- Government is accused of fostering fossil-fuel dependence
· - U.S. argued to appeals panel case doesn’t belong in court
By
Kartikay Mehrotra
A group of 21 youths who accuse the U.S. government of failing
for decades to properly address climate change defeated the Trump
administration’s attempt to keep the dispute out of court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that
a novel and sweeping case,
which the Obama administration first tried to extinguish in 2016, can proceed
toward a trial. Trump’s Justice Departmentis
expected to ask the Supreme Court to shut it down.
The group of mostly teenagers in Oregon alleged in a 2015
complaint that government policies have exacerbated global warming in
violation of their rights -- and those of future generations -- under the
U.S. Constitution.
They claim that for more than 50 years, the office of the
president and eight federal agencies promoted regulations to support the U.S.
energy industry’s proliferation of fossil fuels, accounting for a quarter of
the world’s carbon emissions. They asked the court to force the government to
formulate a formal plan to change course.
The Trump administration argued the case is based on “utterly
unprecedented legal theories” and that it’s unreasonable to delve into
“unbounded” research into the executive branch dating back to the Lyndon
Johnson presidency.
Using a rare procedural maneuver, the Justice Department
contended that the federal judge in Eugene, Oregon, who refused to dismiss
the case in November 2016, had overstepped her authority. The government
asserted that the policy matters at issue are the domain of the president and
Congress.
A three-judge panel unanimously concluded the issues raised by
the federal government are “better addressed through the ordinary course of
litigation.”
Please continue this article, and to view video, please go here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-07/youths-defeat-trump-s-move-to-kill-climate-change-lawsuit
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