|
The San Francisco Chronicle (9/18, Lee) reports, “A federal judge in San Francisco has thrown out a lawsuit that the state attorney general filed against the six largest auto makers, in what had been billed as a novel attempt to hold the companies financially liable for global warming.” U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins wrote in his decision that “it would be inappropriate for the court to wade into the ’global warming thicket’ as it pertained to interstate commerce and foreign policy – matters he said should be left to the political branches of government.”
The New York Times (9/18, A18, Liptak) calls the decision “welcome news for automakers, which had suffered a defeat last week in federal court in Vermont.” In the suit, “California claimed that the six car companies produced vehicles that accounted for more than 20 percent of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions in the United States and more than 30 percent of those in California. The suit claimed that the emissions were a public nuisance and sought billions of dollars in damages.”
“The court is left without guidance in determining what is an unreasonable contribution to the sum of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, or in determining who should bear the costs associated with global climate change that admittedly result from multiple sources around the globe,” Jenkins wrote, according to an AP (9/18, Elias) report. The AP calls the decision a “stinging rebuke” to “California Attorney General Jerry Brown’s environmental crusade.”
The Wall Street Journal (9/18, D7, Ball, Spector, subscription required) notes that “the California ruling effectively muddies the legal waters over the broad question of how much authority states have in addressing climate change. Forcing the auto industry to pay California monetary damages for its cars’ emissions ’would improperly place this Court into precisely the geopolitical debate more properly assigned’ to the political branches of the federal government, Judge Jenkins wrote.”
“We understand that it might be difficult for a district court judge to jump with both feet into the global warming issue,” California Deputy Attorney General Kenneth Alex told Bloomberg (9/18, Gullo, Rosenblatt). Currently, “the state is considering whether to appeal the ruling.”
|
