Articles

Fed Soc teleforum on ‘the right to a better climate’

December 20, 2017 | By DAMIEN SCHIFF

Last week’s teleforum focused principally on the recent oral argument before the Ninth Circuit addressing the federal government’s mandamus petition, which requests that the appellate court put an immediate stop to the litigation. … ...

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Vilify critics now, send money

November 22, 2016 | By JAMES BURLING

My friend, Myron Ebell, at the conservative / libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute has become a chief fund raiser for all sorts of liberal green groups in this post-election season of hand-wringing. How did this happen? At the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Myron has long been skeptical of many of the claims made by the ̷ ...

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Ubiquitous misstatements in the United States Senate

May 27, 2016 | By JAMES BURLING

On May 17 Senator Sheldon Whitehouse gave a 17 minute speech to a largely empty Senate chamber attacking Exxon for that company’s alleged climate change denial. You can see the Senator’s speech here at the 9 hour mark. Whitehouse used the occasion to attack PLF as a “creepy front group” that is in the climate-change … ...

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Zeal of climate change activists collides with the First Amendment

April 14, 2016 | By DAMIEN SCHIFF

Several state attorneys general have announced their intention to begin investigations of ExxonMobil.  They contend that the energy company may have violated state unfair business practice laws during the 1980s and 1990s by trying to mislead the public about the relationship among global warming, greenhouse gases, and fossil fuels.  Recently, t ...

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Greenhouse gases complicate CEQA

December 03, 2015 | By DAMIEN SCHIFF

On Monday, the California Supreme Court issued its decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. California Department of Fish & Wildlife.  The ruling overturns an important section of a voluminous environmental impact report prepared, under the California Environmental Quality Act, for the proposed Newhall Ranch development.  The project ...

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Washington court rejects environmentalist show trial, but with a scary opinion

November 30, 2015 | By BRIAN HODGES

It has come to this … using children as a stalking horse for a radical eco-technocratic agenda. Last year, a couple of well-heeled environmentalist organizations filed a petition, purportedly on behalf of eight school-age children, asking the court to force the Department of Ecology to write a climate change rule based on the science offered ...

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Should we send dissenters to jail?

September 18, 2015 | By JAMES BURLING

Is it time to jail dissent?  When faced with an existential crisis, the needs of society may outweigh the rights of individuals, right?  Under that theory, of course, it was perfectly acceptable for the politicians in charge of the early Republic to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts, making it a crime to criticize the … ...

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D.C. Circuit deflates environmentalists’ attempt to create a “public trust” in the air

June 10, 2014 | By BRIAN HODGES

Last week, the D.C. Circuit issued a short unpublished decision in Alec L. v. EPA, beating back a strange attempt to assert a “public trust” in the air. As previously noted, the case was part of a concerted effort by environmentalists seeking to force the federal government and every state government in the nation to … ...

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President's weekly report — June 6, 2014

June 07, 2014 | By ROB RIVETT

Environment — No trust in the air The D.C. Circuit issued this short unpublished per curiam decision in Alec L. v EPA, beating back a strange attempt to assert a “public trust” in the air.  This case seems to have been brought more for its optics than any serious legal argument.  This, and about 50 companion suits filed R ...