A Judge in Oregon Refuses to Dismiss a 2015 Climate Lawsuit Filed by Youth
Firstly, attributing extinction-level risks to climate change has no scientific basis.
The IPCC highlights significant threats posed by ‘climate change’, including extreme weather events (which we have not seen a rise in since 2000), sea level rise (sea level will change regardless of the ‘GHG’ concentration), and resource scarcity (green tech requires significantly more resources), these challenges don’t translate to an existential threat to our species.
Technological advancements and adaptation strategies all present avenues for mitigating risks and ensuring human flourishing. To claim otherwise simplifies the issue and disregards population growth of 5X since 1900, while the planet warmed 1.1°C.
In fact, in all of the IPCC reports, there is no mention of the extinction of the human species.
Secondly, relying on emotionally charged narratives instead of established scientific principles sets a dangerous precedent for legal decision-making.
The judicial system thrives on objectivity and impartiality, ensuring that verdicts are based on demonstrable evidence and reasoned arguments, not fearmongering and speculation.
This approach safeguards against rulings swayed by public anxieties and ensures justice remains grounded in verifiable facts.
In this case, allowing a lawsuit grounded in unproven claims of imminent human extinction sets a precarious precedent for future rulings based on contested scientific claims.
Finally, such pronouncements are at the heart of the mental health crisis surrounding climate anxiety.
The specter of an immediate existential threat, while potentially a call to action for climate activists, breeds despair and paralyzes young people’s progress.
When faced with an insurmountable crisis narrative, individuals and institutions often adopt fatalistic attitudes.
https://principia-scientific.com/when-fear-is-allowed-to-trump-facts/
*************************************************Support plummets for socially-conscious ESG funds
Research shows that younger investors are turning their backs on firms that tout trendy environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts — which is often mocked as 'woke capitalism.'
A survey of some 1,000 investors found that millennial and Gen Z respondents had started to allocate their money more like baby boomers, who are keener on turning a profit than lofty principles.
It comes as social media influencers discuss ESG on TikTok and question whether it makes good returns or amounts to little more than greenwashing.
Prof David Larcker, of Stanford Graduate School of Business, who led the research, said support for ESG values among younger investors fell by 'double-digit percentages' between 2022 and 2023.
Previously, young investors said they were 'very concerned about environmental and social issues' and wanted their fund managers to push 'for change, even if it meant a loss of personal wealth,' said Larcker. That 'sentiment has changed dramatically,' he added.
In the survey, preference for ESG investing among millennials and Gen Zers, who are aged between 18 and 41, fell sharply.
The share of those who said they were 'very concerned about environmental issues' dropped from 70 percent in 2022 to 49 percent last year.
The share of those who were worried about social issues fell from 65 percent to 53 percent.
Meanwhile, those concerned about social issues dropped from 64 percent to 47 percent, according to the study from Stanford University, the Hoover Institution, and the Rock Center for Corporate Governance.
The share of millennial and Gen Z investors who said they wanted their fund managers to promote ESG values also tanked — from nearly half of them in 2022 to about a quarter last year.
Their investment preferences became much closer to those of baby boomers, researchers said.
The trend comes as millennial and Gen Z TikTok users who share financial advice on the platform express unease about ESG.
The user known as @kathildahill this month asked followers whether socially conscious investing amounted to 'scam.'
Another finance influencer, @commonstock, warned profit-seekers not to get duped.
'ESG is mostly a marketing term that funds use to try and convince investors that they are investing in good companies,' he said. 'Don't fall for it.'
ESG refers to a set of standards for a firm's behavior that guide investors on where to put their money — for example, by funding wind farms to combat climate change, while pulling out of harmful oil and tobacco giants.
The strategy gets more controversial when it guides funding to firms promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) schemes, which irk conservatives, who say they help women and minorities by sidelining white men.
This has spawned a fractious debate about whether efforts to make society fairer and cut carbon emissions are in the strategic interest for investors, by mitigating the risks of climate chaos and social disorder.
ESG investing boomed in the pandemic, when lockdowns caused energy prices to fall and buoyed portfolios that shunned fossil fuels.
Those same strategies have floundered as lockdowns ended and economic activity resumed.
Sustainable funds faced a sharp slowdown in demand globally last year, even though they outperformed other funds thanks in part to their inclusion of technology stocks, which performed well.
Globally, funds classified as 'responsible investing' recorded $68 billion of net new deposits in 2023 through November 30, LSEG Lipper data showed.
That was down sharply from $158 billion for all of 2022 and from $558 billion for all of 2021.
Prof Amit Seru of Stanford Graduate School of Business, another researcher involved in the opinion survey, said younger investors used to be 'bedrock advocates' of socially-conscious investing.
Now 'they are much less willing to lose personal money to see progress made against issues such as climate change, sustainability, labor conditions, and diversity in the workplace,' said Seru.
'With their confidence down, investors are more cautious about risking their personal wealth to support stakeholder issues.'
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Climate Dystopia: How Life Would Get Worse If Climate Alarmists Carry Out Their Agenda
The global climate is always changing, but contrary to the popular narrative, the science on the exact causes is far from settled. Alarmists claim that humans burning fossil fuels for energy will catastrophically ruin the climate, and they demand a “net-zero” future to save the world.
What would happen if the climate alarmists actually succeeded in the United States?
Although it is impossible to predict the future, early warning signs from President Joe Biden’s policies don’t paint a pretty picture.
Decreased Individual Mobility
First, if the federal government bans gas-powered cars, individual transportation would get less reliable and more expensive.
