An Oregon judge ruled in favor of a group of children last week. Twenty-one kids between the ages of 8 and 19 sued the federal government and the fossil fuel industry for violating their rights and those of “future generations.” The judge, rather than dismissing these petulant children, found that they have a substantive complaint on legal grounds, and dismissed the government’s call to drop the case.
No, this is not The Onion. Taking climate alarmism to an absurd conclusion, the 21 kids — along with Dr. James Hansen, who participated as a guardian for the plaintiff “future generations” — said that the gridlock in the federal government which has stopped massive economic regulations against the allegedly disastrous effects of carbon emissions was a direct assault on their rights to life and liberty, and a substantial breach of their due process rights when compared with prior generations. It is as convoluted as it sounds.
Yes, this judge accepted the argument that the federal government is harming future generations by not acting against a huge chunk of the energy sector.
“This is purely political — a liberal judge putting his personal opinions on climate change above the law he is supposed to uphold and defend,” H. Sterling Burnett, a Ph.D in environmental ethics and research fellow at the Heartland Institute, told PJ Media in an email statement. “The Obama administration has gone around our elected representatives to enact draconian restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, yet for these kids that’s not enough.”
Burnett conceded that it is almost impossible to halt the use of fossil fuels across the world. “It is true that the actions taken by the administration and by world leaders in the Paris climate agreements will not stem the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, but nothing they can realistically do would.” He estimated that “you would have to shut down all of industrial civilization to stop rising greenhouse gas emissions, condemning [both present and future generations] to poverty and early death.”
The Heartland scholar argued that this case “should have been thrown out of court based on lack of standing,” since the children “can’t show they have or are or will be harmed by human caused climate change, and because burning fossil fuels does not violate any portion of the Constitution or the bill of rights,” as they claim it does (emphasis added). Rather, burning oil and gas “contributes greatly to life, the pursuit of happiness, and the general welfare.”