Where Was the Supreme Court When the Earth Burned?
by Professor Bruce E. Johansen
When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was a youngster, only a few people talked about carbon dioxide. In fact, until about 50 years ago, he and the other five justices who voted to strip the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of its power to formulate policies to slow down the impact of a rapidly heating atmosphere on everything we know and cherish would have been able to plead ignorance of Nature’s laws.
In the world of police and judges, we know that ignorance of the law is no excuse. When the crime is aiding and abetting the destruction of civilization as we have known it on a scorched planet, the six-member Trump bloc on the nine-member court seem to have received a perpetual get-out-of-jail-free card.
The Court made such a ruling without detailed consideration of the existential question that we all face with regard to coal and oil: oh, wise ones, what must we do about the warming of the Earth by combustion of fossil fuels, the elephant in the geophysical broom closet? If we give any credence to most scientists and most of us who pay attention to our surroundings, our history, and our future: sequestering the world into little conceptual legal boxes is not going to do it. What will your families of the future think about the scalded world that you will leave them? This may not be strictly a legal question. However, planetary survival will trump legal fine points when basic survival is at issue.
Thank you for allowing me to rant. Now, let’s get practical. President Joe Biden said after the ruling he would pursue all legal avenues to forestall climate change and its catastrophic economic and ecological effects. “We cannot and will not ignore the danger to public health and existential threat the climate crisis poses,” Biden said. “The science confirms what we all see with our own eyes—the wildfires, droughts, extreme heat, and intense storms are endangering our lives and livelihoods,” he said. “I will take action.”
In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court had substituted its own judgment over that of lawmakers. “Whatever else this court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change,” she wrote. “And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions.”
The Earth is Not on the Docket
What’s to do when the high and mighty U.S. Supreme Court declares the Earth is not on the docket? Perhaps we—the “we” who read and watch the news—who have paid attention to the case we’ll call Clarence Thomas, et al. vs. the Earth’s residents, re: survival of all species, great and small. Rise up and declare the maintenance of the status quo irrelevant to these proceedings.
If it’s a utility, buy a few shares of its stock, attend annual meetings, and make some noise. Bring some similarly situated friends and learn some things. Write letters to your newspaper, and don’t make any moves until you are secure in your knowledge of who’s doing what to whom and why. You may be surprised at the effect a growing number of well-informed, active people can have. No Supreme Court is needed.
If yours is a public utility (every kilowatt of power generated in Nebraska is publicly owned), even better. You are already a shareholder. You can attend meetings without asking for a hall pass.
Let’s sum this up: Andy Borowitz of The New Yorker came up with this take on our activist, ideologically driven Supreme Court:
Nation’s Fetuses Puzzled Why Supreme Court Wants Them Exposed to Air Pollution
A Bloody Temper Tantrum
Let’s see: Someone whose name we won’t mention lost two presidential elections by about 10 million votes. He won the electoral college by a narrow margin and assumed office for four years of pitiful, painful, harrowing… you can pick your own adjective. In the second election, he lost both the popular vote and the electoral college and then claimed that the election had been stolen from him. He took his case to court about 60 times and lost all of them. He then polished off his second ill-gained term in the White House by egging on a large, bloody, and deadly temper tantrum at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Before the curtain came down on this farce, this person, who will not be named, had an opportunity to nominate three Supreme Court justices. With retirements by smarter, historically attuned justices, the balance of the court’s opinions (which is what counts) veered quickly to the right. Before he took off for Mar-a-Lago, he left a huge stink bomb—which is now going off regularly with no regard for the majority of people who support reproductive rights—and no knowledge (so it seems) of the catastrophe that all of us will inherit as levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses continue to rise above levels last experienced on Earth about 2 to 3 million years ago.
Who knows what lies in the future of our people, nation, and planet? If the United States ever called itself a “democracy” by and for “the people,” those notions may now be covered with the streaks of urine and feces that his supporters left on the Capitol Rotunda about the time that he threw his lunch at a wall in the White House, dripping catsup. History will judge and may die laughing.
Dr. Johansen taught journalism, environmentalism, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha from 1982 to 2019, when he retired as emeritus, with 55 books.
