Australia has just had a rare outbreak of common sense from the courts. The latest, spurious attempt at vexatious watermelon lawfare — using children as its sock-puppets, as usual — has been dismissed.
Once again, the leftist white-anting of Victoria’s legal system is being exposed.
The Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley does not have a duty of care to protect young people from climate change harm when considering fossil fuel projects, such as mines, a court has ruled.
The ruling of the full bench of the Federal Court overturned an earlier decision that found in favour of eight teenagers who brought a class-action case that challenged a proposal by Whitehaven Coal to extend its Vickery coal mine, near Boggabri in NSW.
It might be noted that the initial decision was in Victoria, delivered by Justice Mordechai Bromberg. Bromberg is a failed former Victorian Labor party candidate, who more recently achieved notoriety for silencing free journalistic expression, with his decision in Eatock v. Bolt. In what even a senior ABC journalist called a “a profoundly disturbing judgment”, Mordechai convicted Andrew Bolt of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act, for arguing that “light-skinned” public figures were identifying as “Aboriginal” to further their careers.
But Mordy is nothing if not the model of a modern major woketard. So when a bunch of bourgeois brats in private school blazers stamp their little feets and hold their little bweafs, Granny Mordy is going to hand out all the sweets they demand.
The teenagers argued the mine expansion would endanger their future because climate hazards would cause them injury, ill health and economic losses.
That, right there, should have seen their case laughed out of any serious court. Could these whining brats actually prove their claim? Of course they couldn’t. Proving that a single mine is going to make any more than the most infinitesimal difference to the climate defies logic and science. Proving that even large-scale climate change will “cause them injury, ill health and economic losses” is also contrary to nearly all available evidence.
Bromberg’s judgement had the potential to set a disastrous precedent. This was judicial overreach on steroids: effectively, a single judge was appointing himself to dictate government policy for decades, if not in perpetuity.
Dangerously, though, the court didn’t state such bleeding obvious facts. Because that would be heresy. Instead, it weaselled out by pointing that:
The control of emissions and the protection of the public from personal injury caused by the effects of climate change were not roles that the Parliament entrusted to the minister under current laws […]
In July, Ms Ley argued that she did not have a duty of care to protect Australian children from climate harm caused by the potential expansion of a coal mine. The minister’s appeal said the primary judge, Justice Mordecai Bromberg, erred in his findings about global temperature rise.
Which is something, I guess.
Facts and logic, though, are not something that screeching adolescents are known for. Cue more slammings of bedroom doors and wailing that It’s just not FAIR!
Anjali Sharma, 17, one of the students in the matter, said the ruling had left her devastated but did not deter her fight for climate justice […]
“Climate change is already wreaking havoc on the lives of Australians. Two years ago, Australia was on fire; today, it’s underwater. Burning coal makes bushfires and floods more catastrophic and more deadly. Something needs to change. Our leaders need to step up and act.”
The Age
Every single word of that statement is utter, incoherent bullshit.
We can also judge how serious these whining infants really are by asking them to give up every single appertenance of modern life: no internet, no smartphones, no air-conditioning, no overseas holidays. And they can walk to school and to netball practice.
The judges would have better off ruling that these idiotic children be sent off to bed without their latest model iPhones and made to read a few science textbooks.
Now, we just have to cross our fingers that the inevitable High Court challenge is likewise shot down.