Judge rules in favor of Montana youths in landmark climate decision | Hacker News Reader

Judge rules in favor of Montana youths in landmark climate decision

washingtonpost.com

229 pointshebleb162 comments

I didn't realize how explicit the Montana state constitution was on this [1], which was rewritten in 1972:

Part IX. ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Section 1. Protection and improvement. (1) The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.

(2) The legislature shall provide for the administration and enforcement of this duty.

(3) The legislature shall provide adequate remedies for the protection of the environmental life support system from degradation and provide adequate remedies to prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources.

[1] https://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/title_0000/article_0090/part_00...

Back when conservatism was synonymous with being conservative wrt the environment. Such a different place today's conservatives are at.

FWIW, the democratic party was in power in Montana when this was written & passed. I guess for their part, republicans didn't get in the way.

I believe the word you're looking for is "conservationism". The definition of conservatism has not changed. In fact, the wikipedia article for conservation calls out the ambiguity, right at the top:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_movement

He was referring to the political right in the states. Historically speaking, in 70s/80s, even Nixon, passed laws for conserving the nature, protectionism and etc. At some point there was a switch into “nah, screw the environment” to align with the voter base.

to align with the *funding base

The voter base is led by the nose by the funding base. For both parties.

There wasn’t a switch. The Republican Party is still very much pro-conservationist. You are spewing talking points from their political enemies.

https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/republicans-deliver...

People seem to forget hunters and fishers are still the biggest funding source for conservationism and are almost overwhelmingly conservative voters. But no, the people who live deep in urban jungles have the audacity to call them “environment haters”.

Conservation to enable ongoing future exploitation. That's a very different brand of conservation.

There's a reason those same groups refuse to support policies that would stave off climate change: it would require less exploitation of natural resources, and thus there's no money in it.

I would consider myself pretty centrist, but I thought HN was a good place to get away from the thoughtless political vitriol that exists everywhere else. For a forum that's usually very well spoken, it's wild to see how quick people are to make claims about people and things they know nothing about. Political polarization really is going to destroy this country, damn.

Hmm. I looked for vitrol in the comment chain above you and found none. Perhaps you are the one bringing that attitude.

Ah apologies then, my knowledge of US politics is fairly surface based. I usually associate the oil and co. lobbyists with the conservative government, and they don’t have the best record in terms of natural conservation (I understand they do the same with the liberal side as well). I guess, that’s a bad habit.

This, exactly. Nixon created the EPA, after all. Now, that org is the incarnation of evil to the right.

Do you believe there is any justification for believing the EPA has gone far beyond the original intention for the agency created by Nixon?

Do you believe the EPA of today is the same EPA that was founded in those days?

or has the remit of the EPA like most federal agencies been expanded to the point of totalitarian control where by in many instances they are a detriment to their own stated goals, and certainly seen as no longer caring about balancing public liberty, property rights, or economic interests in their zealous often extremist pursuit of regulatory control over all aspects of anything remotely connected to their purview.

In short the EPA like most federal agencies routinely abuse their authority, invent new authority from thin air, and over all make the lives of every day people miserable who just want to build a home, a business or simply live their lives.

Relatively speaking, the EPA has pushed (in the wrong direction) the boundaries about 1,000,000x less than corporations have. We have PFAS everywhere (a recent HN article). Look at the list of superfund sites in the US. I think the EPA does far too little to protect us from cancer causing chemicals because politicians allow them to pollute. Fracking's 500 chemicals declared a proprietary:

https://www.aafp.org/about/policies/all/hydraulic-fracturing....

We know a lot more about cancer and what causes it compared to when the EPA was founded. Look at how little we do with that knowledge.

Well that is a prime example of what about ism. I think one can hold the position that the EPA has been both abusive to every day American's when the abuse their authority to prevent home owners from building on their land because there is a beetle some where in the area (yes that is hyperbolic) while at the same time playing liability shield for large corporations that are harming these same home owners.

Yelling at the clouds saying "but what about the corporations" does nothing to refute my original statement

I completely disagree that the EPA has been abusive. Proof??

Your comment is a prime example of cherry picking.

I gave you concrete examples (fracking), so that you said I was "yelling at the clouds" speaks to your bias.

How about their massive revision of what "Navigable Waters" is

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/25/1178150234/supreme-court-epa-...

I think it’s more likely the case that the voter base behaviour has been rather successfully aligned with corporate interests.

(The state and) each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.

What is the _duty_ of each Montanan to improve the environment? What is the limit of a state in passing laws requiring action to enforce such duty?

This is the important question. The constitution is very vague on this, how would it be enforced? You might as well invoke the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and ask the courts to rule on this. I am not sure this ruling will withstand scrutiny. (my other comment in this story)

This isn't something impossible to do. It's something that builds over time with precedence with cases like this. Just because the law isn't 100% explicit about everything that is or isn't allowed doesn't mean it's a bad law or too vague. Being vague is a feature, because who knows how things will change tomorrow or next year or in a decade. The spirit of the law is explicit, everything else needs to be decided by voters and the justice system as the law is tested over time.

I swear, all I see is people throwing up their hands and saying "but it'd never work!" It's worked repeatedly, or nobody would've ever bothered with a constitution.

It'd be hard to pass a law that requires individual environmental improvement, but it seems pretty obvious that a law saying to ignore it is the opposite of the state constitution.

