Essay by Eric Worrall
A lawsuit to make climate action a constitutional right; A group of young plaintiffs included By James Hansen niece is shocked that Biden is protesting their effort to make climate action a binding requirement for the US government.
Biden is aiming to drop a historic lawsuit on climate change
VIAJULIA ROCK
Juliana v USA is a historic climate change lawsuit that establishes a constitutional right to a habitable planet. But the Biden administration has indicated it will fight closely to prevent the case from ever going to trial.
Any day now, a federal court is expected to issue a ruling allowing a historic climate change case to proceed to trial.
However, if and when the case does proceed, it runs into one major stumbling block: President Joe Biden’s Justice Department.
Lawsuit, Juliana v. USA, brought by 21 plaintiffs in 2015 and seeks to establish a federal constitutional right to a habitable planet. If the case is successful, any federal policy that allows for more fossil fuel development could be deemed unconstitutional.
But the Obama and Trump administrations are both vehemently opposed to the lawsuit, and now people familiar with the case say Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has said it will also use every procedural tool at its disposal to prevent the case from ever going to trial.
“I asked [them] very direct, if we win this case, and we can continue the case, are you going to go to trial? ” Julia Olson, attorney for the lead plaintiff, told us. “Their response has always been, ‘Our position is that the court has no jurisdiction and this case never went to trial.’
…
“There was no change when Biden took office, no change from the Trump administration,” Olson said.
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Read more: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/05/biden-climate-change-juliana-case-lawsuit-doj
We can only speculate why the Biden administration doesn’t want the plaintiffs to win.
My guess is that someone in the Biden administration knows the climate crisis is pointless. The Biden administration may talk about climate action, but in my opinion, Biden’s opposition to this lawsuit is proof that he has no real intention of reducing emissions.
Even Biden’s opposition to domestic oil production does nothing to really reduce emissions, all they do is make the lives of ordinary Americans more expensive. Foreign energy magnates got rich under Biden’s ultimate American energy policies, but total emissions remained the same.
Correction (EW): James Hansen, not James Hanson
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