Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Late this afternoon the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) released a brief 3-page order denying the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the Juliana case in advance of trial. The allowance to proceed comes as something of a surprise as it follows Chief Justice Roberts’ stay of the trial just days before it was scheduled to begin in an Oregon federal district court.
Whatever the Supreme Court decides in the case of 21 young plaintiffs seeking to protect themselves and the nation from the worst ravages of Earth’s warming climate, they and their attorneys have created a record in which the Trump administration has admitted the truth about the causes and harms of global climate change.
Driven by zero-sum thinking, the rigid, inflexible, ideological thinking and obsessive need of our collective human ego to be absolutely and imperatively “right”, is rapidly driving our Nation and our American democracy toward collapse.
The statewide ballot initiative with the greatest environmental significance will be decided by voters in Washington state, which could signal a shift in climate change strategy.
From Mother Earth’s perspective, the most important ballots cast on November 6th could be in the 30 contests for state attorney general (AG). The role played by AGs in the nation’s transition to a low-carbon economy is easily ignored in the heat of this year’s Congressional elections.
In the past week or two Trumpsters gave climate defenders new reasons to take the Administration to court—of either the legal or public opinion variety.
The World Bank predicts we may see 140 million climate migrants before long, and given the chaos that even a million people fleeing the (partially drought-fueled) crisis in Syria created, we better come to grips.
Despite the Trump administration’s own prediction that by the end of this century, the world could warm “a disastrous” 7°F, or about 4°C, above pre-industrial levels, the president has decided not to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but instead to use the devastating findings to justify and intensify his pro-fossil fuel agenda.
Without compromise, the nation will continue to see years of politics at the extreme—periods of doing and undoing much as we see now in Trump’s dedication to erasing Obama’s environmental legacy. I ask you–is this any way to govern the greatest nation on earth?
From an environmental perspective, the Trump administration’s proposed replacement for the Clean Power Plan (CPP)—dubbed the Affordable Clean Energy plan (ACE)–stinks!
Since the US Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) July 30th denial of the federal government’s motions to dismiss the case of Juliana vs. US, the plaintiffs and their attorneys have been preparing for trial—the one the Trump administration had hoped to avoid and that others are calling the trial of the century.
For someone like me who believes we ultimately need to strengthen local economies but doesn’t believe heavy industry (like mining and aluminum extrusion) should form the heart of these economies, the issue of tariffs has no clear answer.
