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“Montana is violating the rights of young people with policies that prohibit the state from considering climate change effects when it reviews coal mining, natural gas extraction and other fossil fuel projects, a state judge said Monday…
“The 16 plaintiffs sued Montana in 2020, when they were ages 2 to 18, claiming the state's permitting of projects like coal and natural gas production exacerbated the climate crisis, despite a 1972 amendment to the Montana constitution requiring the state to protect and improve the environment.” Reuters
The right is critical of the ruling, arguing that Montana’s emissions cannot be linked to tangible harms alleged by the plaintiffs.
“Even if the entire world stopped emitting all carbon tomorrow, the climate would still get warmer for decades. But the world isn’t going to stop emitting carbon tomorrow. Nor will it even cut carbon in half by 2030. China is adding two coal power plants a week, and it already emits almost 12 billion metric tons of carbon a year, double the United States’s 5.6 billion. The U.S. emits just 14% of the world’s carbon and Montana makes up less than 1% of that total…
“But while decarbonizing Montana overnight would do nothing to affect the climate, it would devastate Montana’s economy. Montana has 5,000 gas wells, 4,000 oil wells, four oil refineries, and six coal mines. All these businesses and their employees would be out of work and every Montanan that relied on the energy from them would see their energy costs rise…
“The reality is that Montana is doing just fine without leftist judges trying to halt infrastructure projects. Under the law that the judge wants to overturn, Montana generates 53% of its electricity from renewables, which places the state 10th best in the nation.”
Editorial Board, Washington Examiner
“A plaintiff named Georgi lamented that her ‘ability to compete and participate in Nordic skiing has been directly impacted by climate disruption,’ the complaint notes. Who knew there was a right to a snowy winter in Montana law? Climatologist Judith Curry, in an analysis filed on the behalf of the state, points out that most of the past seven years have ‘shown normal to above normal spring snowpack across Montana.’…
“The filings are depressing reading for another reason, as adults have terrified children for political gain. Hey, Johnnie, all your stuffed animals are heading for extinction unless we ban oil and gas drilling that employs your father. ‘Mica’s favorite animal is the pika; however, as the number of pikas continues to decline,’ the suit says, it will be difficult ‘for Mica to see or hear pikas while recreating outdoors.’…
“Another plaintiff claimed ‘bouts of depression’ about the climate and feeling ‘heartbroken and desperate.’ These young people ought to sue the adults who have misled them about climate apocalypse.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“The global share of CO2 emissions produced by the state of Montana is equivalent to 0.00084% of the global CO2 emissions. If this share has stayed constant then Montana is presumably responsible for 0.000009°C of the 1.1°C of warming since 1880. At this scale, the ‘climate impacts’ supposedly caused by the emissions of the state of Montana, are below detection limits.”
Matthew Wielicki, Substack
The left is generally supportive of the ruling, arguing that failing to reduce emissions harms both people and the environment.
The left is generally supportive of the ruling, arguing that failing to reduce emissions harms both people and the environment.
“The state’s constitution says that all Montanans have ‘certain inalienable rights,’ including ‘the right to a clean and healthful environment,’ and that ‘the state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.’ Yet a provision in the Montana Environmental Policy Act, as summarized by [Judge Kathy] Seeley, ‘forbids the State and its agents from considering the impacts of … emissions in their environmental reviews.’…
“Not mincing words, the court found that ‘catastrophic harms … will worsen if the State continues ignoring GHG emissions and climate change’ — especially since renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are cheaper, more efficient and widely available… ‘Children born in 2020 will experience a two to sevenfold increase in extreme events, particularly heatwaves, compared with people born in 1960,’ she noted.”
Michael B. Gerrard, MSNBC
“Montana is the country’s fifth-largest coal producer; the state also has significant oil and gas deposits. Judge Seeley provided an exhaustive list of the ways Montana injures its residents and the environment through its permitting of ‘fossil fuel energy projects.’… ‘What we have is a definitive ruling from a judge accepting the core arguments of climate scientists—and that is something that has never happened before,’ says Noah Sachs, director of the Merhige Center for Environmental Studies.”
Gabrielle Gurley, American Prospect
Some caution, “What the ruling means on a practical level is hazy at best. It won’t compel Montana to adopt its version of a Green New Deal, as state leaders had warned, or even change energy policy much at all…
“The ruling also won’t usher in a new era of legal action against fossil-fuel companies for polluting the atmosphere. Plenty of those are already grinding through the courts. Ironically, in many of those cases, unlike the Montana legislature, everybody admits climate change is real and man-made — even the fossil-fuel companies. The fights in those cases are mainly about what legal liability those companies have…
“What the Montana ruling will do is add to the growing consensus that the runaway emission of greenhouse gases is warming the planet, throwing the climate into chaos and threatening the well-being of current and future generations. It could at least force Montana’s legislature to stop pretending climate change isn’t happening. It might delay that natural-gas plant a bit… It’s a win for climate activists, but a small one.”
Mark Gongloff, Bloomberg
A libertarian's take
“The connection between CO2 emissions and wildfires is tenuous at best. Bjorn Lomborg used data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to show that the total land area of the world burned by wildfires has trended downward in recent years. Roger Pielke, Jr. examined the treatment of wildfires in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—he concluded that the IPCC ‘has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human‐caused climate change.’…
“Personally, I suffered acute illness from the wildfire smoke that covered the Washington, DC area for several days this summer. I can vouch for the unpleasantness of inhaling wildfire smoke and the health impacts. However, an objective look at the data does not reveal a link between CO2 emissions and wildfires, certainly not the causal link needed in a court setting.”
Travis Fisher, Cato Institute
