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RealClear Markets: The Deeply Destructive Climate Change Litigation Game

Voters and their elected representatives can be stubbornly uncooperative with interest groups pursuing the achievement of specific policy ends. “Heavy lifting” is the only way to describe an effort to forge a Congressional coalition in support of specific legislation, and “herculean” is the proper adjective for a campaign to elect legislative majorities inclined to support it.

This is particularly the case in the context of climate policies intended to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). Such legislative efforts have been rejected by voters and by Congress several times. So what is a pressure group convinced of the truth of its climate arguments, the urgent necessity of its own policy aims, and the nefarious nature of its opponents—“Big Oil”— to do?

For much of the policy community arguing the crucial imperative of “action” on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the perfidy of the oil industry, this gordian knot can be cut only with litigation, that is, policymaking by the judiciary. A central example of an organization advocating such climate litigation at the municipal level and among state attorneys general calls itself Climate Communications and Law (CCL), about which more below. The behavior and motivations of such groups as CCL deserve far more scrutiny than reporters and other observers have offered.

The full article can be read here.