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Judge Orders Dutch Government To Finally Take Action On Climate Promises
New submitter Errol backfiring writes: Although the Dutch government has promised to make sure carbon emissions are lowered considerably, they have consistently failed to take action. Dutch climate group Urgenda and Dutch citizens have gone to court to force the government to take action, and the verdict (linked page is in Dutch) is that the government must reduce emissions by at least 25% compared to 1990 leves.
This 25% cut is seen as the minimum effort needed to keep the people safe from climate change dangers. 25% to 40% is the norm in international climate policy. The verdict is also important for similar climate groups in other countries.
This 25% cut is seen as the minimum effort needed to keep the people safe from climate change dangers. 25% to 40% is the norm in international climate policy. The verdict is also important for similar climate groups in other countries.
This is upside down. The elected government is sovereign, and derives its necessary powers from the consent of the people.
The correct way to change a government's course is by electing new people. Did the people of Holland appoint a judge to overlord the elected government?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Yup, as another poster said: "cue libertarian outrage" alright.
This isn't pulled out of the court's ass. The Dutch government made promises and then tried to back out of them. Their own court has said, "No, you made binding promises, now keep them." Which is what most contract law is about, and what most sane courts enforce.
In no sane system does a court have the ability to pull legal obligations out of its arse, as it seems to have done here.
This is indeed a bad precedent. Judges should stick to judging, rather than usurping the responsibilities of the legislature. If this is not overturned by a higher court, the result will be further politicization of the judiciary, erosion of their independence, and ultimately a reduction in their power to perform their legitimate duties.
It's all about government control and increasing taxation, while giving backhanders to the oligarchs that control the planet.
I can't believe people are falling for it. And as to those "scientists", they cost less than a single lobbyist for a real cause. The govt tells them to keep the story running or they'll lose tenure and grants. You think they care about the people when they have income for life for doing as they're told a few days of the year?
You do realize that a scientist who actually disproves anthropogenic climate change would become filthy rich from the oil companies, right?
A government that's accountable for its promises. Is it possible that human society has evolved to this level?
You know, given how much of Holland is below sea level (26%) ... you can kind of see that they might give a damn about rising sea levels.
Since when the hell is it shocking that a government has an "independent legal obligation towards their citizens".
As opposed to, what, an independent legal obligation to its fucking corporations?
This isn't an authoritarian dictatorship, it's a rejection of the stupid idea that government doesn't owe a duty of care and concern for its citizens. That's kind of the purpose of governments, despite all the delusional rantings to the contrary we see around here.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well the first action the government needs to take, is to make sure it meets part of the 25% goal by shutting down power and heat to the judges home, and it goes without saying confiscate any cars he may have,
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It can't happen in the modern economy which is based on consumption.
You wouldn't be able to afford the device you're typing this on if that was the case
Libertarians believe strongly in contract law. The Dutch government made a contract and has broken it. It's being told to complete its obligations. As a libertarian, I see no issue with the ruling.
The only delusional idiots are those that somehow missed just how strongly libertarians believe in contracts, despite it being emblazoned in just about any article on libertarianism. Well, either you're a delusional idiot, or you can't read. Whichever it is... let us know?
You know, given how much of Holland is below sea level (26%) ... you can kind of see that they might give a damn about rising sea levels.
Problem is: It's not the Dutch CO2 that's going to sink them. SO long as the USA, et. al. keep on producing CO@ at the current rate it won;t make a damn bit of difference what they do in a small country like that.
No sig today...
they need to import about 25'000 solar panels a day
We're talking about Holland you know. Windmills, not solar, windmills, lots of windmills. ;-)
From how I am understanding it, the government promised to make changes, and quite possibly was elected at least partially because of their promises. If so, that could possibly be construed as entering into a (verbal) contract, which when they fail to carry out these promises would bring them into the jurisdiction of the courts as breach of contract? This would be a great precident too, if the courts could be used to actually force politican to uphold campaign promises.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The problem is that things a lefty court might think are obligations are not necessarily things taxpayers can actually afford to do.
It would show
a) it is possible
b) the technology is there
I'm pretty confident that it would have some consequences outside the Netherlands.