I post this a lot but it's a relevant but super long read/listen - Piketty at the end of a 45 hour long audiobook (Capital and Ideology with additional web resources - charts and data) concludes we cannot change our course ala the climate/economics without changing the national constitutions of all countries to incorporate some language like this to protect future generations from the current one, current property owners have more say than voters (amending many national constitutions is pretty rare short of widespread civil unrest) because of this basic issue.

Yes, this is fairly obvious. The question is whether or not it will happen on a scale large enough to make a difference. These things are global in nature and you can't really solve global problems with local solutions, though you can create global problems with local activities. The level of coordination required is massive otherwise the hold-outs will be able to reap the advantages of not playing nice.

Lots of humans die every year, and lots age into voting globally, in various forms of government. Electorate turnover is inevitable. It won’t happen overnight, constant force will be required. Success is not assured, but the effort is probably better than “smoke if you’ve got ‘em.” Collectively, we keep going until we can’t.

You don’t have to get to the goal, only to tipping points that lock in the desired outcome.

Probably not. See Latin America: most governments recently elected are against environment preservation efforts, and most people seems very happy with their suicidal plans.

For example, in Costa Rica the government is reactivating bottom trawling (which apart from destroying ecosystems also releases a lot of CO2), looking to extract natural gas, canceled the electric train plans, increased the maximum lifespan of busses even more (so, more polluting decades old units for population)...

Sounds more like corporate-fueld corruption than "people seeming happy with suicidal plans".

What's crazy to me is how common this line of thinking was from way back. Thomas Jefferson was borderline obsessed with basically this same concept. There's a really excellent letter from Jefferson to Madison from 1789 describing the importance of usufruct. [1]

My favorite chunk of this thing / the meat of the argument:

> I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, ‘that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living’: that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.

> ...

> For if [a man], during his own life, eat[s] up the usufruct of the lands for several generations to come, & then the lands would belong to the dead, & not to the living, which would be the reverse of our principle.

[1] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-024...

> I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident

Reminds me of another famous quote from Jefferson. I wonder if describing things as "self-evident" was a personal favorite idiom of his or if it was just a common phrase back then. It seems like a fairly common phrase to me now, but it's hard to know if that's only because Jefferson popularized it.

From Walter Isaacson’s "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life":

On June 21, after he had finished a draft and incorporated some changes from Adams, Jefferson had a copy delivered to Franklin, with a cover note far more polite than editors generally receive today. "Will Doctor Franklin be so good as to peruse it," he wrote, "and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?"

Franklin made only a few small changes, but one of them was resounding. Using heavy backslashes, he crossed out the last three words of Jefferson’s phrase, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" and changed it to read: "We hold these truths to be self-evident."

The concept of "self-evident" truths came less from Jefferson’s favored philosopher, Locke, than from the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of Franklin’s close friend David Hume. Hume had distinguished between "synthetic" truths that describe matters of fact (such as "London is bigger than Philadelphia" ) and "analytic" truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition. ("The angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees" or "All bachelors are unmarried." ) When he chose the word "sacred," Jefferson had suggested intentionally or unintentionally that the principle in question the equality of men and their endowment by their creator with inalienable rights was an assertion of religion. By changing it to "self-evident," Franklin made it an assertion of rationality.”

Interesting! I think nowadays, the common way I've heard the latter type of truth described is "axiomatic", but that's probably because it's one of those words that math/CS professors seem to love, and people in tech (like me) might have picked it up from them.

It is sad that this kind of language would never be approved in today’s political climate. The GOP passed some historic environmental bills in the past and today it is unthinkable that they would even consider it.

I think this law/provision was passed at a time before there was a clear notion of CO2 from burning fossil fuels being connected to climate change, and they were thinking about more traditional pollutants/harms like logging and drilling oil.

(In my opinion) This historic law/provision is not specific enough (or it does not create a novel enough kind of cause of action) for the climate change type of problem, to be enforceable as it gets tested up the judicial chain. (see my other comment in this story)

The connection between atmospheric CO2 and warming was actually identified as early as around the year 1900.

I wasn't around then to have a sense of the broad social awareness of things, but I've gotten the impression that the science was fairly obvious before the 1970s.

To me it reads of the kind of Rachel Carson types of environmental damages that were getting much more attention at that time. (Acid rain, pollutants, runoff, etc)

If they had anticipated CO2 (and yes, I agree it was known by some well before this time), they should have / would have made it much more specific to include that kind of slow, "who is responsible" kind of harm.

I assume that the year 1900 "identification" you refer to is the work from Svante Arrhenius, which was later disproved.

https://www.climate-debate.com/forum/so-if-angstrom-already-...

If the law had been intended to apply to oil drilling and specific pollutants, it would have named them. Or at least named specific types of pollution. Instead it appears to have been deliberately written broadly to capture a wide variety of forms of environmental degradation, perhaps including some not discovered at the time of writing.

Except it literally was just tested.

Because the clear intention of the law is not what the courts are enforcing today. This is common in modern times where by original intent has no bearing to current "modern" interpretation of old laws.

Sadly our founders predicted this would happen in away, Jefferson famously wanted all laws even the constitution to have a sunset of 19 years, requiring them to be debated and passed a new every generation.

What is the clear intention of the law?

Clearly not the abstract "harms" asserted in the case, where by one plaintiff has a medical aliment that was acerbated by COVID and because of that MT did not due enough for climate change.

Also the case was largely about individual "extreme weather" events that have no clear, direct link to MT pollution, and there is zero evidence to suggest that should MT suspend all their pollution today, right now, it would change anything for these young people.