When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was a youngster, only a few people talked about carbon dioxide. In fact, until about 50 years ago, he and the other five justices who voted to strip the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of its power to formulate policies to slow down the impact of a rapidly heating atmosphere on everything we know and cherish would have been able to plead ignorance of Nature’s laws.
In the world of police and judges, we know that ignorance of the law is no excuse. When the crime is aiding and abetting the destruction of civilization as we have known it on a scorched planet, the six-member Trump bloc on the nine-member court seem to have received a perpetual get-out-of-jail-free card.
The Court made such a ruling without detailed consideration of the existential question that we all face with regard to coal and oil: oh, wise ones, what must we do about the warming of the Earth by combustion of fossil fuels, the elephant in the geophysical broom closet? If we give any credence to most scientists and most of us who pay attention to our surroundings, our history, and our future: sequestering the world into little conceptual legal boxes is not going to do it. What will your families of the future think about the scalded world that you will leave them? This may not be strictly a legal question. However, planetary survival will trump legal fine points when basic survival is at issue.
Thank you for allowing me to rant. Now, let’s get practical. President Joe Biden said after the ruling he would pursue all legal avenues to forestall climate change and its catastrophic economic and ecological effects. “We cannot and will not ignore the danger to public health and existential threat the climate crisis poses,” Biden said. “The science confirms what we all see with our own eyes—the wildfires, droughts, extreme heat, and intense storms are endangering our lives and livelihoods,” he said. “I will take action.”
In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court had substituted its own judgment over that of lawmakers. “Whatever else this court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change,” she wrote. “And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions.”
The Earth is Not on the Docket
What’s to do when the high and mighty U.S. Supreme Court declares the Earth is not on the docket? Perhaps we—the “we” who read and watch the news—who have paid attention to the case we’ll call Clarence Thomas, et al. vs. the Earth’s residents, re: survival of all species, great and small. Rise up and declare the maintenance of the status quo irrelevant to these proceedings.
If it’s a utility, buy a few shares of its stock, attend annual meetings, and make some noise. Bring some similarly situated friends and learn some things. Write letters to your newspaper, and don’t make any moves until you are secure in your knowledge of who’s doing what to whom and why. You may be surprised at the effect a growing number of well-informed, active people can have. No Supreme Court is needed.
If yours is a public utility (every kilowatt of power generated in Nebraska is publicly owned), even better. You are already a shareholder. You can attend meetings without asking for a hall pass.
Let’s sum this up: Andy Borowitz of The New Yorker came up with this take on our activist, ideologically driven Supreme Court:
Nation’s Fetuses Puzzled Why Supreme Court Wants Them Exposed to Air Pollution
A Bloody Temper Tantrum
Let’s see: Someone whose name we won’t mention lost two presidential elections by about 10 million votes. He won the electoral college by a narrow margin and assumed office for four years of pitiful, painful, harrowing… you can pick your own adjective. In the second election, he lost both the popular vote and the electoral college and then claimed that the election had been stolen from him. He took his case to court about 60 times and lost all of them. He then polished off his second ill-gained term in the White House by egging on a large, bloody, and deadly temper tantrum at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Before the curtain came down on this farce, this person, who will not be named, had an opportunity to nominate three Supreme Court justices. With retirements by smarter, historically attuned justices, the balance of the court’s opinions (which is what counts) veered quickly to the right. Before he took off for Mar-a-Lago, he left a huge stink bomb—which is now going off regularly with no regard for the majority of people who support reproductive rights—and no knowledge (so it seems) of the catastrophe that all of us will inherit as levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses continue to rise above levels last experienced on Earth about 2 to 3 million years ago.
Who knows what lies in the future of our people, nation, and planet? If the United States ever called itself a “democracy” by and for “the people,” those notions may now be covered with the streaks of urine and feces that his supporters left on the Capitol Rotunda about the time that he threw his lunch at a wall in the White House, dripping catsup. History will judge and may die laughing.
Dr. Johansen taught journalism, environmentalism, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha from 1982 to 2019, when he retired as emeritus, with 55 books.