Bert
You're at least 15 years behind the times. Long ago the oil companies figured out that they could profit from the whole climate change alarm-ism.
a) In the future they expect to be able to sell half the oil for twice the amount, thus increasing their profit margins and making a limited resource last much longer. Any taxes levied on oil will be paid by consumers, not the oil companies. Any claims that we could stop using fossil fuels ignores the fact that less than half of the oil is used as fuel.
b) The oil companies are receiving billions of dollars in grants and tax credits for their research into alternatives. This is happening even though they are unlikely to actually let the alternatives advance to a usable state unless they can totally control them.
...the government can't just wave its arms and say, "Emissions be gone!" So the date gets here and the reduction isn't achieved, the court will do...what, exactly?
The Dutch government did not make legally enforceable promises to their own people. They made promises to other sovereign states. In other words, it is up to the other parties of the contract (the other countries) to force the Dutch government to follow through on the promises, not some activist judge.
BS. Oil companies fought scientists for years and still are. They want us to do nothing about climate change. Only recently they stopped saying that climate change didn't exist.
Libertarians believe strongly in contract law. The Dutch government made a contract and has broken it. It's being told to complete its obligations. As a libertarian, I see no issue with the ruling.
Fair enough... So as a libertarian, what would you have the court do if the government doesn't "do what it is told"?
Court rulings are nice and all, but out here in the real world, what enforcement options does this court have?
When I was in college a few years ago, there were hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in the journals about AGW, and what items are happening.
The number of peer-reviewed papers discounting AGW and its effects? None.
People talk about AGW being a pawn of the oligarchs. That is a bit of a fib. A shift to nuclear reactors and moving to 2010-era technology and thorium from 1940s/1950s-ers reactors (you can thank Jimmy Carter for his knee-jerk permanent moratorium against new power reactors for that, which ceded the future of the US to Big Coal/Oil for generations) will reduce CO2 emissions by incredible amounts. And this is just base energy. Peak can be handled by solar, and with better batteries, even non-peak can be covered by renewables.
Delusion is thinking there's an infinite amount of other people's money available for your pet projects.
In no sane system does a court have the ability to pull legal obligations out of its arse, as it seems to have done here.
In no sane economic system is anyone permitted to push the cost of cleaning up after them onto the rest of the world, but that's what we have here (on Earth.)
This is a very bad day for the Dutch people.
Why, because it's been determined that their government is beholden to them?
They are now officially an authoritarian dictatorship ruled by Judge Hans Hofhuis.
That is slightly funny, but nowhere near the truth. I smirked but did not lol, so you don't actually deserve even a +1 funny.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Where do you think Shell comes from ? Major stockholder: the Dutch government.
Our government basically has a lot invested in doing nothing, so this was a good decision. The liberal conservatives immediately shrugged and said they wouldn't change a thing, but a precedent has been set. Maybe some good will come from this after all.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Mod parent up.
Even if they had made the promises to the Dutch people, manifesto commitments aren't generally considered legally enforceable (and shouldn't be, for a whole raft of reasons - possibility of coalitions, practicality (party can't control what the legislature will pass), changing circumstances, the fact there already exists a recourse for grievances (elections and recall petition) etc.).
Court rulings are nice and all, but out here in the real world, what enforcement options does this court have?
That depends on what law enforcement in the country will do when push comes to shove. Will they follow the orders of a court? Or will they follow illegal orders from their government? I know which way it would go in this country, but I can't speak for them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They are 1.8% over 1980 levels, so no progress in principle.
Since when the hell is it shocking that a government has an "independent legal obligation towards their citizens".
It's not. When that "independent legal obligation to their citizens" is laid out (specifically) in statute (and is only used to interfere with statutes (as opposed to the executive) when it is a law of appropriate authority (ie. constitution)). But when a court uses the term "independent legal obligation towards their citizens" to mean "there's no basis in law so we made one up", that's a problem.
You know, given how much of Holland is below sea level (26%) ... you can kind of see that they might give a damn about rising sea levels.
If anyone on earth doesn't give a damn what sea levels are, and can engineer to work around them - it is the Dutch. We are currently talking about around two feet over 200 years, hardly an issue for existing systems they have in place, much less whatever technology is to be had over 200 years time...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Dutch government did not make legally enforceable promises to their own people. They made promises to other sovereign states. In other words, it is up to the other parties of the contract (the other countries) to force the Dutch government to follow through on the promises, not some activist judge.