The clear intention of the law was to preserve the land from direct, articulable harm such as chemical dumping, clear cut mining, deforestation, etc etc etc

Where does it specify what you claim?

> The legislature shall provide adequate remedies for the protection of the environmental life support system from degradation and provide adequate remedies to prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources.

https://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/Constitution/IX/1.htm#

Where does that sentence specify the legislature shall ignore indirect or shared harms?

The defendant declared Montana air unhealthy or very unhealthy every year since 2020 or before. And people with medical ailments are part of current and future generations.

Was the clear intention of the law to allow dumping DDT into a river contaminated outside Montana?

An author of the constitutional article was a witness. The judge cited the constitutional convention transcripts also. Did you read them?

> Clearly not the abstract "harms" asserted in the case

...

> The clear intention of the law was to preserve the land from direct, articulable harm such as chemical dumping, clear cut mining, deforestation, etc etc etc

I've read the Montana constitution and read up on the case. The points above are not clear to me. Is there something else your looking at that makes it clear to you?

I am very interested to see how this may play out and whether it gets upheld (note this is just a district judge writing a single ruling). Or whether the remedy is either toothless, or unenforceable.

Because the major barrier I see is, with the climate change problem in general, no one is able to concretely and incrementally connect someone's (tiny) polluting action to actual harm to someone far down the line. (for legal liability purposes -- not saying the link doesn't exist in scientific proof)

Let me phrase it this way. For someone to have an actionable legal cause, doesn't it require that the person/entity causing some claimed harm have a particularized, concrete, connected relationship to the harm? And that their cessation of the claimed causative action would remedy the issue? <--- this is the important thing

The kids claim that <xyz> climate detrimental action is causing them harm. In most cases (some gas guzzling vehicle, coal burning plant) etc. the thing they claim is harming them, even if it were to be completely shut down, would not solve the climate problem. They would still be experiencing the harm.

So how would a law be enforceable if anyone could be sued for something that minutely adds to climate change, and their stopping their activity would produce no measurable effect on the claimant's outcome? Heck, the kids' own existence could be said to be linked to climate change.

Or, how about this -- wind farms could be sued for minutely adding to the environment / climate change problem. Or big box retail stores for causing traffic and wasteful packaging. The list could go on and on. We have opened a can of worms like if you said that denial of "the pursuit of happiness" is something that people can sue over.

What legal principle is being promulgated here? I suspect this will be subject to significant review if more cases accumulate.

> how would a law be enforceable if anyone could be sued for something that minutely adds to climate change, and their stopping their activity would produce no measurable effect on the claimant's outcome?

There is a remoteness doctrine that it can’t be so remote as to minutely add to a harm. And so this would limit claims to only large emitters, and then there would be a measurable impact on the outcome.

> detailed how extreme weather has hurt her family’s ranch.

Animal agriculture is also a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, dead zones, and habitat loss. Her family's ranch my not align with her fight against climate change.

very complicated issue as animal grazing also has tremendous environmental benefits

Can you provide some additional citations on this?

https://today.tamu.edu/2021/08/10/grazing-cattle-can-reduce-...

where I'm from the drive them down the highway on horseback and load them up on trains and drive them to the slaughterhouse. the land is kept similar to when however many thousands of bison roamed on it. as opposed to the nearby cities whose parks are overgrown with invasive brush or trimmed with petrol tractors.

Wild animal grazing where we're not killing them and breeding more every year has tremendous environmental benefits. Killing them and eating them is not compatible with the environmental benefits of grazing:

>Small numbers of grazers may be consistent with healthy ecosystems and have minimal greenhouse gas impact, but only if their populations stay within ecologically defined limits.

https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-ran...

Taking as a given that we've eliminated 99% of natural predators, there's nothing inherently ecologically wrong with humans eating cattle instead of wolves eating bison.

I believe the distinction here is scale. The rate at which natural predators killed bison is only a small fraction of the rate that cattle are killed for food.

If human livestock consumption were closely matched to natural grazer consumption, essentially acting as a 1:1 replacement, this argument makes more sense. I don’t think that’s been true for at least a century at this point though.

I agree with this, I was disagreeing with the broad complaint in the OP

> Killing them and eating them is not compatible with the environmental benefits of grazing

which does not attempt to qualify the disagreement at all.

Citation needed. A quick Google search says the US has about 90 million heads of cattle, while the peak population of wild bison was 60 million and of wild deer was 40 million. That seems pretty close.

>That seems pretty close.

You're wildly off in your calculations because you've failed to account for replacement rate. It's 90 million heads of cattle with 30 million killed each year.

https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/rx913p...

How many wild bison/deer/elk got killed each year? Right now it seems about 2/3 of fawns die, most of them eaten by predators: https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.21...

I wonder if that number was higher before humans reduced the number of predators.

The number of grazers that are needed to maintain a prairie or plains ecosystem is far higher than most people assume, and vast spaces in the US are becoming forested because of lack of wildlands management.

OK, we need a lot of grazers. That still doesn't really help with the fact that 30 million bovines are killed and "restocked" on a yearly basis. If the argument is "we can keep eating meat at the current rate because we need a lot of grazers", I don't think it's a very good one. Whatever carbon sequestering benefits we were supposed to get are almost immediately invalidated. It's the same issue with trees - you don't realize the carbon sequestering benefits of planting trees until they've been alive along enough to offset the input carbon.

One win at a time. Better have cows and clean electricity than cows and coal energy (article says Montana has the largest coal deposit and always granted mining applications).

