Reports about a children’s lawsuit against the government for not fighting global warming have neglected to mention that several billionaire liberal organizations are behind the climate crusade.
Well-heeled organizations such as the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) are underwriting a court case designed to sue the government for failing to beat back climate change. Several young children are the key plaintiffs in the case.
“Children are disproportionately experiencing the impacts of climate change, and will going forward,” Julia Olson, Executive Director of Our Children’s Trust, told the court Monday. Allowing the case to continue allows “these young people [to] present their historic and scientific evidence and make their case.”
The Trump administration believes the judicial branch is not the appropriate branch to determine environmental policy questions. The White House requested the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to place a hold on the case in July — the three-judge panel complied.
“It is really extraordinary. Plaintiffs seek unprecedented standing to pursue unprecedented claims in pursuit of an unprecedented remedy,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Grant told the three-member panel on Monday. All three judges — two of whom are Clinton-era appointees — expressed skepticism about the case’s chances in the federal court.
The panel’s skepticism has not swayed the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which lists $180,000 in grants to Our Children’s Trust since 2014 to “Advance Solutions to Climate Change: Public and Policymaker Awareness of Climate Change.” Our Children’s Trust is the primary group orchestrating the lawsuit.
The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF) also forked over $1.3 million to a host of recipients, including Our Children’s Trust, as part of a $15.6 million effort. Other foundations participating in the ruse include the Walker Foundation and the Noya Fields Family, both of which contributed $45,000 and $20,000, respectively.
Environmentalists and regulators have increasingly used children as reasons to fight global warming. Former President Barack Obama, for example, used his own daughter’s asthma attacks to personalize the climate debate. Environmental groups have jumped on this bandwagon and routinely claim global warming will make asthma and other respiratory illnesses much worse.
Our Children’s Trust’s campaign is no different. Olson’s inspiration for inviting children to bring lawsuits stems from her colleague Mary Christina Wood, a University of Oregon law professor who first introduced global warming as a brand of the public trust doctrine in law.
Wood and Olson’s goal is to force massive reforestation and carbon capture that would theoretically return the planet to a sustainable level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which they believe is 350 parts per million. The idea is grounded in the internationally recognized principle known as the Public Trust Doctrine, which argues a government can be held liable for damaging natural resources that are held in public trust.
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