In the same week large swaths of the US were under extreme heat warnings, Joe Biden’s Justice Department filed its most recent motion to dismiss a landmark climate case by arguing that nothing in the Constitution guarantees the right to a secure climate.
They’re right though. There is nothing in the US constitution that guarantees the right to a healthy environment.
Cool that it isn’t stopping them from putting a lot of climate action in motion.
What a dumb article.
Not only is there nothing in the constitution to prevent them from adding to it, the forefathers urged us to do so, and created systems for exactly that reason. The forefathers weren’t dummies, they were smart guys. That’s why they created something that is supposed to be a living document.
That filing came as President Joe Biden has refused repeated calls to declare a climate emergency, and as his administration backed a court case designed to accelerate the construction of a massive fossil gas pipeline, despite scientists’ climate warnings. Biden’s administration has also declared that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scientific report about climate change “does not present sufficient cause” to halt a massive expansion of fossil fuel drilling.
Always fun to see liberals lie by omission. Look at all that “action”. It surely is just a coincidence that the Biden admin keeps aggressively fighting against climate change lawsuits in court.
The rules in the Constitution are only relevant so far as they are within the ability of the government to provide. Outlawing slavery, the right to free speech, the right to vote, these can all be provided and protected by the government. The global climate can only be protected by ensuing that the rest of the world does not ruin the climate, in other words, the US would have to invade any country that endangers the climate for is citizens to ensure that right. This is why the Constitution does not provide he right to travel anywhere outside of US borders either.
the US would have to invade any country that endangers the climate for is citizens to ensure that right.
The US has invaded several countries to ensure their citizens have the right to cheap oil, which is also not covered in the constitution.
No. The complete opposite of your point.
It is not in the constitution, so it can’t be done - your point.
I am saying that the US has done things outside the constitution and in breach of international law to directly and materially aid their citizens.
But this time it is different somehow…
I did not say that the US government does not provide protections beyond what the Constitution says, nor does any of the included things prove that it can not provide protections to freedom of expression, etc, inside of its own borders.
the US would have to invade any country that endangers the climate for is citizens to ensure that right.
Well, that depends on what we think about climate change. If we think the climat change will destroy the humanity then this seems to be justifiable.
Justifiable or not, it’s still not something that is in the control of the government exclusively.
The US subsidizes the world’s demand for military and protection as well as the world’s healthcare. There’s no excuse, we could have this world fully renewable if we had the will to do so.
The Constitution also explicitly states that we have rights not enumerated in the Constitution.
That’s true I always forget about that.
I find penumbral reasoning compelling in its own right.
But the Ninth Amendment is express:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The difference here is that unenumerated rights can be added at a future date, and this right has not been added.
Unenumerated rights can become enumerated rights if they are added to the constitution. There is certainty surrounding enumerated rights, while unenumerated rights are uncertain.
There isn’t. That doesn’t mean that this isn’t a noble cause, but come on. There’s no point in using the Constitution as the deciding factor of all that is good.
Americans are utterly obsessed with their constitution. They treat it like a holy book, despite (and perhaps sometimes because of) the fact that it’s pretty much impossible to convince enough people to change these days, despite it also needing changes.
This is a legal proceeding and the constitution is the fundamental basis for legal precedence in the US.
The government’s argument is not that this right cannot exist but that it is not presently defined.
This is a legal proceeding and the constitution is the fundamental basis for legal precedence in the US.
Someone should tell that to the supreme court.
Good to know that nobody will be held accountable for the end of the world.
It won’t matter if the world is ending. In the mean time since you’re also contributing, start the blame there.
Yeah, that’s the spirit! Let’s all just blame ourselves for being born into a system which actively prevents you from choosing not to be a part of it! ^/s
But seriously though, individual action can be a little helpful and it’s worth doing the parts that aren’t an excessive cognitive load, but it’s much, much more effective to have government regulate environmental action. Choosing to compost your vegetable scraps is helpful, but it pales in comparison to the industrial yard 30 miles over burning guzzoline by the kiloliter like they’re in some sort of Mad Maxian hellscape.
That’s always been happening and its always been futile. We have major problems yet the focus is on everything but. We focus on hatred over insignificant bullshit and how we’re victimized because people don’t agree with every aspect of more mundane things. This presidential election we’ll put a senial old man, who we aren’t even sure runs the government, up against a sociopath who cares primarily about winning and little else, because we don’t want to admit that we might have been wrong about guns, sexuality, etc. Meanwhile the candidate that cares most about the environment doesn’t stand a chance because of one or two things we nitpick andsayy he’s wrong about, that he doesn’t fall into line with our collective and mutually shared toxic justifications for hatred of “the bad guys from the other party”. There’s a lot of various reasons, that are too many to mention, which arrived us to where we are with climate change and those reasons go back at least half a century. I think today, however, as a mob or a society or a community or whatever you want to call it, we’re the dumbest we’ve ever been and that’s what we are when the stakes are the highest and the problem is VERY immediate. We got here through a cult mentality of hate and justification of that by choosing to be victims. With respect to inaction on climate change, if it weren’t the political case, we would gave been using mostly nuclear power for the past 40 years. It wasn’t politicians or lobbyist that resisted when it was on the table, it was people influenced by pop culture, musicians, actors… the same shit as today, same sing being sung for the sane reason but withdifferent lyrics that fit the narrative at the time. There’s people here complaining that the people responsible for the end of the world aren’t held accountable and at the same time voting for what public bathrooms people use is more relevant than our literal survival. If that doesn’t imply that we are a collective pack of idiots, then I’m a 10 foot tall wizard with a 16 inch penis.
Are you really going to use the line that we can accomplish much as individual contributors? While everyone can change habits to make very minor differences, the real issues like with governments and large corporations.
No. I have an issue with people feeling victimized and placing blame on others as if the shit sandwich we’re all going to eat can be reasonably blamed on an entity as if a moment existed in the history of human behavior and politics where we weren’t already screwed long ago.
