Jaundiced Judgement
The climate-exploited children of Montana that brought forth the lawsuit, “Held v. Montana” may have prevailed in that case, however, it was actually the activist judge who won. I have previously written about this lawsuit, where these 16 children represented by a Eugene, Oregon firm called, “Our Children’s Trust”, alleged that fossil fuel energies are in violation or contrary to the Montana constitution and thus contributing to climate change. The related articles, “A Beginning to an End Perhaps”, “Use and Abuse of Children” and “Kiddie Court” were all authored in June of this year.
I also allege that the State of Montana failed to produce expert climate witnesses to challenge and confront those brought on by the plaintiff. As I wrote in Kiddie Court, relative to Dr. Judith Curry, an American climatologist, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and now president of Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN), “In a general grasp and understanding of her story, it would seem Miss Curry was somewhat displeased, not at her absence in being seated in the witness chair, but a general deficiency of arguments made by the state. She watched the case, and the plaintiff’s testimony was done, for the most part, by academic ecologists, who the plaintiff labeled “climate experts”. She maintains that none of the Plaintiffs’ climate “experts” had “any expertise that related to actually understanding the crucial points in the case. She further said, that had she been the cross-examiner, she “would have shredded their testimony.”
The following would have been the testimony the judge relied on for her ultimate ruling:
Her own perceived conviction of scientific consensus and politically partisan instruction of how climate change works;
Academic Steven Running is a University Regents Professor Emeritus of Global Ecology in the College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana
Reports by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change likely the most partisan body in all of climate change theory;
Academic Cathy Whitlock is Regents Professor Emerita of Earth Sciences and a Fellow of the Montana Institute on Ecosystems at Montana State University;
Erroneous carbon dioxide statistics as it relates to human contribution;
A pediatrician - Dr. Lori Byron;
A psychiatrist Dr. Lise Van Susteren;
Michael Durglo, Jr., a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT)';
The rehearsed stories told by the indoctrinated children; and
And others.
All of these can be read in the court ruling which I link here. Judge Kathy Seeley does not hold back on any of her biased support in making her ruling nor her obvious distaste of the current Montana government. In her ruling, she authored no case synopsis or summation of testimony by the defense.
In an NBC article on the matter entitled, “Youth activists win 'game-changer' case for U.S. climate change protections”, Emily Flower, spokeswoman for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen said, “This ruling is absurd, but not surprising from a judge who let the plaintiffs’ attorneys put on a weeklong taxpayer-funded publicity stunt that was supposed to be a trial,” and “Montanans can’t be blamed for changing the climate — even the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses agreed that our state has no impact on the global climate. Their same legal theory has been thrown out of federal court and courts in more than a dozen states. It should have been here as well, but they found an ideological judge who bent over backward to allow the case to move forward and earn herself a spot in their next documentary.”
While Flower’s assessment of the activist judge is exactly right, the State put on a meager, inferior, and shoddy defense. Right from the beginning when they endeavored to have the case dismissed, to the defiance of hiring a well-versed environmental lawyer, and to the refusal of calling in expert witnesses like Dr. Curry and others. Despite being scientifically undeserved, these were all reasons for the defeat.
If I could sway the Montana legislature at this point, I would suggest the way to curb any further lawsuits is to enact legislation that henceforth Montana will construct only nuclear energy plants in order to protect its people from their relatively meager contribution to carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.
On another front, they owe it to the world, to true rectitude, and to decency, to appeal this BS.
Children will never understand the importance of constant, consistent, and stable electricity which only fossil fuels and nuclear can provide until a power outage or rolling blackouts impede their ability to charge their phones and thus hinder access to texting friends and connecting to TikTok.