100% correct. On to the International Court of Justice then... in The Hague. Oh the irony!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
The issue I generally have with governments defining targets to meet, is that they rarely have an indication of how they plan to achieve these goals. Plucking an election pleasing number is fine, but without a real method it is just meaningless marketing.
Is anyone aware of any document or site that indicates how various countries are planning to meet their targets?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
In no sane economic system is anyone permitted to push the cost of cleaning up after them onto the rest of the world, but that's what we have here (on Earth.)
I didn't say otherwise. If legislation doesn't do that, then legislation is the way to fix it. Not the court. But hey, attacking reasonable arguments about the separation of powers and governance systems is much more difficult that just pretending I said something I didn't about how we aught to deal with pollution.
Why, because it's been determined that their government is beholden to them?
No, because it's been determined that their government is beholden to a judge and a lobby group with expensive lawyers. If the plaintiff was McEvil Multinational inc., rather than Hippies.org, I'm sure your tune here would be very different.
They paid me with a house on a mountain so I can laugh in the face of rising sea levels.
I didn't say otherwise. If legislation doesn't do that, then legislation is the way to fix it.
The government already agreed to do these things, and now isn't doing them. When they signed the agreement, didn't it effectively become law? I know every country works differently, but generally speaking, countries are required to follow their agreements.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nothing was pulled from the court's rectum. The ruling is based on Dutch human rights legislation, which implements the European Convention on Human Rights that they signed up to, and so which likely can apply in other European countries too.
The argument is that severe climate change will harm many people, violating their human rights. It's similar to how severe pollution by the state would violate their human rights, only over a longer period. Since the state must consider the human rights of all human beings (it's not like the US where only US citizens count, European human rights are universal) it must act to avoid violating those rights by altering the climate beyond a certain level.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
For being a hoax it's amazing how many of the predictions are coming to pass. Rising temperatures, rising sea levels, melting ice, and ocean acidification to name some of the biggies.
Here's a clue - corporations that damned large and powerful have already figured out how to profit from the whole AGW debate no matter which way it ends.
How? Well first off, they know full well that the world's appetite for plastics, kerosene, gasoline, and nearly all of their products will not slacken in the slightest, so they have plenty of time to adapt to any changes that may come. Meanwhile, these same companies are doing what large corporations all around the planet do: they Greenwash the hell out of their image, and pass the costs of doing so onto the consumer. Carbon tax? Hah! They've got that figured out as well, and again, guess who gets to pay for that? (hint: Not Them. It'll be passed on as a cost of doing business.)
To top all that off, you may want to look into who the biggest investors and shareholders in the Green Energy sector actually are... those same petroleum companies are right there, holding stock and encouraging the whole shebang, because they're more than poised to buy up the first one that actually makes enough headway to be a threat (mind you, not to squash the company, but to profit like hell off of it.) I wouldn't be surprised if many of these alternative energy enterprises are owned in whole or in part by a petroleum corporation, with the alt. energy company being a shell or 'independent' division. Again, no conspiracy or tinfoil involved; it's just a bit of pre-positioning for future profits.
You're more than welcome to disagree, but consider that these same corporations are looking decades ahead, and know full well that they have to hedge their bets against diminishing/expensive supply, rising political instabilities (read: Venezuela and the Mideast), and no-longer-rare governmental money-grab attempts. Only a total idiot would run his company any other way.
So tell me - given the fact that the eeevil petroleum corporations are happily and quietly positioned to profit from this thing no matter which way it goes, why do you think they would bother?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I don't know why you think I'm a repub. I'd terminate all corporate welfare instantly if it was up to me. And let the banks die when they screw up.
Well, the court says that: 1) Article 21 of the Dutch constitution requires the government to protect the environment; and 2) the government has signed treaties (which are legally binding) committing the Netherlands to reducing CO2 emissions. So arguably the court is just telling the government to obey the law. Which is not on the face of it unreasonable.
Now, it may not be a great idea if courts start setting specific emission targets, but the 25% is actually the bottom end of what the IPCC considers necessary. (The plaintiffs demanded 40%.)
