Washington post columnists Bina Venkataraman and Amanda Shendruk approvingly cite a ridiculous lawsuit filed against the state of Montana by a group of teenagers in their article A new tool in the fight to save the planet? A 6th-century Roman doctrine. They write:
A decade ago, the idea of young people suing their governments for failing to act on climate change seemed naive. How would they prove in court that planetary warming was harming them or would harm them in the future? Even if they did, could they show that forcing one state to curb greenhouse gas pollution would spare them harm from global climate change?
And there was another, more fundamental question: Does government sanction of fossil fuel projects abridge young people’s constitutional rights — whether to life, liberty and happiness or to a healthy environment? Especially in the United States, the notion that teenagers might ever win such cases seemed a pipe dream.
A Montana court decision has suddenly made it a reality.
So what is that Roman doctrine? The article goes on:
This might be a long shot. But many democracies do, in theory, guarantee their citizens the right to clean air, water, farmland, forests and other natural resources. The idea of getting judges to enforce this guarantee in more places is not unreasonable. Governments would merely be held to promises they’ve already made. The Montana ruling, for instance, rests on an explicit promise in the state’s constitution.
The state and each person shall
maintain and improve a clean and
healthful environment in Montana for
present and future generations.
The authors trace this vague and essentially unenforceable constitutional mandate to this:
By the law of nature these things
are common to all mankind, the air,
running water, the sea and consequently
the shores of the sea.
Note that the Montana constitution includes “each person.” Since every person uses, either directly or indirectly, fossil fuels, this means that the plaintiffs themselves are equally guilty, by their own standard!
But, no matter; this is stupid season.
We live in an Age of Ingratitude. But this court case—if you can call it an actual “case”—is the most egregious manifestation of ingratitude imaginable. Do these kiddies know that they are living in the best time in human history in which to be a teenager? Do they know that young people have never had a brighter future (assuming, of course, the Environmentalists don't get their way and kill it)? Throughout human history, the planet was "saved" from human technology and development—and life was miserable, short, incredibly dangerous, unimaginably unhealthy, and brutishly hard.
And then came what Deirdre McCloskey accurately calls The Great Enrichment—the greatest beneficiaries of which are today's youngest generation. Do these young people appreciate the miraculous human-made achievement that the freedom of Capitalism—the very constitutional rights to life, liberty, and THE PURSUIT of happiness these young fools ridiculously claim are being violated—made possible? Do these claimants realize that the Enrichment was fueled by the very hydrocarbon energy they want to stop? Do they realize that without that government sanction of fossil fuels, their lives would be much worse, if they existed at all? Do they realize the genocidal implications of eliminating fossil fuels?
Of course, the alleged "right" to a healthy environment doesn't exist, and the crafters of the Montana constitutional mandate likely had a much narrower idea in mind, like actual pollution and actions that individuals and lawmakers could actually do about it. Certainly, they didn’t have climate in mind.
But as I said, there is no right to a healthy environment. Why? Because nature doesn't provide it. Not for humans. For humans, life in raw “saved” nature, unimproved by technology and industrialization, is wholesale misery and death? A safe, healthy environment doesn’t just happen. It must be created by human ingenuity and industriousness. The fact is that human innovativeness, powered by liberty and by fossil fuels, has made a dangerous planet much safer for human life, not the other way around.
Do these young people realize we live in the healthiest and safest environment—and, yes, including climate—that man has ever had? Apparently not. Yet this much improved planet, and even dramatically better future, is the inheritance that today's young people enjoy thanks to the best of the generations that preceded them. What lies ahead is not doom, but the end of doom—the steady progress up from a life of perpetual hardship that has been steadily receding since the beginning of The Great Enrichment 250 years ago.
These young so-called climate activists are the ultimate in our Age of Ingratitude. They are a bunch of greedy, rotten, spoiled, ignorant, ungrateful, entitlement-minded brats. That's all. But they are not the worst culprits. Worse is the judge that sanctioned their "case." He should be impeached and disbarred. Now, I don’t expect this suit to succeed. How do these plaintiffs prove that fossil fuels are driving global warming and that this warming is causing them harm, when their fossil fuel-powered lives are so good and, anyway, when even scientists disagree on how much warming is driven by fossil fuels and how much is driven by natural causes?
But the worst culprits are the climate crisis doom mongers who are destroying the younger generation’s confidence in the future. The latest doom-mongering hysteria was triggered by this year’s heat waves in Europe and the American South, about which the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declared asserted signaled the “era of global boiling has arrived.” Yes, boiling! This kind of elitist Chicken Little hysteria peddled by the likes of Guterres and, more recently, President Joe Biden’s attribution of Hurricane Idalia to “the climate crisis” is doing real harm to young people. Undoubtedly, as opportunistic as this lawsuit is, there is an element of sincerity in the motivations of these young people. On some level, who can blame them given what their politically motivated idiot elders are telling them?
The Montana climate lawsuit isn’t going anywhere—at least not yet. But the very fact that it was brought and taken seriously by a rogue judge is a danger sign. The blazing irony is that, although the alleged right to a clean and safe environment—a principle enshrined in constitutions around the world—does not exist, we humans today live in the cleanest, safest environment ever experienced by humans and fossil fuels, far from being the culprit, are up to now actually the cause of this vast improvement. The evidence is overwhelming not only for this improvement but that fossil fuels will be vital to this continuing improvement for at least many decades to come. More importantly, the rapid elimination of fossil fuels will be catastrophic, not planet saving.
If there is a silver lining to this lawsuit, it’s that it will give the champions of fossil fuels a platform for dramatically proving their case, including the moral case, for fossil fuels. There is a real opportunity here, and this case could actually backfire on the climate doom mongers, who up until now have been dominating the climate and energy narrative. These kids, and many more people, desperately need the education.
Related Reading:
Eco/Climate Doom: The Miseducation, and Mental Abuse, of the Young
Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting by Ronald Bailey and Marian L. Tupy
Humanity and Wild Nature Will Likely Both Be Flourishing in 2100 by Ronald Bailey
Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less by Alex Epstein
The Suicidal Demonization of Fossil Fuels
Fossil Fuels and Climate Change: Remember Life Before Them
The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century by Ronald Bailey
Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters by Steven E. Koonin
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