address them? What will have to be sacrificed to do that? Are you certain they can be addressed? Are you certain subsequent factors and events won’t materially change “the impending crisis”?
The dissent goes off the rails into Fantasyland, and then flies out of Fantasyland into Maniac Mansion. “[P]laintiffs have a constitutional right to be free from irreversible and catastrophic climate change,” she writes. This, of course, is irresponsible bootstrapping from the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness asserted in our nation’s mission statement, the Declaration. Her distorted view transforms a statement meant to affirm the individual’s right to be free of government domination to one justifying government dictatorship rationalized by citizens’ assertion that they have a right to have everyone else’s liberty and needs forcefully curtailed because they prefer policies embodying their priorities.
Judges like this, and I know we have many more than Judge Staton, are un-American and dangerous, lurking enemies of democracy and representative government waiting for their chance to order policies they support regardless of the will of the people or the judgment of their elected representatives. She continues, “Without explicitly laying this groundwork, the majority nonetheless suggests that this case is “special”—and beyond our redress—because plaintiffs’ requested relief requires (1) the messy business of evaluating competing policy considerations to steer the government away from fossil fuels and (2) the intimidating task of supervising implementation over many years, if not decades….I admit these are daunting tasks, but we are constitutionally empowered to undertake them. There is no justiciability exception for cases of great complexity and magnitude….”
Translation: even though we are unqualified to make policy in this area, unelected as well, and though there is no provision in the Constitution or court system empowering the judiciary to wrest lawmaking from the Legislative branch and regulation from the Executive Branch, we can do it because we’re all going to die if we don’t. That’s what my friends tell me.”
This is a Green New Dealer talking, make no mistake. She is advocating dismantling our system to put in place a leftist regime, relying on the courts for legal authority. Naturally, the progressives in thrall to this plot—use climate change fearmongering to scare people into giving up their rights for the good of humanity—are extolling this sinister effort to undermine our governing principles.
But I’m sure she supports late term abortion, so she must be a terrific judge.
In one respect, I almost wish hers was the majority opinion so the U.S. Supreme Court could emphaticaly stuff her ideas into the dustbin of bad jurisprudence where it belongs, as well as overturn the 5-4 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, the 2007 Supreme Court case she relies on. If that had happened, the late Justice Scalia’s ringing dissent in the 2007 case would undoubtedly be enshrined in precedent, as it must be. He wrote,
“The Court’s alarm over global warming may or may not be justified, but it ought not distort the outcome of this litigation. This is a straightforward administrative-law case, in which Congress has passed a malleable statute giving broad discretion, not to us but to an executive agency. No matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake, this Court has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency….
Bingo.
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Ethics Alarms 
I see she went to Harvard Law School. So, of course, her credentials are impeccable and she’s brilliant.
Great analysis by The Manhattan Contrarian: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-1-18-another-of-the-stupidest-litigation-contenders-dies-but-just-barely
He talks about what a close call this dismissal was.
That is indeed an excellent analysis of the crazy case.
“This is a Green New Dealer talking, make no mistake. She is advocating dismantling our system to put in place a leftist regime, relying on the courts for legal authority. Naturally, the progressives in thrall to this plot—use climate change fearmongering to scare people into giving up their rights for the good of humanity—are extolling this sinister effort to undermine our governing principles.”
No doubt about it. The Left loves to lean on so-called Settled Science to extend their reach into people’s personal lives. I have no doubt that much of the “Settled Science” that is politically-charged today has behind it an agenda to tribalize our society. When it’s finally admitted that there’s no scientific basis for much of the social programming that’s gone on in, especially, the last few decades, they’ll just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, it’s already done anyway, everyone’s accepted the way we’re living now so why go back?”
In Portland we’ve recently had a couple “eco-lifestyle” changes, essentially forced on us. We now have to bring our own bags to stores or else pay .05 per bag. That’s statewide. In Portland exclusively, straws must be asked for or else you don’t get a plastic straw, rather getting a crappy paper one. If a worker gives a customer a plastic straw or plastic bag without asking, I believe they can be fined by law.