And as to those "scientists", they cost less than a single lobbyist for a real cause. The govt tells them to keep the story running or they'll lose tenure and grants. You think they care about the people when they have income for life for doing as they're told a few days of the year?
Is it just climate scientists that are so dishonest and unethical? I never hear claims that physicists faked the Higgs Boson particle so they could have job security building the LHC or of paleontologists creating fossils in rocks so they could live high on the hog at taxpayer expense.
The Dutch government made promises and then tried to back out of them.
Much as I disapprove of politicians saying one thing and then doing another there are times when it is necessary e.g. if the situation changes or politicians learn the true cost/implication of the promised action. This is why, in a democracy, the people get to decide. If the government can make a good case to the people as to why it cannot fulfill its promise then they can vote it in again, if not they can give someone else a chance.
Given the number of, sometimes contradictory, promises which politicians make any system where a court can force the government to fulfill a particular promise risks ending up as being government by the courts. This is bad because then you have government by whoever can afford the most lawyers.
That the government, to avoid that, can use force to reduce the numbers. Specifically forcing industry and citizens to produce less CO2. Things like checks to see how much you drive and prison if you go over, forced shutdown of industry, etc.
If you aren't ok with that, then you can't very well say the government should be arrested. After all, they themselves don't produce all the CO2, society at large does. They can't magic it away, meaning the only thing they can do is force citizens to comply.
Hold the members of government in contempt and jail them for failing to follow a court order?
The court has made its decision, now they may enforce it.
In case you wondered.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Not speaking for the Dutch in particular, but in general, no, agreements with other nations do not have the force of law until appropriate enabling legislation is enacted.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Big money disagrees with you here. Oil companies are moving into the Arctic sea, expecting it to stay ice-free for times to come.
You get basic economics wrong.
A tax is never 100% passed to the consumer, unless the demand elasticity is null. In practice, some part of the tax is absorbed by the seller/producer, and in part by the consumer.
Some of them might invest in green energies, however they will make much more money in the short term (and that's all they care about) if we don't fight climate change.
So as a libertarian, what would you have the court do if the government doesn't "do what it is told
Probably the same thing that would be done against the goverment in a non-libertarian society
Probably not, but in this ruling the court explicitly pointed out that it will not allow the government to hide behind the inaction of other countries.
Even though that actively harms the country in question? I think historians will find it remarkable how much harm the developed world will do to itself over the next few decades due to issues like this and destructive, Orwellian policies which break the societies they allege to help.
You get basic economics wrong. A tax is never 100% passed to the consumer, unless the demand elasticity is null. In practice, some part of the tax is absorbed by the seller/producer, and in part by the consumer.
Every penny of gas taxes legislated by states and local municipalities is paid by the customer -- none of it is paid by the gas company.
I have half a dozen taxes on my phone and cable and electric and water bills that are paid for in full by me without a penny of it being paid by any of the companies involved.
There are about a dozen (guessing) taxes applied to every plane ticket sold in the US. Guess who pays those taxes in full?
I occasionally hear ads from stores who say "buy from us and we'll pay the sales taxes", but those are rare. Guess who pays the sales taxes in stores normally?
Some taxes don't get fully passed along, but it is increasingly common for more and more of them to become a line-item on the bill and the customer pays them.
a lefty court might think
The court didn't specify a policy or a remedy, so it is hard to see how you would consider this a 'lefty' judiciary. You can't assume that just because the court accepts the science that they are 'lefty'. It is not universal that conservatives reject science or that those on the left accept it.
How many divisions does the court command?
I remember several years ago when Ohio gas tax went up $0.10. The price that day went up roughly $0.15 (depending on the station).
See level has been rising for 100's of years.
for hundreds of years prior to 1800 sea level was falling. Now it is going up quite fast and accelerating: 20th-Century sea-level rise on the U.S. Atlantic coast is faster than at any time in the past two millennia."
Good, maybe this means that we'll finally meet our agreed obligations to NATO as well. Even better: in that case the judge won't also have to pull a number out of their arse; it's right there in the treaty.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
You apparently are unaware that oil companies already have some of the smallest profit margins, as a percentage of revenue, of any industry. I believe that only the restaurant industry has a smaller profit margin.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Ahh yes. It's only people that don't share your ideology that are ideological. Your ideology is of course totally rooted in facts and reality.
