Last Call For Climate Of Destruction, Con't

This legal victory on climate change in Montana will go up in flames like, well, a Montana wildfire.

In the first ruling of its kind nationwide, a Montana state court decided Monday in favor of young people who alleged the state violated their right to a “clean and healthful environment” by promoting the use of fossil fuels.

The court determined that a provision in the Montana Environmental Policy Act has harmed the state’s environment and the young plaintiffs, by preventing Montana from considering the climate impacts of energy projects. The provision is accordingly unconstitutional, the court said.

The win, experts say, could energize the environmental movement and reshape climate litigation across the country, ushering in a wave of cases aimed at advancing action on climate change.

“People around the world are watching this case,” said Michael Gerrard, the founder of Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

The ruling represents a rare victory for climate activists who have tried to use the courts to push back against government policies and industrial activities they say are harming the planet. In this case, it involved 16 young Montanans, ranging in age from 5 to 22, who brought the nation’s first constitutional and first youth-led climate lawsuit to go to trial.

Though the cumulative number of climate cases around the world has more than doubled in the last five years, youth-led lawsuits in the United States have faced an uphill battle. Already, at least 14 of these cases have been dismissed, according to a July report from the United Nations Environment Program and the Sabin Center. The report said about three-quarters of the approximately 2,200 ongoing or concluded cases were filed before courts in the United States.

Experts said the Montana youth had an advantage in the state’s constitution, which guarantees a right to a “clean and healthful environment.”

Coal is critical to the state’s economy, and Montana is home to the largest recoverable coal reserves in the country. The plaintiff’s attorneys say the state has never denied a permit for a fossil fuel project.

Across five days of emotional testimony in June, the youths made claims about injuries they have suffered as a result of climate change. A 15-year-old with asthma described himself as “a prisoner in my own home” when isolating with covid during a period of intense wildfire smoke. Rikki Held, the 22-year-old plaintiff for whom the lawsuit is named, detailed how extreme weather has hurt her family’s ranch.

Held testified that a favorable judgment would make her more hopeful for the future. “I know that climate change is a global issue, but Montana has to take responsibility for our part in that,” she said.

Attorneys for the state countered that Montana’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is small. If the law in question were altered or overturned, Montana Assistant Attorney General Michael Russell said, there would be “no meaningful impact or appreciable effect” on the climate.

The state began and rested its defense on the same day, bringing the trial to an unexpectedly early close on June 20. In a pivot from its expected defense disputing the climate science behind the plaintiffs’ case, the state focused instead on arguing that the legislature should weigh in on the contested law, not the judiciary.

Russell derided the case in his closing statement as a “week-long airing of political grievances that properly belong in the Legislature, not a court of law.”

Gerrard said the change in strategy came as a surprise: “Everyone expected them to put on a more vigorous defense,” he said. “And they may have concluded that the underlying science of climate change was so strong that they didn’t want to contest it.”

 

This should be a monumental victory, a watershed moment for, well, watersheds, and aquifers, and fossil fuels being sequestered, because the teenagers of today are going to have to deal with the record storms, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and heat waves of tomorrow. We've sentenced them to trying to survive triple digit temperatures six months out of the year and huge floods for the other six, just so we can drive to the mall in our Yukon Denalis.

Instead I expect this case to go to SCOTUS and in a few years we'll get a 6-3 case overturning any right for people to sue over climate change in any capacity.

It is an important win.

It'll go up in smoke anyway, just like everything else around here.

 

 

Orange Meltdown, Con't

After being admonished by US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan over his social media threats on Friday, Donald Trump has learned precisely nothing and made more threats late Sunday night.

 

Former President Donald Trump launched a post-midnight attack Monday on the judge handling the case charging him with seeking to steal the 2020 election, despite a warning from the court late last week against "inflammatory statements."

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan "obviously wants me behind bars. VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!" Trump said in a Truth Social post just after 1 a.m.

Trump, who also protested an expected indictment in Atlanta in statements over the weekend, cited Chutkan's comments during the sentencing of a person convicted for participating in the insurrection attempt of Jan. 6, 2021.

Noting that the people who mobbed the Capitol that day wore caps and carried flags with the name of one man, Trump, Chutkan said in October 2022: "It's blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”

Chutkan, who has been assigned the case that accuses Trump of conspiring to steal the 2020 election from President Joe Biden, issued a protective order Friday restricting what Trump can say publicly about the evidence against him.

The federal judge is known for imposing stiff sentences on the individuals who participated in the Capitol riot, but veteran federal court watchers told USA TODAY that she is a consummate professional who will handle a sensitive case with the utmost care.

 

Trump seems to think he's going to win this fight, turning up the heat until Chutkan is forced to act and to make him a martyr before the trial can even start, something he figures will help him on appeal if nothing else. It's a calculated move, with Trump's calculations strongly favoring the fact that he's never really been dealt any consequences for his long career of criminal nonsense.

So far, Trump's been right.

We'll see.

 

RFK Is A Fitting Sobriquet

I still think RFK stands for Rat Fuc Ker, as the guy is running as a Republican and has been since the start.

 

Democratic presidential hopeful and known anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Sunday that he would support a national ban on abortion after the first three months of pregnancy if elected, only to walk back the stance hours later alleging he “misunderstood” repeated questions from NBC News on the topic.

“Mr. Kennedy misunderstood a question posed to him by an NBC reporter in a crowded, noisy exhibit hall at the Iowa State Fair,” a spokesperson said, clarifying the candidate’s stance on abortion as “always” being the woman’s right to choose. Kennedy "does not support legislation banning abortion,” the spokesman added.

But Sunday morning, Kennedy was much more specific, telling NBC: “I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life.” Pressed on whether that meant signing a federal ban at 15 or 21 weeks, he said yes.

“Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child,” he continued, adding “I’m for medical freedom. Individuals are able to make their own choices.”

The original stance put Kennedy — who’s mounting a controversial, long-shot bid to unseat President Joe Biden as the Democratic standard-bearer in 2024 — out of step with the majority of his party at a time when abortion access has been a sustained motivator for voters.

A leading conservative anti-abortion group, Susan B. Anthony List, praised Kennedy’s position in a statement, calling it “a stark contrast to the Democratic Party’s radical stance of abortion on demand. … Kennedy is one of the few prominent Democrats aligned with the consensus of the people today. Every candidate should be asked, ‘Where do you draw the line?’”

In the interview, Kennedy defended running as a Democrat, despite espousing multiple typically conservative talking points during the 15-minute appearance.

For instance, Kennedy said he would not have voted to support the Inflation Reduction Act, among the biggest Democratic policy wins of Biden’s first term. Asked about the hundreds of billions of dollars in investments to fight climate change in the legislation, Kennedy said: “They say that this is fighting climate change; it’s actually doing the opposite.”

Kennedy steeply trails Biden in the polls and has been dogged by controversy in his few months as a candidate, including his having spread repeated disinformation about the efficacy of vaccinations and deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well antisemitic remarks.  

 

There's really not a choice here between Biden and RFK Jr. here, one is the 46th President of the United States from the Democratic Party, and the other is you bog-standard Republican. He's running to hurt Biden, period.

 

Don't fall for it.