Environmental groups file lawsuit over Trump climate actions
12 replies, posted
[QUOTE]Environmental groups that vowed to fight President Donald Trump's efforts to roll back his predecessor's plans to curb global warming made good on their promises Wednesday, teaming up with an American Indian tribe to ask a federal court to block an order that lifts restrictions on coal sales from federal lands.
The Interior Department last year placed a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands to review the climate change impacts of burning the fuel and whether taxpayers were getting a fair return. But Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive order that included lifting the moratorium, and also initiated a review of former President Barack Obama's signature plan to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Environmentalists say lifting the moratorium will worsen climate change and allow coal to be sold for unfairly low prices.
Environmental groups have been preparing for months to fight the Trump administration's environmental rollbacks, including by hiring more lawyers and raising money. Trump, who has called global warming a "hoax" invented by the Chinese, said during his campaign that he would kill Obama's climate plans and bring back coal jobs.
Advocates said they also will work to mobilize public opposition to the executive order, saying they expect a backlash from Americans who worry about climate change.
"This is not what most people elected Trump to do," said David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Poll after poll shows that the public supports climate action."
A poll released in September found 71 percent of Americans want the U.S. government to do something about global warming, including 6 percent who think the government should act even though they are not sure that climate change is happening. That poll, which also found most Americans are willing to pay a little more each month to fight global warming, was conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
While Republicans have blamed Obama-era environmental regulations for the loss of coal jobs, federal data show that U.S. mines have been losing jobs for decades because of automation and competition from natural gas; solar panels and wind turbines now can produce emissions-free electricity cheaper than burning coal.
Trump's order also will initiate a review of efforts to reduce methane emissions in oil and natural gas production, and will rescind Obama-era actions that addressed climate change and national security and efforts to prepare the country for the impacts of climate change. The administration still is deciding whether to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Environmentalists say Trump's actions will put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage to other countries that are embracing clean energy, which they say could create thousands of new jobs.
Even so, they believe efforts to revive coal ultimately will fail because many states and industries already have been switching to renewable energy or natural gas.[/QUOTE]
[URL="https://apnews.com/23000549831849e494b26b0b9d861b3e/Environmental-groups-file-lawsuit-over-Trump-climate-actions"]AP News[/URL]
Good, he's going to fucking ruin the US and this planet for future generations. It's criminally negligent.
Lock him up. He's a menace not just to the US or humanity, but to the whole damn world.
You know what would be cool?
If this actually did go to actual court, make the charge a crime against humanity, prove in a court of law that climate change is true (sorta like the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial for Evolution) and set a precedent that ignoring well-established science is a punishable offense when in public office.
[QUOTE=EcksDee;52031052]You know what would be cool?
If this actually did go to actual court, make the charge a crime against humanity, prove in a court of law that climate change is true (sorta like the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial for Evolution) and set a precedent that ignoring well-established science is a punishable offense when in public office.[/QUOTE]
that almost sounds too good to be what'll happen
[editline]30th March 2017[/editline]
and that's morbid
[QUOTE=Occlusion;52029464]Good, he's going to fucking ruin the US and this planet for future generations. It's criminally negligent.[/QUOTE]
You can't hold someone legally responsible for an outcome that hasn't occurred. Should we start giving out advanced sentences to people we think might be murderers in the future?
[QUOTE=EcksDee;52031052]You know what would be cool?
If this actually did go to actual court, make the charge a crime against humanity, prove in a court of law that climate change is true (sorta like the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial for Evolution) and set a precedent that ignoring well-established science is a punishable offense when in public office.[/QUOTE]
You do know that courts don't create law right? Congress would have to first add "Acting Against Climate Change" to the definition of "Crime Against Humanity".
[QUOTE=Silence I Kill You;52031866]
You do know that courts don't create law right? Congress would have to first add "Acting Against Climate Change" to the definition of "Crime Against Humanity".[/QUOTE]
Yea they don't create law, they intepret it in disputes. If the current law can be interpreted to include deliberately ignoring climate change in public office (which is directly responsible for many current climat anomalies around the world and will cause mass death and relocation of hundeds of millions of peopl) then it should damn well be so.
[QUOTE=EcksDee;52031888]Yea they don't create law, they intepret it in disputes. If the current law can be interpreted to include deliberately ignoring climate change in public office (which is directly responsible for many current climat anomalies around the world and will cause mass death and relocation of hundeds of millions of peopl) then it should damn well be so.[/QUOTE]
So you want the judicial branch to just "interpret" laws to include things they don't include? Then what's the point of congress?
[QUOTE=EcksDee;52031888]Yea they don't create law, they intepret it in disputes. If the current law can be interpreted to include deliberately ignoring climate change in public office (which is directly responsible for many current climat anomalies around the world and will cause mass death and relocation of hundeds of millions of peopl) then it should damn well be so.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I'm pretty sure you could interpret current law on Crimes Against Humanity simply by taking the end point of what runaway Climate Change shall wreak. Ignoring Climate change would just be a method.
[editline]30th March 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=Silence I Kill You;52031893]So you want the judicial branch to just "interpret" laws to include things they don't include? Then what's the point of congress?[/QUOTE]
The point is that crime against humanity is the end point/crime (mass suffering/death etc). All the courts would be doing is pointing out that "ignoring climate change" in the opinions of the experts (and we're pretty unanimous on this) is the means by which that will be achieved.
If you kill someone with an entirely new method of murder (hypothetically, you create a device which simple destroys someone down to a molecular level, leaving a cloud of carbon etc floating free), the courts don't need to re-interpret the law just because you used a new method. What you've done is still murder.
[QUOTE=Silence I Kill You;52031866]You can't hold someone legally responsible for an outcome that hasn't occurred. Should we start giving out advanced sentences to people we think might be murderers in the future?[/QUOTE]
tbh a lot of environmental damage is already being caused because of trumps actions
[QUOTE=Silence I Kill You;52031893]So you want the judicial branch to just "interpret" laws to include things they don't include? Then what's the point of congress?[/QUOTE]
they already do this though?
I mean thats exactly why i mentioned the kitzmiller vs dover trial. The judge in that case deemed that intelligent design in its current form should be included under the definition of religion and thus be subject to separation between church and state (in a nutshell)
thats no different from a judge theoretically deeming that acting to undermine climate change should be considered in some respect a crime against humanity, since a direct result of this is way, WAY more deaths and human suffering than anyone in Nuremberg got slapped on them.
[QUOTE=Silence I Kill You;52031866]You can't hold someone legally responsible for an outcome that hasn't occurred. Should we start giving out advanced sentences to people we think might be murderers in the future?[/QUOTE]
Why are people fined for speeding when they don't cause accidents then?
There are plenty of laws that hold people legally responsible for things they could have caused due to negligence, especially if they were aware of the risks.
[QUOTE=Silence I Kill You;52031893]Then what's the point of congress?[/QUOTE]
Good question, considering how useless they've been here lately at dealing with this problem (and many other problems too).
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