Most republican would terminate corporate welfare as well. They aren't generally big fans of subsidies.
Temps are not rising, they are flat for the past 15-20 years depending on which temp series you look at.
A rigorous statistical analysis shows the trend since 2000 is not significantly different than the trend since 1970.
Sea levels have been rising for hundreds and thousands of years, with no acceleration visible.
Sea level has been rising since the late 1800s but it was remarkably stable for the preceding 2000 years. Here's a paper about it and the abstract:
We present new sea-level reconstructions for the past 2100 y based on salt-marsh sedimentary sequences from the US Atlantic coast. The data from North Carolina reveal four phases of persistent sea-level change after correction for glacial isostatic adjustment. Sea level was stable from at least BC 100 until AD 950. Sea level then increased for 400 y at a rate of 0.6 mm/y, followed by a further period of stable, or slightly falling, sea level that persisted until the late 19th century. Since then, sea level has risen at an average rate of 2.1 mm/y, representing the steepest century-scale increase of the past two millennia. This rate was initiated between AD 1865 and 1892. Using an extended semiempirical modeling approach, we show that these sea-level changes are consistent with global temperature for at least the past millennium.
Ice melting, not really. Antarctica is at a record high the past few years, and arctic ice has had a nice recover the past 2 years,
Antarctic sea ice is at record highs but the land ice continues to melt and far more land ice has melted than sea ice has formed. Arctic sea ice has come back a bit since an all time record low year in 2012 but it's an example of regression to the mean. It's still lower than any year before 2007.
You'll have to come up with something more credible than WUWT for me to give your ocean acidification claims any credence.
Here's my anecdote. For the first time in my lifetime I was not able to ski at HooDoo Ski Area on the Santiam Pass in Oregon because of the lack of snow (I've skied there since 1967). That's just another drop in my bucket of anecdotes contradicting the flood of climate science denier bullshit and just as meaningful as yours.
LOL, as pugnacious as Michael Mann is I suspect he'd like to demonstrate the Buzz Aldrin technique on you.
Since they have to charge a lower price to maximize profit while compensating for the tax,
The other examples I listed disprove the claim that companies have to lower prices to "maximize profit". The water rates did not go down here, for example, when taxes were added as line items. The cable bill has never gone down, and certainly not when more taxes were added as line items. My ISP, ditto. My phone bill, ditto. The last hotel room I stayed in gave me the price without taxes, and then added them on after I was standing in the lobby checking in.
And the last airline ticket I priced showed me the prices without tax, and then added the taxes at the end after I had chosen to buy the ticket.
In none of those cases did the companies involved lower their base prices to make up for the taxes -- which meant I was paying them in full. That doesn't mean some companies don't do that, it's just becoming less common as taxes start to show up as specific charges instead of being lumped into the price.
By the way, since the taxes I'm talking about apply to all providers of a specific service (room taxes at a hotel, for example), those providers know that their competitors will be charging their customers more so they don't have to cut prices to compete. Gas taxes are a shining example of this -- they apply to all gas sales and not just to one company. A rising tide lifts all boats, to adapt a phrase.
Wouldn't the time to negotiate that position been before the Dutch signed the treaty?
Which treaty is "the treaty"? None are mentioned! I note that the ordered reductions in emissions are greater than Netherlands's obligations under the Kyoto Treaty (-20% reduction versus the court-ordered -25%).
Wouldn't the time to negotiate that position been before the Dutch signed the treaty? That the Dutch may argue after the fact that "oh wait, we forgot to use this argument for leverage" doesn't absolve them of the commitments they signed up for.
And what happens if Netherlands happens to sign a trade agreement treaty that gives US corporations extraordinary power over internal Netherlands affairs? Is it still "doesn't absolve them of the commitments"? Or are onerous and/or fraudulent treaty conditions only a problem when you don't like them?
As I noted before, there's plenty of indication that this is not based on treaty or promises, but rather one jurist's opinion combined with an overstepping of authority and considerable economic ignorance.
They linked to the verdict in the Slashdot article.
Delusion is also the big fucking lie which is globalization and trickle down economics.
A delusion which has saved more people from poverty than anything you will ever come up with.
