The Constitution, Property Rights, and Climate Change

QUORA: According to the U.S. Constitution, one of the government’s essential roles is to protect property. Climate change and rising sea levels put some property at risk of flooding. What do conservatives want to do about this?

My answer:

Let me start by stating unequivocally that I am not a conservative. I speak only for myself. 

As to the question, it’s true that one of the government’s essential roles is to protect property. That is made crystal clear in the 5th and 14th Amendments, as well as throughout the Federalist Papers. But that protection extends only to human predators, be they the government, domestic criminals, or foreign enemies. Natural processes, like sea level rise, are outside the scope of government. And, yes, climate change and sea level rise, even if partially linked to human activities, is a natural process. Man is part of nature, and like all life forms, man has a particular mode of survival, which is to apply his mind and labor to altering, re-shaping, and improving the natural conditions of nature to his own benefit. But natural processes are not human predators, and thus don’t fall under the essential government role to protect anyone’s property.

Of course, the U.S. government can and does tax its citizens to build seawalls, dikes, sand dunes, and the like to protect coastal properties from the seas. We can argue whether or not the government should be doing it. But, to my understanding, that is not authorized anywhere in the Constitution. 

Elsewhere, Dennis Manning Answered, in part:

The Preamble to the Constitution lays out the basics of essential roles…to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for common defense, promote general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty for us and future generations. Defense of the nation is not the same as protecting property. That is not the government’s role.

My reply:

I generally agree with everything beyond the first paragraph, which is completely erroneous in its conclusion—”protecting property . . . is not the government’s role.”

What is Justice, if not to secure rights to persons and property? What, exactly, does “the blessings of liberty” mean, if not the right of property, without which no other rights, including the right to life, are possible? If you’ve ever read the Federalist Papers, the Constitution’s definitive resource, you would know that the protection of property rights is a primary goal of the government. E.G. Federalist 54: “Government is instituted no less for protection of the property, than of the persons of individuals. The one as well as the other, therefore may be considered as represented by those who are charged with the government.” John Locke, the Founders’ most cited Enlightenment philosopher and the originator of the concept of unalienable individual rights, understood property rights to be inextricably linked to man’s rights. Man, Locke argued, has a fundamental natural right to his own person, and by logical extension to the product of his own labor, and that the government’s job is to secure those Natural Rights to Property, along with Life and Liberty, through its laws.

As to the Constitution:

The 5th Amendment states “. . . No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The 14th Amendment states “. . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

And what exactly does “the common defense” (“defense of the nation”) mean, if not protecting the rights of its citizens, including their private property? 

Related Reading:

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay

The Primacy of Property Rights and the American Founding -- David Upham for FEE

Property Rights and the Constitution -- Cato Handbook for Policymakers

Mamaroneck, NY’s Tree Law Smacks of Theocracy: Climatism Has No Place in the Politics of a Free Society

In ‘My Property, My Trees’: New Tree-Cutting Law Divides N.Y. Town, the New York Time’s Hilary Howard reports on a law in Mamaroneck, New York, that regulates tree removal on private property. Requiring property owners, including homeowners, to get a permit to remove a tree is disturbing enough from a pro-liberty standpoint. But what really got my attention were the rationalizations at the forefront of the new law. Howard reports:

When Robert Herbst returned to his hometown about 30 miles north of New York City in 1992, he wanted his children to be immersed in the lush greenery of his childhood. But over the decades, he noticed more trees coming down to make way for bigger houses.

Mr. Herbst, a lawyer, and other like-minded residents of Mamaroneck, N.Y., view the vanishing trees as a serious threat in the era of climate change.

“We should be protecting trees for our own survival,” said Jacob Levitt, a dermatologist who lives in Mamaroneck. “It’s suicidal not to do it.”

But some residents say they should have the right to remove any and all trees on their properties to make way for more sunlight or a home expansion, or simply because they want them gone.

“People want to landscape the way they want to landscape,” said Eve Neuman, a realtor who lives in the area.

Herbst and Levitt are leaders in the war on tree removal. But, what right do these men and their cohorts have to use the coercive power of the state to impose their values on everyone else? None. Enter “climate change.” 

I wrote these comments, which were not published because the comment section of the article was closed before I could get to it. :

“[V]anishing trees [are] a serious threat in the era of climate change. ‘We should be protecting trees for our own survival. It’s suicidal not to do it.’”

How does one answer such Chicken Little hysteria? You can’t, any more than you can rebut “It’s God’s will.” Yet such quasi-religious rhetoric is used to justify trampling people’s sacred property rights, without any evidence that cutting down a tree would violate the rights and/or safety of anyone else.

