March 30, 2010
Grasping at straws - Climate Change and the Court System
From FOX News:Global Warming Advocates Threaten Blizzard of LawsuitsTalk about wasting everyone's time. If there was a strong case for Anthropogenic Global Warming, there would be a much greater outcry from the Scientific Community. There is not -- the AGW crowd is being promoted by politicians and business who stand to profit from GW legislation. Alston and Bird are politically well connected -- from OpenSecrets we can see that they do a lot of lobbying for their clients; $11,170,000 for 2009:
Environmentalists, unable to squeeze "cap and trade" rules through the U.S. Senate, have a new strategy for combating what they believe is man-made global warming:
They're going to sue.
They're revving up their briefs and getting ready to shop for judges who will be sympathetic to their novel claim that the companies they believe contribute to global warming are a "public nuisance."
The environmentalists allege that individual companies are responsible for climate change because they have emitted greenhouse gases during the course of their operations. Those gases, they say, have "harmed" them by fostering Hurricane Katrina, eroding the shorelines of America's coasts and causing global warming.
"People have a right to sue for redress of grievances," said Lee A. DeHihns III, a partner with law firm Alston & Bird's environmental and land development group and a former associate general counsel with the EPA. He said global warming is a "public nuisance," just like a neighbor with a loud stereo. "You can sue for an intentional infliction of harm, a nuisance," said DeHihns, whose firm is consulting with defendants in these types of cases.
The lawyers seek a "consent decree," an agreement from the defendants to stop causing global warming -- even though the theory that mankind causes global warming is hardly settled science.
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