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...
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...
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.
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?
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.
(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)
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.
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.
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.
>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...
Source: I play a lawyer on TV.
Not watching a couple of billionaires experience weightlessness for a few minutes.
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 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?
It’s a market failure that needs to be rectified.
You could steal everything for free, why don't you?
Priceless
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?
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.
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.
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?
Yes, there are, indeed.
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.
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.
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
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 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!)
Judges apply laws, they don't cook them up fresh
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
Pritzker's nuclear ban also means Montana invading a fellow state.
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.
Why does the west love to rip ourselves to shreds over non-issues? Our enemies aren’t half as dedicated as we are.
Nothing Montana does has a measurable effect on global climate change.
