Joe Biden’s DOJ is Claiming “There is No Constitutional Right to a Stable Climate”

https:// jacobin.com /2023/08/joe-biden-justice-department-climate-crisis-constitutional-right-julianna-v-us

News @lemmy.world Joe Biden’s DOJ Is Claiming “There Is No Constitutional Right to a Stable Climate”

Not The Onion @lemmy.world Joe Biden’s DOJ Is Claiming “There Is No Constitutional Right to a Stable Climate”

61 comments

It's a nothing article. There's no reason to have ever assumed it was a constitutional right

There's plenty of other, much better reasons to justify the need for stable climate.

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- It's not about justifying the need for a livable climate, but being able to legally enforce the future having one.
  
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  The constitution also doesn't deny the right to a stable climate, if that is what you mean.
  
  It just has nothing to do with it.
  
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  Then possibly something needs to change - add a new Amendment or something. But to claim that old laws written with an old understanding of how the world works needs to somehow carry the semantic weight of something it was never written to do seems a bit much.
  
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  Wouldn't that be the EPA's job? I do wish they had more power or were more strict when it came to climate change measures. I did find this though: https://www.epa.gov/climate-change
  
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I mean, they're right. Nothing in the constitution says anything about the climate.

In this case I don't think "It's not a constitutional right" means "so I guess we're going to do nothing". It's just that some legal groundwork needs to happen.

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- Well, we have the bill of rights which let us gather, and I guess we can’t gather if the climate does not allow people to actually live
  
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  I don't think there is a constitutional right to not get hit by giant meteors either.
  
  I think the need to peg action to constitutional rights is a very uniquely American thing. In most other countries a simple addition to the legislature might suffice, whereas here if it's not in a constitution written many years before climate change became a popularly known thing, suddenly nothing can be done.
  
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Except this case was denied by the Supreme Court in 2018,

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I mean, that's correct. There is in fact nothing about a stable climate in the US constitution. The courts need to have at least a pretense of interpreting existing laws rather than dictating what the laws ought to be.

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- Isn’t that rather obtuse though. Is not life liberty and pursuit of happiness enumerated through the Declaration of Independence?
  
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  The Declaration of Independence is not technically a legal document. But even if we ignore that, it would still quite a stretch to go from a general right to life to a right to some particular environmental policy. It's unreasonable to expect the government to always take the course of action that prevents the most deaths (or else the government would be required to ban driving, unhealthy lifestyles, etc.) and once we accept that reasonable tradeoffs between "life" and other policy goals are acceptable then we must (IMO) concede that Congress (and agencies empowered by Congress) have the authority to make these tradeoffs except when there are specific Constitutional directives to the contrary.
  
  I would go even further and argue that a policy intended to reduce global warming is not necessarily the one that best defends the right to life (or rather the American right to life) as opposed to a policy of burning more fossil fuels now in order to build a stronger foundation for American security in a world destabilized by global warming.
  
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  Obtuse would be interpreting that phrase to include a responsibility for the federal government to preserve the global climate as it was in the particular time in which the constitution was written.
  
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Why does it need to be in the US constitution for it to matter?

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- Many of my countrymen seem to think if it's not a problem written down on some dusty old piece of paper, at least 1-2 centuries old, it isn't a problem now.
  
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- Something that isn't in the constitution is, by definition, not a constitutional right.
  
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requires the federal government to maintain a climate that supports human life.

Unironically this is a new frontier of ghoul behevior. The next time a person tells me some shit like Biden is "the most progressive president since FDR" I'm straight up spitting in their face.

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- Biden can't just dictate DOJ positions. DOJ is saying that, as a matter of law the Constitution doesn't say that. That if they use that argument in court, they'll lose. They're not saying that's a good thing and they're certainly not saying that Biden doesn't care about climate change.
  
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- As a leftist, anyone who says biden and fdr in the same sentence generally gets a guffaw…. But thankfully it’s usually the punchline of a joke anyways, so
  
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- Who's the most progressive president since fdr?
  
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  FDR was really the only slightly good (post-Lincoln) US president. And that was really only because he knew heads were going to start rolling if the government didn't throw some bones to the working class.
  
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  LBJ if u ignore the vietnam war, Carter. Probably JFK too.
  
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  Who cares? But if you were just talkig about the environment it would be Nixon.
  
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- If I had any courage, I should keep track of all this shit Biden and his team has done and when CHUDs whine, point to it and ask "He's giving you everything you want, what more do you want?"
  
  God, I wish it was the opposite, both parties favor the left, but Republicans just give the normies lip service, which seems to be what appeases them anyways.
  
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Do you want a Constitutional Amendment? Because that's how you get a Constitutional Amendment.

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- There's no chance of that happening. There have been no amendments in over 30 years. And no amendments that weren't a joke in over 50 years. You won't get 3/4 of the states to agree to anything the least bit controversial.
  
  (You won't even get "just" 2/3 of the House and Senate to agree to even propose the amendment.)
  
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- Yeah, no, we shouldn't have a constitutional amendment for that. We cannot and should not try to control the climate, we can merely control our contributions to global pollution. And contributing to global pollution isn't Constitution territory, but regulation territory.
  
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Don’t need a constitution when everything is on fire or under water

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Which leads directly to the statement "there is no constitutional right that the government will protect the citizens of this country from harm".

Then what the fuck do we need government for?

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Permanently Deleted

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The doj:

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Joe Biden is terrible for this country, the DNC needs to stop pushing 80 year old boomers

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- i love how you frame this is some how a thing only the dnc does. especially when the republicant party has done the same and part of it is still trying for the 77 year old russain spy.
  
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  I don't see anywhere the OP is saying it's unique to the DNC, only that the DNC is doing it and should stop.
  
  The GOP should also stop.
  
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  Russia has nothing to do with anything, it's a great scapegoat for the failure of Democrats to actually carry out any of their goals. If the DNC runs Biden then I'm voting third party, I don't want a white trash racist boomer as my President
  
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- Ffs, the DNC had nothing to do with Biden winning and Biden has nothing to do with this DOJ opinion.
  
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The universe only exists for me, god's specialest boy. When I die you all die too!

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