Americans prefer gas-powered cars over the electric cars favored by climate alarmists. In November, a coalition of nearly 4,000 auto dealers sent a letter to President Biden explaining that his plan to force Americans to buy electric vehicles won’t work.
The auto dealers warned that “the supply of unsold [battery electric vehicles] is surging, as they are not selling nearly as fast as they are arriving at our dealerships—even with deep price cuts, manufacturer incentives, and generous government incentives.”
Despite subsidies to encourage manufacturers to make electric vehicles and tax credits for drivers to buy the cars, only 7 percent of new vehicle sales are electric, compared with Biden’s goal of 60 percent in 2030 and 66 percent in 2032.
Americans have many reasons to prefer gas-powered cars, as explained by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment.
Drivers may refuel gas-powered cars in five or 10 minutes at a gas station, while recharging an electric vehicle may take 45 minutes or longer for a full charge. Most drivers of electric vehicles prefer to keep their battery above 20 percent, and the charging process gets longer when the battery reaches 80 percent.
Batteries lose range in cold weather, and electric vehicles cost more than gas-powered cars. Furthermore, not everyone has a garage at home, so charging overnight might present difficulties.
These electric cars may improve over time, but the climate alarmists push an aggressive timetable that limits the chance for a natural transition. President Biden has proposed regulations that would penalize automakers for selling gas-powered cars. California, meanwhile, will require all new-vehicle sales to be electric after 2035.
If cars become less effective and more expensive, Americans may be forced to accept less mobility. Many Americans no longer may be able to afford a car, and may have to move to areas with more reliable public transit.
The suburbs would get more expensive, and Americans would have fewer options in where to live.
Individual transportation may become more expensive and more difficult with government-forced transitions to electric vehicles. But if all vehicles shift to electric, that also may hobble delivery trucks, driving up costs for all sorts of goods that must make it from the manufacturing floor to the sales floor.
Whenever a transportation system becomes more expensive or less reliable, that change worsens the “last mile” problem.
In telecommunications, the “last mile” refers to the final stage of extending a cable or wire all the way to a customer’s home. Similarly, in a supply chain delivering goods to customers, the final leg often represents a rising marginal cost of getting goods from point A to point B.
A less efficient transportation system would make goods more expensive, as sellers pass on the added cost to consumers. Inflation, which already has made life more difficult for Americans in the past few years, would get even worse.
Decreased Quality
Earlier this week, a federal appeals court shot down the Biden administration’s efforts to impose energy- and water-efficiency standards on dishwashers and clothes washing machines, because “it is unclear that [the Department of Energy] has statutory authority to regulate water use” in these appliances.
Yet if the climate alarmists are successful, regulations such as this would become more commonplace, and dishwashers and clothes washers would become less effective. Americans may have to wash their dishes and clothes for longer periods of time, and they may still find food on dishes and stains on clothes after running the machines.
Increasing regulations also would make toilets, showers, and sinks less effective, as government forces a rationing of water.
Increased Electricity Costs
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, about 60.4 percent of all American electricity in 2022 came from fossil fuels. Natural gas represents the largest share, at 39.9 percent, and coal powers about 19.7 percent of the U.S. electrical grid. Nuclear power accounts for 18.2 percent of the grid and renewables 21.3 percent.
If the federal government outlaws fossil fuels, or even just coal, that would prove a tremendous hit to American energy production. Costs would skyrocket, leading to rolling blackouts or electricity rationing. California has gotten a taste for this dystopian nightmare with its rolling blackouts.
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Australia: Federal Court rejects Indigenous heritage claim against Santos gas pipeline
Gas producer Santos is free to install a vital gas pipeline from its $5.5 billion Barossa gas pipeline after the Federal Court rejected claims it could damage Indigenous cultural heritage.
On Monday, Justice Natalie Charlesworth lifted an injunction – which she had imposed in early November and revised two weeks later – on laying the pipeline to allow work in the northernmost part of the route away from the Tiwi Islands.
In her judgment, Charlesworth said differing accounts from witnesses from the Jikilaruwu, Munupi and Malawu people led her to conclude the beliefs and customs that formed the intangible cultural heritage the applicants claimed could be damaged by the pipeline were not broadly accepted within their communities.
Charlesworth said there was a “lack of integrity” in some aspects of an exercise that married science and traditional belief in evidence to show there was an ancient lake near the pipeline route, undermining her confidence in the existence of such a lake.
Concerns over tangible cultural heritage along the pipeline route from the time the area was not underwater were rejected by Charlesworth, who found there was a negligible chance of archaeological remains.
The Barossa project has been dogged by legal challenges based on concerns over protecting Indigenous culture.
In September 2022, the Federal Court found the Adelaide-based company had not adequately consulted traditional owners – led by Tiwi Islander Dennis Tipakalippa – before submitting its plans to the offshore environment regulator NOPSEMA and ordered it to stop drilling for gas at Barossa.
The decision threw the offshore oil and gas sector into turmoil as companies withdrew their plans lodged with the regulator and launched new rounds of consultation to ensure the plans could withstand a similar legal appeal.
After a series of legal hearings, NOPSEMA in December accepted Santos’ revised plan for drilling at Barossa and, according to the regulator’s website, the work will commence in January.
Despite the legal challenges, Santos as recently as October said the key project remained on track to start production in the first half of 2025 within the budget of $US3.7 billion ($5.5 billion).
The Barossa field will supply gas to Santos’s Darwin liquefied natural gas plant that shut down in late 2023 when the gas supply from the Bayu-Undan field in Timor-Leste waters was exhausted.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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