PRESS RELEASE: Heartland Institute Reacts to Children’s Climate Lawsuit Thrown Out by 9th Circuit

Published January 17, 2020

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (January 17, 2020) – Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit handed down a 2-1 ruling against 21 young plaintiffs who sought to sue the federal government over climate change. The Ninth Circuit is traditionally among the most liberal courts in the nation, having jurisdiction over the western states including California and Oregon.
 
An excerpt from the opinion:
 
“We reluctantly conclude, however, that the plaintiffs’ case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large, the latter of which can change the composition of the political branches through the ballot box. That the other branches may have abdicated their responsibility to remediate the problem does not confer on Article III courts, no matter how well-intentioned, the ability to step into their shoes.”
 
The following statements from climate and environment experts at The Heartland Institute—a free-market think tank—may be used for attribution. For more comments, refer to the contact information below. To book a Heartland guest on your program, please contact Media Specialist Billy Aouste at [email protected] and 312/377-4000.

 
“Just like the recent case against Exxon-Mobil in New York that was dismissed, this case by ‘climate concerned children’ was prompted and powered by climate activist interests. In both cases, huge amounts of money, time, and legal expertise were thrown at these claims in an attempt to make a legal case that climate change has been harmful.
 
“Both cases were dismissed. The bottom line is that while yes, we’ve seen some changes in our climate over the past century, with improved crop yields, better health, reduced deaths from weather disasters, and increasingly less impoverishment worldwide, it is hard to argue that an increase of about 1 degree Centigrade has been detrimental to humanity.”
 
Senior Fellow
The Heartland Institute
 

“It is hard to imagine a more thorough rebuke of climate-lawsuit nonsense than having the ultra-liberal Ninth Circuit rule against such lawsuits. These young puppets of the well-funded climate alarmism establishment had no standing to make their claims and no science to back them up. Even the nation’s most liberal judges made that clear today.”
 
Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute
 

“Ill-informed kids keep being manipulated by radical environmentalists to sue over purported future climate damages. It’s time for federal and state courts to say enough is enough and toss all such lawsuits, recognizing as the Ninth Circuit did that it’s the job of elected branches, not the judiciary, to determine climate and energy policy.
 
” Undoubtedly, the plaintiffs arrived in court using transportation that relies on the very fossil fuels they would stop the world from using, and pleaded in a court house whose lights and indoor climate controls depend on those very same fossil fuels. Kids should stay in school, not in courthouses.”
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, Environment & Energy Policy
The Heartland Institute
Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News
[email protected]