If you can use climate change—or “the climate crisis”—as a God-like justification for trampling individual rights to cut a tree on one’s own property by law, then what dictatorial scheme can’t be justified by it? On that standard, none of our liberties are safe. Faith is impervious to reason and morality. But that’s the point, isn’t it? “Climate Change” is the newest calling card of totalitarianism. America beat back tyranny in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWs 1 & 2, and the Cold War—only to give up our freedom to the likes of  “tree advocates?”   

In the Constitution it is written that no law respecting the establishment of religion shall be made. The Founders well understood the threat of theocracy. Yet a new secular religion—Climatism—is exactly what is being established by this law. Totalitarian theocracy is the ultimate goal of anyone who raises climate change as a justification for rights-violating laws. It's a reincarnation of The Divine Right of Kings, and the Separation of Religion and State should apply here. End the madness.

The term “climatism” is not mine. The term was first coined by Robert Bryce, as far as I can tell. Bryce roots the term in economic terms: Environmentalism, Bryce observes, “has morphed into the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex.” That’s true enough. But I see something deeper. I see the tentacles of religious dogma and authoritarianism wound through the entire movement. Climatism fits the bill very nicely, in my view. “Follow the money,” says Bryce in explaining Climatism’s grip on policy. But religion provides something far more consequential—and dangerous—moral firepower. Replace God with Climate Change, and you have a new superior power to submit to. And just as “God’s will” is determined by faith leaders who claim to speak for God, and thus must be unquestioningly obeyed, so we have “climate experts” who claim to speak for “the fight against climate change,” and unquestioningly obeyed. Neither authority requires evidence. Any dissident is heretical, which makes you a sinner—or a climate denier on the moral level of a neo-Nazi. . . a holocaust denier.

Of course, like all manifestations of statist assaults, the best moral and practical defense is individual rights.

Related Reading:

‘Climate Crisis’: The Dem’s Path to Totalitarian Socialism

New U.N. Study Shows Climate Catastrophists Getting More Open About their Totalitarian Designs

Environmentalism In America Is Dead: It has been replaced by climatism and renewable energy fetishism. by Robert Bryce

The Would-Be Climate Dictators’ Trial Balloon

From ‘Authoritarianism’ May Be Necessary to Fight Climate Change, Cambridge Study Argues, FEE’s John Miltimore reports:

A recent study published in American Political Science Review, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University, begins with a teasing question: “Is authoritarian power ever legitimate?”

For many, the answer is clearly no, concedes the study’s author—Ross Mittiga, an assistant professor of political theory at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. But Mittiga, in the abstract to the study, suggests otherwise:

“While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach.

This was inevitable. I have long argued that the normally mundane science of climate change had become a means to a political end—some form of totalitarian statism. The tactics used by politicians for fighting the "climate crisis" are invariably dictatorial, but they would never openly admit it. Now, with so many people duped into being conditioned to accept government coercion to "fight climate change," the climate crisis mongers appear to be getting ready to take the next step—openly declare that freedom cannot handle the crisis and then demand the dictatorial powers their policies always implied. 

Note also that the over-reaching COVID 19 freedom restrictions are being cited as the precedent for the coming climate attack on our liberty, which I also predicted.

The piecemeal advance of statism is often preceded by trial balloons to gauge how ready the public is for another erosion of their freedom and rights. That’s how I see this study. We'll see how far this trial balloon goes.

Related Reading:

New U.N. 'Study' Shows Climate Catastrophists Getting More Open About their Totalitarian Designs

As We Endure Through COVID-19 Lockdowns, Dems Gear Up for ‘Climate Crisis’ Authoritarianism

The Migration Crisis

Ross Douthat has a good column titled The Permanent Migration Crisis. The subject of the New York Times article is on what has been dubbed the “migration crisis.” He observes that mass migration is mainly moving from Africa to Western Europe and Latin America to the United States. His intelligent analysis examines the interesting problems this massive wave of migration is creating for both the political Left and Right. I believe his analysis is largely accurate. In zeroing in on the cause of the crisis, Douthat observes:

Civil wars and climate change will play their part, but the most important shifts are, first, the way the internet and smartphones have made it easier to make your way around the world, and second, the population imbalance between a rich, rapidly-aging West and a poorer, younger Global South, a deeply unstable equilibrium drawing economic migrants north.

All of this is a bigger problem for Europe than the United States — European aging is more advanced, Africa’s population will boom for decades (in 50 years there may be five Africans for every European) while Latin America’s birthrates have declined. 

