Chalk one more up for climate hysteria!
A Montana district court under Judge Kathy Seeley has ruled in favor of a group of green Zoomers, backed by fearmongering legal outfit Our Children’s Trust, who sued the state over its regulatory policy of not using carbon emissions as a standard when permitting new fossil-fuel projects.
In other words, the war on domestic energy continues apace, now with judges getting in on the action.
Look: Choking off American energy production by imposing impossible-to-meet emissions standards is a recipe for disaster.
It will do nothing to slow warming, as the world’s leading polluters (like China) will be utterly unaffected by it.
It will do massive economic harm to average Americans, by driving up energy prices.
Biden’s federal war on production proves that: Energy prices have skyrocketed under him, and his fossil-fuel clampdown is a huge contributor.
Plus, beyond the practical considerations here, it’s absurd for a judge to find a state-constitutional right to be protected from the warming that results from global carbon emissions.
Yes, carbon output contributes to warming.
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But warming is a slow-motion risk, whereas carbon drives currently everything in the modern economy: refrigeration, clean water, farming.
No one needs to be protected from emissions.
They will, however, need lots of protection if green nuts succeed in their decarbonization schemes and all the goods and services we count on go dark one by one.
The Montana attorney general’s office was dead right to call the judgment a “taxpayer-funded publicity stunt” — and to plan an appeal.
Indeed, the judge herself is a true believer, apparently citing pie-in-the-sky claims that Montana can go 80% renewable in seven years as a factor in her judgment.
Luckily, the decision is a low-level state one, limited in scope and near-certain to be reversed.
Certainly, Montana’s GOP-dominated Legislature is unlikely to sign on to Judge Seeley’s crusade.
This is the first Our Children’s Trust case that’s ever reached trial.
It should also be the last.