Court Rejects Multi-State Attempt To Stop Biden’s Arbitrary 'Cost Of Carbon' Impositions

P. Gardner Goldsmith | April 9, 2023
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A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals Wednesday rejected a suit brought by multiple attorneys general to block the Biden administration from hiking its utterly arbitrary, make-believe “cost of carbon” – a “cost” that it plans to use when calculating numerous federal “regulations” and “fines” for breaching federal “Climate Change” edicts.

And if the above paragraph inspires you to think that maybe, juuuuust maybe, a bunch of tax-fed fantasists have reinforced the impossible-to-justify, made-up “price,” of something – namely, carbon -- that, in turn, the same kinds of fantasists unjustly claim is contributing to something that isn’t happening – namely, “Anthropogenic Climate Change” – you are not alone.

And there’s a lot more here.

The states involved in the suit were Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming, and, as the Associated Press reports:

“The unanimous decision by three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans was the latest defeat for states challenging the Biden ‘cost of carbon’ policy. It leaves the administration to continue using a damage cost estimate of about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions as it develops environmental regulations. That estimate is under review by the administration and could increase.”

This, of course, assumes a lot that is NOT assumable.

First, it assumes that “Anthropogenic Climate Change” is happening – a claim that not only has NOT been proven, but has, at its root, impossible-to-compare temperature readings from centuries ago versus manipulated ground readers today, and even those ground readings do not comport with satellite readers (which can avoid the controversial tactic of placing ground-based readers near airport tarmacs and raising them from lower ocean depths to warmer, higher depths). Additionally, many who have pushed the claim that man’s use of petrochemical fuels has caused “catastrophic climate change” also have been caught in multiple attempts to manipulate data, or have been unwilling to produce their original data in court.

Second, carbon emissions are associated with productive activities. Without any hard science to show that it is harming people, the net benefits or losses incurred by the use of so-called “fossil fuels” must be determined by free, real-market participants.

The costs involved must be based not on some spurious, made-up notion of harm that the government has not proven, but on normal, market bases of costs for exploration, retrieval, refining, transport, and wholesale and retail expenses tied to the process of sales. Market participants determine their goals, their incentives, and their marginal losses and profits, and operate within them.

Third, if one would like to claim that the use of petrochemicals causes harm, then one has to be direct, and proceed according to something I often mention -- for important reasons -- the process of bringing a tort claim for damages.

The harder politicians push for the power to arbitrarily impose “limits” and “fines” and “carbon cost numbers” on people who have not been shown to have brought direct harm to another real person, the more imperative it is that people understand the concept and original history of Common Law torts. And this means understanding that in original British Common Law, a tort was a legal claim for recompense/reparations when one believed he or she had been harmed or his property had been harmed by someone else.

That claimant had to show harm, and then, the parties would face each other before a jury.

Related: Feds Announce Pilot Program For Major U.S. Banks To 'Manage Climate-Related Financial Risks' | MRCTV

By definition, the state is not a person, and cannot bring suit for damages. Likewise, the state cannot morally preempt or prohibit private peaceful action. Even AFTER some party might bring a tortious claim and win against another person, such a victory would not allow the state to prohibit future private parties from engaging in the same kind of peaceful action. For example, if a gold miner were to have polluted the water of a nearby farm, the farmer could bring a tort claim and win, but the government could not morally or ethically prohibit future gold mining, because the act of mining itself may not bring about the same result conducted in a different locale or by different parties.

The dynamics of future private parties engaging in peaceful activity that might risk harm to other property or other people would be up to the private parties to shape as they calculate their risk of harming another person, and as the insurance companies they might try to hire charge them for their potential risk.

Every case of tort harm must be handled separately, party-to-party, and harm must be proven, or else state power will be used to play favorites to block certain kinds of behavior or favor certain kinds of behavior.

Which is precisely what the Biden administration is doing with this obscene “Carbon Cost” pantomime.

As the AP notes:

“The Biden cost estimate had been used during former President Barack Obama's administration. President Joe Biden restored it on his first day in office after the administration of former President Donald Trump had reduced the figure to about $7 or less per ton.”

They sure do assume a lot. But why didn’t the state Attorneys General win?

Curiously, that brings us to what could be the most ironic twist in this tale. The AP reports that, after some court movement back and forth, with various appeals and maneuvers, this three-judge panel ruled that the states did not have standing… because they could not show harm.

Let's allow that to sink in...

“On Thursday the appeals court dismissed the case, saying the challenging states had no standing to sue because they had not shown that the regulations caused the economic harms their lawsuit cited.”

That’s right, the judges of the Fifth Circuit offered a decision that mirrors the old personal injury tort system. Which brings us to the big irony.

What we have here is a panel of judges ruling that these state AGs can’t bring suit because they cannot show they have been harmed… by arbitrarily invented “costs” the Bidenistas are intent on imposing over carbon – which the Bidenistas cannot show causes any harm.

And as we see this federal-level fraud, we should note that the “cost of carbon” nonsense already is being used by twelve northeastern states to engage in what they call the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a coercive “trading of carbon credits” system that sees the participant governments ready to apply fines to businesses if they don’t adopt expensive “climate” and “carbon” ameliorating technologies, and then allowing those that do comply to “sell” their climate “credits.” Obviously, it’s based on zero bankable science, and on zero principles of tort law, and it favors big, big corporations at the expense of those that are smaller and have slimmer margins.

And keep in mind that the Federal Reserve already has asked the nation’s six biggest banks to produce their own list of “climate costs” that the Fed appears ready to include in its Environmental-Social-Governance (ESG) model, to be part of its utopian imposition of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), possibly this year.

And, THAT happens, while, internationally, Australia is testing precisely such a manipulative, command-and-control, make-believe “cost” system in its first-run “digital currency,” and as prank callers pretending to patch European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde through to “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky” got her to admit that the ECB was intent on using central bank digital “money” as a way to control people.

The big-government politicians want to manipulate markets, pretend that peaceful activity is dangerous, and control our behavior with an endless parade of brickbats and hobgoblins, even as THEY represent the biggest threat to our liberty and livelihoods, and as they play favorites with corporate interests by handing them pork in schemes such as the tragically titled “Inflation Reduction Act.

They celebrate falsity, raise it to the level of sanctification, and tell those who remind them of reality that WE are the trouble-makers, WE are the apostates.

They even mock ancient tort law to do it.

This is just the beginning. More disastrous, government-forced change is coming – and this absurd court ruling tells us that pushers have our liberty in their crosshairs.

Related: PA Gov. Wolf Backs Cities Who Force Residents Off Natural Gas | MRCTV

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