This would come under the doctrine of "unclean hands," where the plaintiff is also culpable in the matter they are suing for. I think it would be an affirmative defense the defendant would have had to plead before trial, so they've forfeited it, IMO.

Source: I play a lawyer on TV.

This is the kind of thing that is inspiring to young people.

Not watching a couple of billionaires experience weightlessness for a few minutes.

Why does it need to be either/or? Some youths might be inspired by watching non-astronauts in space, some may be inspired by this climate activism. Others may be inspired by watching re-runs of Futurama. The important thing is the inspiration, not what triggers it.

The important thing is what it inspires.

And some are inspired by that NPC trend on tiktok. There's definitely a difference in kind between sources of inspiration.

My experience is young people are rarely inspired by news stories.

Of all news stories, the ones involving court cases are the least inspiring.

This isn’t about a disadvantaged person overcoming adversity. It’s a bunch of suits sitting on a room.

You might surprised how a good teacher could inspire hope in teenagers over this, contrary to all the other signals that indicate doom and gloom in their futures. Global warming was already weighing on me in my teens when I'm in my 30s now. It's a much more visible issue now.

A good teacher can make soup exciting. Catching interest is 90% of teaching.

I’m in my 40s, and for a good chunk of my childhood overpopulation and resource scarcity were big fears.

It took me a like time to accept the global warming consensus, because that’s what happens when experts cry wolf.

This looks like an interesting case, but also very specific to Montana.

Myexperience is the opposite. Both my memory and my observation

Why would future price increases for all your goods be inspiring for young people? That's what you're going to end up with when you increase costs. People don't choose fossil fuels just because, they're chosen largely for economic reasons.

“Won’t someone think of the costs!”

You know prices would be even lower if we let all our rivers and groundwater be polluted, right? Led piping was cheaper than alternatives too.

Perhaps lower prices is not the all-important end you assume it to be?

Much easier to ignore the externalities if you know you will be dead by the time the bill comes due. Until them, more widgets for me!

If including economic externalities in the price makes goods more expensive, so be it. It's how things should be done.

Lower prices themselves have a price.

You could steal everything for free, why don't you?

Carbon externalities not being reflected in the price of a good is a bug, not a feature.

It’s a market failure that needs to be rectified.

Sure, and it will come at the expense of your economy. Eg would the ranch mentioned in the article be able to survive if it had to account for this?

What will people's reactions be when you double the price of their food or gasoline?

I'd wager one of the reasons why America's economy does so well compared to Europe's is the much cheaper access to energy. For example, Lithuania pays twice the price for gasoline and almost 3 times the price for electricity, meanwhile income in Lithuania is less than half of US incomes.

People take a good economy for granted and are willing to trade it for many things. But then when the trade actually happens they will blame everyone else for the misery that results from it (eg "living wage" people).

Why are you so eager to live at the cost of earth's future? Even if food prices were to double (I don't see why it would, unless you measure it only by specific high-impact products such as authentic lamb) to transition away from the destruction of the habitat we depend on (planet A), that seems like a better option than continuing on a path to reversal of what we've achieved in the last century (from 60% in extreme poverty to 10%, despite going from 2 to 8 billion inhabitants)

I understand change is scary, or maybe you've done a lot of environmental harm in the past and don't want to acknowledge that. Either way, I would suggest to look at the options for the future and see that we have good alternatives for most things already. Change doesn't have to be scary and I only care what people do after having had a chance to learn what impact their choices have

> maybe you've done a lot of environmental harm in the past and don't want to acknowledge that.

Very unhelpful

Personal attacks like this make things harder for everybody

We must be kind, to make things better

Because it’s extremely, EXTREMELY difficult to map Montana’s carbon emissions (mind you, one of the least populated states in the country) to actual real impact on climate change in the future.

Environmentalism used to be about direct impact - contaminating waterways and the like. Moving to these more esoteric issues makes measuring and showing impact near impossible, and also makes people care less.

Because I live in a country like Lithuania. I know what basic things being too expensive to afford is like. I also know that whatever Americans adopt they push it onto the rest of the world.

>Change doesn't have to be scary and I only care what people do after having had a chance to learn what impact their choices have

Change is scary when you're talking about increasing living costs by a large amount. Meanwhile Americans still don't have a substantial excise tax on gasoline to discourage its use.

> I also know that whatever Americans adopt they push it onto the rest of the world.

I don't know if that's supposed to be about me, but I'm not from "murica". You and I are nearly neighbors, only separated by Poland. But I'm not proud of my country either: I vote for what I think will help us get better, but about 70% votes for a "let it burn" party

> Meanwhile Americans still don't have a substantial excise tax on gasoline to discourage its use.

Although we at least have some tax on some of the fuels (kerosine being a notable omission), ours is also not about discouragement, as far as I know. Fuel prices are dominated by market effects, not by discouragement, and evidently the high market price is not sufficient to make the difference that would be needed.

Maybe it's similar to movie/software piracy: not a pricing problem but a service problem (as Gabe Newell said). Having realistic alternatives rather than prohibitive pricing

Because many of us understand human history, and understand that we humans will resolve this by technological advancement often at the time the need arises.

Using government to artificially inflate prices on what you perceive to be a problem rarely results in good outcomes for anyone and even rarer does it actually resolve the problem it was claimed to solve

More often the new regulations will be abused to profit a few, and hold back actual technological progress for decades (see Ethanol as an example)

For my entire long long long life, people have been predicting the end of the world as we know it, always 10 years off before we are all dead. having lived many decades now, hearing these 10 year predictions often, and seeing them never come well color me unamused, and unmoved by this latest call to action.

