Climate change policy is EPA’s job, not courts’
THE DEMOCRATS’ global warming bill died in the Senate last year. The new Republican majority in the House wants to gut carbon regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency. President Obama is reluctant even to discuss global warming publicly. So some environmentalists believe that a case being argued before the Supreme Court Tuesday represents the last, best hope to reduce greenhouse emissions.
This is not where environmentalists had hoped to be when the case, American Electric Power v. Connecticut, was launched in 2004. A group of states and New York City sued several electric companies that year, claiming that the greenhouse emissions from their power plants are a “public nuisance” because they contribute to global warming. Climate change directly harms California’s snowpack, New York’s sea level, shipping in the Great Lakes and so forth, the states argued, and so they turned to an element of common law, non-statutory legal norms imported from England centuries ago that allow for nuisance suits when one party’s activity harms others.
A U.S. District Court judge curtly threw out the states’ case, saying that plaintiffs were asking the judicial branch to settle an inherently political question. The states persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to reverse the district court’s ruling, arguing that, under ancient and recent precedent, courts have settled nuisance claims similar to those in AEP v. Connecticut.
Disrupting the Borg is expensive and time consuming!
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“Climate change directly harms California’s snowpack, New York’s sea level, shipping in the Great Lakes and so forth.”
LOL. What kind of radical planet-hating ring-wing evil judge could dismiss a case built on that unequivocal evidence?
Pity about the snowpack… and so forth…
In the last 2 weeks, Courts of Nuisance record were made available on the Internet.
Extract:
“Fri. 29 Feb. 1348. Continued.
410. Hugh de Huntyngdon complains by Thomas de Ware, his attorney, that in rainy weather the water from the tenement of the abbess of Burnham adjoining his in the par. of St. Andrew Castle Baynard, falls upon his land for the length of 33 ft., and that she has four windows less than 16 ft. from the ground through which her tenants can see the private business of his tenants. The def. after essoin makes default. After the premises have been viewed, the proceedings are adjourned, as above, for lack of aldermen until Wed. 27 Feb. [rectius 5 Mar.], when there being assembled at Guildhall Thomas Leggy, mayor, and [the same aldermen as in 407], Hugh comes by his attorney, and the record and process of the plea having been recited, it is adjudged that within 40 days etc. the abbess convey her water on to her own land or into the street, and block up the windows complained of.
Fri. 9 May 1348. Thomas Leggy, mayor, John Hamond, Roger de Depham, William de Causton, Adam Brabazon and Richard Basyngstoke, aldermen.
411. Simon de Worthstede complains that in rainy weather the water from the tenement of Joan relict of Robert Sely and Lawrence Sely adjoining his in the par. of St. Alban de Wodestrete falls upon his land; and that they have two apertures through which their tenants can see the private business of the pl. and his servants. The defs. ask for a respite so that they may produce their muniments but subsequently make default. Judgment after view that within 40 days etc. they convey their water on to their own land or into the street and block up the two apertures.”
In reaching their judgement for Simon de Worthstede in the above case, Thomas Leggy, mayor, John Hamond, Roger de Depham, William de Causton, Adam Brabazon and Richard Basyngstoke, aldermen, may have, as in other cases, visited the site to see for themselves the truth about the complaint
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=35977
It is therefore, quite a stretch of imagination to apply verdicts about rain water falling on your land from another’s roof, or the location of a latrine next to a dividing wall, spilling its contents into your cellar, with CO2 emissions being the cause of natural cycles of warming and cooling. As with the 14th century, so in the 21st century; the issue of CO2 as a pollutant should not be accepted conclusively as proved, based only upon the political declaration of the EPA. The states should have to prove to the court, that CO2 does cause the so-called harm attributed to it. Indeed, is there any harm from elevatedCO2 levels? That is a big can of worms to open. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit seems to be shooting itself in both feet.