To be honest, my wife and I naturally live a “conservationist” lifestyle. We believe in the tribal and human right to hunt, ideally using all the animal. We watch our utility use, one of us mainly busses, and I even campaigned to keep toxins out of our water.
Yet it’s clear there is a goal here to control. There’s just the slightest sense of “getting into trouble” around, of all things, bags and straws. It’s subtle, this control, but it’s here and mostly people go along.
We go along.
Maybe the slippery slope doesn’t apply here. Maybe these changes aren’t difficult for your average Portlander.
But now I always carry a bag everywhere I go. What’s next? One pot meals?
Indeed! Invite your neighbors to your one-pot meals. Then a member of the Progressive Youth will knock on your door to collect the money you saved for Woke Education.
IoT is one of the areas where I believe a great deal of control could be brought to bear in the future. A quick primer for the uninitiated: IoT is the “Internet of Things” – basically all non-computer smart devices, such as TVs, appliances, those video doorbells, sensors, security cameras, drones, phones (phones qualify though they’re essentially computers already)…anything that can be hooked to a network and send/receive data.
All of these devices can transmit…right now they might transmit to your phone via an app, so you can see inside your fridge when you’re at the store and pick something up, or start your dishwasher remotely if you forgot…turn on the lights for your wife (like the Alexa commercial), see where your husband is driving the car, see who’s at the front door when you’re at the office…whatever.
But it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to figure out that all of that data – usually sent to “the Cloud” – could be read by a hands-on government that wants to monitor your water usage, how often you open the refrigerator and what unhealthy foods are in there, what temp your thermostat is set to, how many lights are on, where you drove your car…anything…
Right now, IoT is pitched to our advantage to help us monitor our usage, use fewer resources, and be more sustainable. You know, climate change and all. In the future?…it will be to the advantage of a more totalitarian state, one which wants to monitor everything you do, control everything you use, and penalize you for exercising “freedom of usage”.
All of these devices – and there will be hundreds of billions of them coming – would overwhelm our current network bandwidth…except now we see the arrival of 5G…how convenient.
If I sound a bit “cloak and dagger” and sinister, let me just write that I’m probably understating what will happen.
The Lou Costello “Niagara Falls” video is probably the funnest thing I’m seen posted on this site. Keep it up Jack as with the Impeachment trial coming up, we need more like it.
If there is indeed a climate crisis, clean energy would not c ut it.
We would need to create a nuclear winter.
http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Dark-World-After-Nuclear/dp/0393302415
Perhaps I should have mentioned that the dissenter was foolish enough to evoke “Eve of Destruction” to begin her argument. Boy,is that stupid. The song, as I’ve mentioned here, and recently, was hysterical, and that doomsday prediction was spectacularly wrong. We were NOT on the Eve of Destruction.The song was a false alarm.
Again, I ask.
If we are facing climate crisis, why not trigger a nuclear winter?
“Snowpiercer” covers that plan. It doesn’t work out well….
It would bee too harsh a medicine if we were only facing a greater number of storms, a greater number of heat waves, and sea levels rising one foot over the next hundred years as compared to the previous hundred years.
But if we were faced with “destroying the Nation”, ” “an inhospitable future . . . marked by rising seas,
coastal city functionality loss, mass migrations, resource
wars, food shortages, heat waves, mega-storms, soil
depletion and desiccation, freshwater shortage, public health
system collapse, and the extinction of increasing numbers of
species.”, Snowpierce does not seem so bad.
I cannot forget the hysteria about hair spray in the 70’s that would cause global cooling. We still use pump sprays that came from that panic… Maybe we should all use old hair spray massively and call it a day.
Thanks! Yeah, some of us are sufficiently experienced to remember – in the 1960s and 70s – when many scientists believed we were headed for another Ice Age. My dad subscribed to Time magazine and I seem to recall an issue with a big article about it. Anyways…
But using old hairspray is so complicated. It’s much easier to end all use of fossil fuels, curtail 70% of all travel, take away our freedom of decision and movement, and install a totalitarian system of government.
…all to fix a non-existent problem.
For nonexistent it is.
The hole in the ozone was a hoax, too