Instead i choose to believe we will over come the challenges in the future has we have the ones from the past. With technological advancement, and market economics. Not government

> Using government to artificially inflate prices on what you perceive to be a problem

Literally the opposite of what I said

> For my entire long long long life, people have been predicting the end of the world

I never claimed that either, but at least this time I didn't say the opposite. Some people seem to think it's an extinction threat, but personally I expect civilisation to continue, even if half of us starve and we reduce to a much smaller population while dealing with the fallout and having to rebuild. You may want to look into the consequences of global warming before judging whether it's similar to the end of the Mayan calendar or whatever end of the world events you're talking about

> what you perceive to be a problem

If you still think we aren't causing climate change, I'm not sure there's a point talking about it. Can't help people that don't do logic

>>If you still think we aren't causing climate change, I'm not sure there's a point talking about it.

literally not what I said... or even implied

>>similar to the end of the Mayan calendar or whatever end of the world events you're talking about

I am talking about world ending predictions in the realm of climate change... There have been many, and continue to be many that if we do not "act now" it will be "too late" these claims have been persistent since the 70's at least yet very few of those predictions have come true and then it is explained away with "well in the next decade we will be correct this time"... trust us we are "The Experts™©"

Climate activist are the living embodiment of the Boy who cried wolf parable

> world ending predictions in the realm of climate change... There have been many, and continue to be many that if we do not "act now" it will be "too late" these claims have been persistent since the 70's at least

Could you be any more specific?

Like you I also believe that the only way to get companies to listen is through money, not idealism, so by making renewables cheaper than fossil fuels (which thankfully is currently happening), companies will naturally use them over fossil fuels.

This is true, but will those companies actually stay in a place like Montana or would they just go... elsewhere? Rural areas aren't the most attractive places for business.

If you can have such laws and judgements, why couldn't other places?

As more and more places outlaw bad practices, one could subsequently argue, it becomes increasingly lucrative to facilitate cheap fossil fuel usage. But look at how easy it is to do international trade with Russia before and after 2022: we can choose our partners and, while we can't force them, we can stop business from moving there, solving the problem for the vast majority of people's supplies and thus emissions.

Believing that a majority of others aren't as benevolent as oneself is the only bar to that being possible. Took me a bit to find it again, but I think the technical term for this is worst-motive fallacy: "participants significantly expected the [other] to pursue a worse course of action than they would prefer themselves" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620954492

>If you can have such laws and judgements, why couldn't other places?

Of course you can, but the playing field isn't level to begin with. Over the past century we've seen an increasing amount of urbanization happen. This causes issues such as constantly increasing housing prices, which make it into a good investment, which leads to more increases in housing prices. If you remove the reason for businesses to be in Montana, then some of them just won't be in Montana. They'll go where every other business is congregating to, because why wouldn't they?

Just look at the economic outcomes of "coal country". What you'll see is poverty. Climate action is important, but I have serious doubts on whether the people involved understand the kind of economic impact these decisions can have on the future of their state/city. Maybe they're rich enough that it won't affect them, but it's going to affect many.

You could say that "Oh, people will account for this and make sure that the poor people aren't affected," but then you look at eastern and western Kentucky. When the coal mines stopped hiring as many, the towns started dying out. What's left behind is poverty (by US standards).

I do think more needs to be done to stop climate change, but I would like to see people at least acknowledge the impacts it's going to have as a start.

I don't know the specifics of US coal mine history so I can't comment on most of this, but looking at the broader, long-term picture:

> What's left behind is poverty (by US standards).

I'm afraid that climate change, at least if we would all apply US levels of action, would result in non-US levels of poverty for all but the wealthiest few. Depending also on how heavy-handed/inhumane one wants to be towards displaced immigrants from places that become mostly inhospitable or below sea level (most people worldwide live in coastal regions)

Though if we keep extracting fossil fuels at the same rate, while electric cars lead to less demand for them, the price of fossil fuels will go down. Then people (corporations) will buy cheap fossil fuel for other stuff (now cruise tickets got even cheaper because electric cars lead to less demand for oil! When it gets really cheap you can heat your outdoor pool in January off a diesel generator.)

Of course, when the price of oil starts dropping, they'll have to extract at a faster rate to keep profits up.

Burn tomorrow for cake today

Priceless

There's a very old phrase to describe what you're espousing: penny-wise pound-foolish.

> 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.

The attorneys for the state apparently did not dispute any of the provided science (which scope I don't know). What I find interesting is, why? Do they accept it? Or did they choose not to to avoid political blowback from challenging the science in court?

Any time an activist organization presents evidence that the state doesn't contest I assume the whole case was set up by activists and the lawyers on both sides have an outcome that they both want but that democratic processes like election and debate won't create.

AFAICT without being an expert:

1. The state constitution says it's got to provide a clean environment

https://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/Constitution/IX/1.htm (so short I won't provide a quote)

2. The Montana Environmental Policy Act in Montana has some exceptions written into it and in subsequent revisions

https://leg.mt.gov/content/Publications/Environmental/2021-m...

3. One of these exceptions is that it limits the scope of environmental review for some energy projects (Cmd-F "energy" in above link)

4. I didn't read the case docs so I don't know which particular limit or if something else was it violated the constitutional thing but something did according to the court.

I don't know what the things are that the folks are fighting against, but if it is one of those "everything must be environmentally reviewed" things that's used to stop windmills and nuclear plants from being built, then I'm on the other side of the kids. The article is that it's over fossil fuels, which sounds like the right target, but if someone else has details then please do share.

