From a National Center for Public Policy Research press release :
According to a July 20 Associated Press article by Mark Johnson, “Eight states and New York City intend to sue five of the country’s largest power producers to demand they cut carbon dioxide emissions, which are believed to be linked to global warming.
The attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, as well as New York City’s corporation counsel, will file a public nuisance lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, according to a draft news release…
The states contend carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced by increasing efficiency at coal-burning plants, switching from coal to cleaner burning fuels, investing in energy conservation, and using clean energy sources such as wind and solar power.
Marc Violette, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, declined to comment on details of the lawsuit. But he said the action would ‘for the first time, put global warming on the litigation map’ – specifically targeting carbon dioxide emissions. ‘This is a precedent-setting, first-of-its-kind lawsuit,’ he said.”
Hence – no pun intended – the appeal. These politicians are attempting to expand their power.
“Global warming”—the theory that behavior by human beings is causing the Earth to warm significantly—is highly contested scientific issue, one on which many climate scientists disagree. Even those scientists who believe human behavior is causing the planet to warm disagree significantly about causes and degree.
Scientists furthermore differ on the impact global warming would have on the Earth. Some expect global warming would cause sea levels to rise. Others believe it could cause sea levels to lower—as increased amounts of water vapor in the air result in more snow congregating at the still-frozen poles.
Some global warming debaters stress the possibility that global warming could hurt plants, while others note the beneficial effect of increased carbon dioxide levels on plant life (carbon dioxide is, roughly speaking, to plants what oxygen is to human beings).
Court decisions are blunt instruments and ill-suited for determining policies on such matters as global warming, where opinions are constantly undergoing change as new scientific knowledge is gained. The judicial branch, unlike the legislative, is not designed to accommodate the easy repeal or amendment of flawed policies.
Trials are by nature a debate between two parties—the plaintiff and the defendant. Legislatures convene hearings, hear from witnesses, review testimony and debate at length, with many voices and perspectives considered. The public, furthermore, is aware of the proceedings of legislatures and is easily able to communicate desires to lawmakers.
It often has been said that if you look at a state attorney general, you see a governor-wannabe.
Apparently, that’s yesterday’s news. Now they want to be Caesar.
Somewhere, Ben Franklin just threw down a three-cornered hat—and a kite, and some bifocals—in disgust.
More, from Jonathan Adler :
[…] This is yet another suit seeking to bypass the legislative process and force the regulation of greenhouse gases through litigation. (I wrote about the prior suits here.) If the draft press release circulating around is accurate, this suit is particualrly outrageous. It seeks a court order to require the relevant utilities to reduce their emissions under the federal common law of public nuisance—an ambitious claim, to say the least. Unless the state AGs have come up with a particularly ingeneous legal theory, this suit is nothing more than a publicity stunt. Even if the AGs could win, and manged to shut down the targetted utilities completely, this would not abate the alleged nuisance, as atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and predicted climate change would scarcely be affected at all.
Great. Looking forward to reading by candlelight for the rest of my life because some greedy-ass AGs see a chance to make headlines.
Speaking of which, I wonder why MN’s AG–Mike Hatch, who everyone thinks is setting himself up for a run at governor–isn’t all over this one, too?
In other related news-
Sami Solanki, Professor at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich Switzerland, says the Sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years than over the previous 1090 years.
“We have to acknowledge that the Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago, and this brightening started relatively recently – in the last 100 to 150 years. We expect it to have an impact on global warming,†he told swissinfo. “
Because you know, the sun, that big bright thing in the sky just may, JUST MAY, have an impact on global warming…
Jeff: for some reason I can’t get the link to the AP story to work–as in I can’t even click it (tried using 2 different browsers).
Tman: I saw that story too, but couldn’t find any explanation for why data on relative sun brightness goes back precisely 1150 years, which seems like a rather strange number. My only guess was it somehow involved the analysis of really-old-but-still-living trees.
Should be fixed, thanks.
The sun has been conspiring against us for years. ‘Bout time we sued…
“We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a foreign rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly that we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us.”
I bet those evil power companies could reduce their emissions easily….by not providing power to the states in the suit. California and New York eat so much power that we could probably run the generating plants at less than half capacity if we cut them off.
I wonder how well the liberal intelligentsia will function in the luddite paradise they demand?
And am I the only one who thinks it odd that New Jersey would dare to sue anyone for pollution? For a wedding present we hacked off a chunk of NJ air and presented it to the groom, a former inate of Bayonne.
“The people there are of the breed
that don’t need electricity.”
“California”—Al Jardine & Mike Love (I think)
I don’t understand the negativity. I think its a great idea for one Federal court to control the entire economy of the United States under a nuisance theory…
Amusingly, the utilities being sued for the most part don’t supply power to the states doing the suing. TVA and SOCO are nowhere near any of them, and while some of the others export dribbles to a few of the relevant states, none are the primary (or even secondary or tertiary) suppliers. It’s especially amusing that NYC has joined the suit since it, along with Long Island, enjoys the most expensive electricity in the United States (a function of insufficient transmition, not any of the more usual culprits you might suspect), almost none of it coal.
I was going to make a snide comment about Mike Hatch, but Steve beat me to it. All I can add is, it’s nice to see he’s sitting this one out.
-Eric