For the last six years, I’ve been following the labyrinthine proceedings of an American court case known simply as ‘Juliana v. United States’. The Plaintiffs are 21 young people who are suing their Government for violating their constitutional rights in ignoring climate change, and thereby depriving them of any expectation of a stable life in the future.
One of those Plaintiffs is Levi Draheim. I used his words to introduce one of the chapters in ‘Hope in Hell’:
‘The American constitution says I have a right to life, liberty and property. How am I supposed to enjoy life, liberty and property if, one day, the island I live on will be under water?’
These words will be well known to one of the great heroes of the climate movement in the USA – Gus Speth. Gus is the former Chair of the US Council on Environmental Quality, and a Co-Founder of the World Resources Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Gus helped those 21 young people put together their case, and has been right there with them over the last six years and more, crafting the Expert Report that underpins their case.
His new book, ‘They Knew’, is out today. It’s an updated version of that Expert Report – and an utterly devastating indictment of the role of different US Administrations (from Carter to Trump) in aggressively promoting the interests of the fossil fuel industries even as they acknowledged the validity of the science behind accelerating climate change. Decades of deceit, double-dealing and craven subservience to Big Oil.
As such, this is as strong a case of political Predatory Delay as you’ll ever see. I’ve just done a three-part blog on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as a stand-out example of technological Predatory Delay, the first part of which follows.