Granted, there is no easy fix in the short to mid term. But does it have to be permanent? No. Note that the migration moves from “poorer” to “rich” regions. The migration is primarily driven by desperation of people escaping intolerable living conditions in their home countries. But do the poor regions have to be poor? What is the reason why the rich nations are rich? Certainly, people in rich countries are no better, smarter, or harder working than those in poor regions. What’s holding back the poor? What’s facilitating the economic growth of the rich? Douthat identifies the problem, but doesn’t address the causes.

I posted this comment, slightly edited for grammatical correctness:

What seems always to be missing from analysis of the migration crisis is recognition of the fact that people are moving from places dominated by authoritarianism and with minimal fossil fuel use to places with substantial Capitalistic freedom powered by extensive fossil fuels use. That's the elephant in the room. Freedom of migration is a good thing. But the migration CRISIS is purely political. Fundamentally, what the countries from which mass migration originates need is more Capitalism—i.e. individual liberty, including property rights and the freedom to use fossil fuels, rule of law, limited democratic governance, etc.—so they can prosper and better protect themselves from domestic violence, tyranny, and the ever-present climate dangers.

Related Reading:

Pope Francis: Prosperity, Liberty, and Climate Change are the Common Enemy

At Climate Summit, America takes Lead on Energy Realism and Prosperity

Capitalist Industrialization, Not Handouts, is “Poor” Countries' Best Protection Against Natural Disasters

CLIMATE VULNERABILITY AND THE INDISPENSABLE VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM—Kieth H. Lockitch 

Religionists Should Promote Capitalism and More Reliable Energy to End Poverty, Not ‘Protect’ the Poor from Fossil Fuels.

The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less by Alex Epstein

Mexico Feels Pressure of Relentless Migration From South America by James Fredrick for The New York Times 9/21 23

The Ungrateful, Uninformed Young Brats Behind the Climate Lawsuit Against Montana

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

QUORA: ‘Is it normal for 75% of the U.S. to be below freezing in November, or is that another sign of climate change?’

 QUORA: ‘Is it normal for 75% of the U.S. to be below freezing in November, or is that another sign of climate change?’

In November 2019, The Lower 48 in the U.S. was swept by an intense cold wave that was very unusual for so early in the season. The question above apparently refers to that extreme weather event. At least, that’s what I’m assuming.  

Below is an edited and expanded version of the answer I posted:

No, it is not normal, if by “normal” you mean average. Far from it. In fact, the November 2019 cold snap is the strongest November cold wave since 1911, and in many cities stronger. Here are articles from the Washington Post and AccuWeather documenting just how unusual this cold wave was. 

But it is not some unprecedented event. The atmospheric conditions that unleashed this arctic air mass and sent it South, bringing with it well below average temperatures in the Lower 48, happen from time to time. Yes, records were broken. But remember that systematic weather records have only been around for about 100 to 200 years, depending on location. In the history of meteorology, that’s a pin prick in time.

As to climate change, I wouldn’t put too much stock in the notion that a single weather event signals anything about climate. Climate is an average of weather conditions measured over a long period of years spanning decades or longer. What the cold wave signals to me is that the hysteria over a so-called “climate crisis” is hogwash. Unfortunately, “climate change” has been so politicized that most of the “debate” about it is geared toward political ambitions rather than oriented around rationality and facts. Attributing an extreme weather event to climate change is a political “explanation.” Weather deviates from “normal” all the time. That’s not climate change. That's the weather. 

Climate change is defined as the long term shifts in weather patterns. Is our climate changing? Probably. Human activity likely contributes to those changes, especially in recent centuries. But so do natural forces. According to political “wisdom,” we face a climate crisis, and humans are to blame. But the steady stream of Chicken Little hysteria is best ignored. There are plenty of calmer, rational experts telling a different story. One I recommend is Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters by Steven Koonan. And if you read Brian Fagan’s The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850, you get a picture of just how wild weather and climate swings have been historically. It puts into perspective how comparatively mild today’s alleged “climate crisis” is historically.

Related Reading:

Sierra Club's Jeff Tittel Smears Star-Ledger Article and its Contributors for Excluding Climate Religion from Hurricane Analysis

The Atlantic: Exploiting Hurricane Disasters to Talk Climate is OK—Eric Worrall for WUWT

A Carbon Tax Won't Stop Hurricanes—James Agresti for FEE

QUORA: ‘Why is there such strong pushback on climate change at the same time as we are seeing overwhelming proof of weather extremes in the USA?’

The Collectivist Left Media Launches Major ‘Climate Crisis’ Propaganda Campaign

It’s Time to Listen to the ‘Climate Denialists’

Stop ‘Denying’ the View From Outside the Climate Catastrophist Government Establishment