>> things that's used to stop windmills

Why do you hate whales and birds? The environmental impact if windmills are pretty large

>The article is that it's over fossil fuels, which sounds like the right target,

MT has the largest coal reserves. Pretty sure that is target. The problem here like most of these things is the unintended consequences of these policies. Often they are only concerned with stopping the thing they believe is evil with no workable solutions as to what will replace it at all level, either from the energy demand stand point, economic fall out to the local economy, or the various other problems that some with regulatory change instead of market driven or natural change.

Well, birds poop on me, so that's a good reason. It's war with those bastards.

If a windmill can chop up whales the freaking largest mammal on the planet, I wouldn't dare stand in its way. Let us submit to our windmill overlords forthwith.

Sound... not chop up. The sound is the problem

Got it. So then you agree that we should start by banning luxury yachts, cruise ships, and fishing fleets? And then on to cutting offshore oil and gas drilling, or at least putting extremely strict sound limits on it.

Energy is crucial to our civilization, so cutting energy generation should be last on the list of priorities. If you really care about helping the whales, I'd suggest starting somewhere else first. Write your Congressperson to sponsor a bill eliminating all super yachts right now.

> The environmental impact if windmills are pretty large.

Do you have any citation for this? Any source that hasn't been debunked thoroughly? Has anyone not currently under multiple indictments for fraud ever suggested this in a serious way?

Is Michael Shellenberger currently under "multiple indictments for fraud" please cite those...

I don't know who that is. Presumably someone you are using as an example of someone who seriously suggests that we should burn more coal to prevent windmills, possibly by some argument about windmills killing birds and whales... an argument that ignores all the birds, whales, humans, and other animals killed by coal.

>I don't know who that is.

Nuclear Energy Advocate / Activist and author... Also has a new Documentary coming out about Wales and Wind.

>Presumably someone you are using as an example of someone who seriously suggests that we should burn more coal

Unlikely, he supports Nuclear as the resolution for Fossil Fuels.

First, Shellenberger is not a scientist of any sort. He has a degree in Peace and Global Studies and another in Anthropology. Reading his writing, it's abundantly clear he doesn't understand the science he's writing about (as a hot tip for life: anyone claiming to have a tidy solution to highly complex and uncertain problems is both: probably wrong, and probably selling you something)

Like "Intelligent Design" practitioners, Shellenberger's work is not science. He starts with his conclusion in mind, and cherry-picks supporting evidence for it. And many of the things he cherry-picks are clearly in bad-faith and deliberately misleading. One such example, in his book "Apocalypse Never", he argues that climate change has no impact on fires, stating: "As for the Amazon, The New York Times reported, correctly, that the ‘fires were not caused by climate change.’" He cites this NYTimes article: [1] The entire point of the paragraph he snipped this quote from was the exact opposite. Here's the full quote:

> These fires were not caused by climate change. They were, by and large, set by humans. However, climate change can make fires worse. Fires can burn hotter and spread more quickly under warmer and drier conditions.

He's also just dead wrong about many things in this book. One easy example, he claims that "climate change so far has not resulted in increases in the frequency or intensity of many types of extreme weather". This is comically misinformed. There are countless peer-reviewed studies demonstrating the causal relationship. [2] [3] [4]

Shellenberger has a bad habit of either misunderstanding or purposefully misrepresents actual working scientists, while weirdly masquerading as if he is equally qualified. [5]

Is this criminal fraud? No. But Shellenberger seems like a grifter, selling the Breitbart crowd contrarian takes that they want to hear.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/world/americas/amazon-fir...

[2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1920849117

[3] https://journals.ametsoc.org/bams/article/101/3/E303/345043/...

[4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-no...

[5] https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/article-by-michael-sh...

A statute can't generally over-rule or limit a constitutional provision, though. Statutes generally expand upon rights given in constitutions.

“There are political decisions being made without regard to the best scientific evidence and the effects they will have on our youngest generations,”

Yes, there are, indeed.

If you’re implying what I think you’re implying, I agree.

> 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.

Of course many laws in many jurisdictions, nationally and internationally, need to be altered to have a meaningful impact. Just like many votes need to be altered to change the outcome of an election.

That's not an argument to leave all these climate affecting laws unaltered. Just like we want every single vote to be counted.

Hopefully some of them will stay and work in Montana and not leave for greener pastures. It would be a shame and unbecoming if they don't follow through on their promise.

Many left-wing movements around the world are becoming increasingly litigious. Due to the failure of mass-mobilization and the realization that laws often favor them.

This is how it begins!!

> 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.

Wait until the State starts making changes to make this true. I am glad the youth won... but they only won the battle. The greedy capitalists will win the war by getting people in office to change everything they need so that none of this matters.

I hope they don't use tractors or any other fossil fuel vehicles. They should be mandated by the judge to reap the land by hand.

Unpopular opinion, really strong judicial review like this (1 judge is able to strike down whatever law the legislature of Congress passes based on vague criteria) is basically incompatible with democracy. At a minimum it should take a supermajority of a panel of judges to find a law 'unconstitutional'. It grants absolutely vast, arbitrary power to 1 single official because they happened to have attended law school. The system of government where 1 person has this much power but they don't have a JD is usually called a 'dictatorship!'

And if your response is- well I like this particular judge's ruling so it's OK, I would remind you that a different judge could come up with an equally stretched right-wing ruling. After all, a state could pass an anti-carbon pollution law only for 1 judge to arbitrarily decide that that somehow violates the constitution, or something. Right-wing judges have struck down gun control laws, campaign financing ones like Citizens United, anti-corruption laws.... the list goes on and on.

