https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-4-9-the-latest-on-international-efforts-to-save-the-planet-through-climate-litigation
When I first came upon it, I called it the “stupidest litigation in the country.” In 2015 a group of adolescents, led on a leash by some activist environmental lawyers, had sued the federal government in the District Court for Oregon. The plaintiffs alleged violation of their fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment, and sought as remedy a compulsory national plan to “phase out” the use of fossil fuels nationwide plus (why not?) “draw down excess atmospheric CO2 so as to stabilize the climate system and protect the vital resources on which Plaintiffs now and in the future will depend. . . .” I first covered this litigation in a post in December 2017 titled “The Stupidest Litigation In The Country Reaches The Ninth Circuit.”
Why “stupidest litigation”? Because this case seemed to represent the ultimate reductio ad absurdum of the entire idea of courts and of litigation, and indeed an attempt at complete subversion of our three-branch system of government. Just make up a new and sweeping “constitutional right,” find a friendly activist-minded judge, and you can get an order transferring all the significant operations of the legislative and executive branches of the government to a single unelected person operating out of a courthouse in Eugene, Oregon. Surely, no court would take this seriously. But then, one must take account of the powerful religious hold that the claims of the climate cult have over all those on the political left, not the least over many judges. And then there’s the excitement for a lonely small-town judge of potentially getting to run the entire country by decree without having to go through the bother of getting elected to anything.
So just because this litigation was stupid would not mean that it would have no chance of success. Also, keep in mind that the environmental left has near infinite resources, and never gives up.