Strong judicial review is arbitrary and capricious

> At a minimum it should take a supermajority of a panel of judges to find a law 'unconstitutional'.

Legal or moral correctness, is not usually limited to a single judicial decision. When it is, it's remarkable enough that we learn about it early in schooling. Just because a Judge ruled to strike down a law, does not impact democracy in any way. It's a legal maneuver that will be challenged both in another legal arena and in the court of public opinion. These are the social frameworks that exist to protect against arbitrary bad actors and they matter, regardless if you think it's "OK" in isolation or not.

Everyone can agree that judges need some leeway in making decisions that are in the best public interest, regardless of the letter of the law...re: misspellings, grammar issues, ill-intent, etc. I happen to be a statist and think that the mere challenge to Federal Policy should not be discounted, because of futility. It's important to challenge governance from a distance, even today.

>It's a legal maneuver that will be challenged both in another legal arena and in the court of public opinion

It will not be meaningfully challenged in the court of public opinion, which is completely irrelevant to judicial decisions. If it'll be challenged in an appellate court.... why not limit decisions blocking the democratically elected legislature to a full appeals court of 15 judges, as opposed to just 1? One party can always find 1 extremely ideological 'judge' in East Texas to enjoin the entire country.

>These are the social frameworks that exist to protect against arbitrary bad actors and they matter.... Everyone can agree that judges need some leeway in making decisions that are in the best public interest

I do not agree, and you are not considering that the judges themselves may be making ideological policy decisions as opposed to 'the best public interest'. It may interest you to learn that several other developed countries do not have judicial review whatsoever- whatever the legislature passes is the law, full stop. (In Netherlands that's literally in their constitution!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty

Our court system is already constitutionally violatingly too slow (but we overlook it because who cares about the constitution nowadays) but yes lets change cases to have 15 judges that ought to be a workable solution. Or wait, we can have an appeals court (that normally has three judges hear an appeal) that though slow at least moves. I can't imagine if the courts were 15 times slower (because the judges were all on one case). I can't imagine every po-dunk jurisdiction that can barely justify 1 judge having 15.

> Our court system is already constitutionally violatingly too slow

Might be caused by this type of thinking:

> I can't imagine every po-dunk jurisdiction that can barely justify 1 judge having 15.

Perhaps funding the court system to properly meet your first point would ease your concerns there?

> It will not be meaningfully challenged in the court of public opinion, which is completely irrelevant to judicial decisions.

Dismissing public opinion because you do not see a direct mechanism to affect change, is a misunderstanding of the inherent social power of Democracy. It is not irrelevant at all. Democracy is about policy being affected by public opinion through representation. A mechanism that doesn't suit an agenda in the short term is not toothless, just less swift than someone who is raging against a perceived injustice.

The concepts surrounding judicial review is taught in US high schools consistently. Even in the smallest of schools the hand wavy basics are described as:

1. congress makes laws

2. judicial interprets laws

3. executive enacts laws

> I do not agree, and you are not considering that the judges themselves may be making ideological policy decisions as opposed to 'the best public interest'.

Let's just dispense with the 'gotcha' retorts. Ofc I consider this. Judges are people and they have values that tend to align with their communities. The pessimistic view that they should all be considered bad actors is at odds with reality, as I know it.

> It may interest you to learn that several other developed countries do not have judicial review whatsoever- whatever the legislature passes is the law, full stop. (In Netherlands that's literally in their constitution!)

There will always have to be interpretation. Language (be it English or Dutch) is imperfect. Worse, it gets less precise as ideas become referential. The US and Netherlands are never going to use identical legal frameworks. Wishing that things were different has no utility for any possible future. Only the breakup of the US into another set of social contracts will proceed a change of that magnitude.

I have a Master's in Comparative Politics. What you learned in high school is simplified and incorrect.

I (somewhat incredulously here) can't tell if you really believe that the judiciary only interprets laws, but no, that's wrong. In a country with strong judicial review, like the US or Germany, they can literally strike them down for being unconstitutional. Once that happens, both popular will and the legislature are irrelevant. Your 1st paragraph.... no idea what you're trying to say there.

Just as a quick example, banning flag burning has always been overwhelmingly popular with the electorate, and every single state plus the federal government used to have anti-flag burning laws on the books. The Supreme Court twice struck down such laws, which made the public and Congress enormously angry. And.... popular will is irrelevant. The Court has the final word on this and any other topic that you choose to take up. You could read

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Eichman

And in general I think it'd help to read up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_activism. But yes, the judiciary essentially makes the law all the time (for example, see qualified immunity- created from whole cloth by the Court), in addition to striking them down as they choose. They hold ultimate power in our system of government. I don't think your general understanding of what judicial review is is correct

And that is why we have a balance. The legislature can change the law to be more explicit if they don't like the judicial interpretation. Our system ONLY works if judges have this power.

Respectfully, all 3 of these sentences are wrong. We do not have a 'balance' presently- the judiciary gets the final word in every situation. Your second sentence is inexplicable- literally no matter what laws the legislature passes, the judiciary can strike them down as 'unconstitutional'. Which is a completely vague term with no real definition.

To answer your other response to me- the German judiciary works much faster with government actions, no reason the American one can't do the same. A lone judge could simply refer possible constitutional violations to the appellate court, which is totally free to issue an emergency declaration while it ponders the issue- courts do that every day

You keep saying the judciary gets the final word... but that's not right, no matter how often you repeat it. The judiciary gets the penultimate word. The constitution can be changed, there's an entire procedure for it, perhaps you should propose an amendment.

The US famously has the most difficult-to-alter constitution of any country. There's about 200 countries globally, political scientists generally agree we have the single most-difficult to change one. So sure, it's 'possible' in the same way that I could potentially make an NBA team, sure

Any of the changes you're wishing for and proposing require a change to the constitution though, or worse. Are you suggesting that we should just jump to a straight revolution/civil war rather than try the existing process or changing the wierd cult-like culture that exists around the constitution? How can you know that the same cultish behavior around what the constitution says won't stick around with something new?

The Supreme Court could at any time remove the ability of individual judges to issue a nationwide injunction against the federal government. Both Thomas and Sotomayor have made rumblings that they're considering it- it's the most nakedly partisan abuse of the judicial system today. More interestingly, Congress could- by the Constitution!- remove the jurisdiction of some courts to hear some cases. You can read more about jurisdiction stripping here- completely legal and as old as the republic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping

I used to wonder about that as well, but note that the ruling is based on democratically put-in-place legislation. If there weren't a solid basis, you take it to a higher court and get it overturned, or go to your representative and have a different law be democratically put in place

Judges apply laws, they don't cook them up fresh

What is next? Old people suing young people if they fail to work enough to keep their pensions afloat? Absolutely banana republic level decision. Courts going beyond their customary boundaries is a bad idea for a democratic system stability.

Activist judge rules in favor of activist Youths, propped up by their rich Activist parents, attempting their best Greta Thunberg impression - sent from my iPhone

Cynical HN user presents cynical mind reading in sarcastic post

From a logical perspective, Montana now needs to declare war on China and India. The US' CO2 emissions have been falling for a long time, now at levels of the 1950s.

Pritzker's nuclear ban also means Montana invading a fellow state.

There are less severe actions than invading.

And more effective/efficient, if this were a serious discussion of options

The US is the #2 largest CO2 emitter and the largest overall historical emitter of CO2 so it would make more sense to declare on the US itself and China, then India if there's still powder left after that, but I don't imagine you're being anythinglre than facetious.

China in 2021 emitted 12,500 Mtons of CO2.

The US in 2021 emitted 4,700 Mtons of CO2.

The EU in 2021 emitted 2,700 Mtons of CO2.

China emitted nearly as much CO2 than the US and EU combined.

The US' CO2 output peaked in 2000, with 6000 Mtons, has been steadily declining ever since.

https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2022

Good. Now add up all the emissions from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and tell us.

How is this relevant for policy decisions now? Build a time machine?

It matters for fairness. You can't get China, or any other country, to agree on low-carbon policy if they think it's unfair to them. So it matters very much that the US and other developed countries do more than China, India or other developing countries. Even if developing countries are currently emitting more carbon than them.

We're not going to get China to agree to meaningfully lower emissions without doing proportionally much more ourselves. That's the reality.

Plus all those historical emissions are still around, heating up the planet, so we still bear responsibility for them. What you're advocating for is making the last guy to use the bathroom clean it up, when in fact many people have been befouling it for weeks before this guy even got there. And we have a pretty good idea of who those other people were and what they did. If the objective is a clean bathroom, I guarantee you pinning it on the last guy will not get it done.

At this point I put anyone who says "But what about China/India/Nigeria?" in the same camp as climate change deniers. It's just a different excuse to pass blame and guarantee nothing gets done, which is the point.

The climate is not about fairness, nature does not care.

We either agree on practical solutions at scale, or we don't.

Social justice is another topic.

> The climate is not about fairness, nature does not care.

> Social justice is another topic

It's about practicality, not social justice. Put it bluntly: China (and India) won't accept a solution they feel is unfair. If you really want them to do something, fairness is not optional.

Go back to my analogy. You're saying "The bathroom doesn't care who cleans it, it just has to be done". But the people who would be doing the clean care very much and that ultimately determines if the bathroom is cleaned at all. Either you don't understand this basic point - which means you don't understand anything about human nature, and should therefore re-evaluate all of your opinions on public policy - or you're putting your head in the sand deliberately because you don't want to lift a finger yourself.

> We either agree on practical solutions at scale, or we don't.

So what are the practical solutions? Because telling China, or India "Stop industrializing right now!" so Americans can keep driving SUVs will simply not work.

China is a lost cause, as it is isolating itself.

India is not. Partnering with them on nuclear, incentives on transport and supply chain would pay off massively. Same is true for EU, which is all over the place - Finland builds reactors, the Germans go "green" by burning brown coal.

And then there are the hardcore solutions around SO2, which just got airtime due to the discovery of clean shipping and the massive backfire on ocean temps. Pump that thing into the atmosphere, buy time.

Also ban all private air travel.

> Also ban all private air travel.

At least we agree on something, cheers

Montana can start at home. Our government recently approved Northwest Energy's purchase of a coal plant after Washington and Oregon companies divested because of climate policies from their home states.

And yet almost all of western Montana is still powered by clean hydropower.

Why does the west love to rip ourselves to shreds over non-issues? Our enemies aren’t half as dedicated as we are.

What enemies? Oh enemies like fossil-fuel energy companies?

Montana has a population of 1.1 million people. Does not even make the size of a small Chinese city.

Nothing Montana does has a measurable effect on global climate change.

You said Montana should declare war on China.

I can do things to make my state better, China is distant and far more powerful than even the Big Sky state.

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