If eliminating serious, measurable threats to the global environment
Like poverty, misuse of resources, habitat destruction, human corruption, and overpopulation? Oh wait, those are insignificant compared to the destructive power of the Earth warmed by 2 C over a century./sarc
My view is that if you deal with the five problems I mentioned, then AGW is just a bother, even if the ice caps melt over the next few thousand years. But if you deal with AGW by making the above problems worse, which is the current strategy (minus the pink-hooved unicorns who will keep that from happening. of course), then you have massive human die-offs.
They've actually been fairly accurate on several things: 1) near future rate of sea level rise, 2) nights warming more than days, and 3) that the greatest near future surface warming will be at the higher latitudes of the Northern hemisphere. It might be a scam without historical precedent, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some truth to it.
You mean gas stations, not oil companies.
Anyways, what I said applies to every industries, oil included.
I looked around a bit, but I don't see a treaty that sets Dutch obligations at -25% reduction. The Kyoto Treaty, which the Netherlands are not actually obligated to follow, only sets a -20% target.
Here you go.
It is amazing that of all the people who get advanced degrees, the vast majority of those who are "intellectually dim but emotionally blinding bulbs in the box" are attracted to climate research. You must be thankful that your strong intellect, emotional stability and settled world view allow you to see the truth.
No, we just have to stop being nice to bad people, hoping they won't fuck you.
You're just parroting what comapies have always said about everything from anti-lock brakes to air bags ...oh it's too expensive, it will destroy the market,
What you're preaching is the inevitability of market failure- that markets can't build X at a profitable price. Then someone does it or they all get forced to by legislation. Then everyone forgets what businesses were saying about how it can't be done. Then businesses trumpet technology X in their ads as their great technological leap and proof they're consciencous corporate citizens.
Rinse and repeat.
Get a new argument.
Not really. Gasoline is much more like a utility than a commodity in its demand. There is somewhat of a captive market controlled by an oligopoly. In a normal market what you say is completely true but with oil it becomes distorted.
First there is the sunken costs. Someone who pays $20k for a car doesn't have the luxury of abandoning it when oil prices jump. The same is true with home heating and such. Second, even if they could, the alternatives are even more costly and it would seriously disrupt the lifestyle of most people. Getting to and from work or the store is essential to most people and public transport (where available ) doesn't eliminate the usages - it just transfers who pays the costs. Finally, population growth and urban sprawl means more usages even with conservation efforts and increasing efficiency. You could say it is somewhat of a captive market.
While there are limits to some of this like collapsing the economy,(like leading up to 2008) there is a lot of room before that happens. There is almost a guaranteed volume of sales and increases over time. Efficiency and alternatives slow the increase but have yet to replace it.
I just read the gist of the verdict (advantage of speaking Dutch). It is NOT a contractual dispute. And it is NOT about interference with politics.
It is solely based on the prudence principle. The Dutch state should do more to shield it's people from the consequences of global warming.
The idea behind this ruling is that the consequences of doing nothing or doing not enough are clear and sufficiently scientifically proven. And thus the Dutch government should act upon it. Saying 'but we are only a small country' and 'this has only sense in a broader agreement' doesn't cut it. The Dutch government should take it's responsibility and do it's part.
Therefore the court orders a reduction of 25% by 2020, which is what the IPCC puts forward as the minimum reduction necessary to keep the global warming under 2 degrees celcius. And keeping it below that level would keep (again according IPCC) the consequences at an acceptable level.
Did their snow machinery break or something? I'm consistently skiing in areas before the first snowfall of the year because they make the snow.
The good of the many outweigh the good of one?
Seriously, There would be no cars if that was not true. Life is full of acceptable losses and acceptable risks. You just try to mitigate them as much as possible or practical.
You seem to be awfully proud of your ignorance. You are terribly confused about what those terms actually mean. Just a cursory glance over the most basic of materials would clear that up, so it appears you haven't even bothered learning.
It is a crank site. It regularly features flat-out opinion pieces masquerading as legitimate science, and has a terrible track record of being entirely wrong on many positions. Of course if it tells you what you want to hear you'd overlook those obvious flaws...
First, does the Kingdom of the Netherlands actually HAVE a Separation of Powers doctrine in its constitutional documents?
Second, are these "promises" or are they signed and ratified treaty obligations? I don't know about there, but in the US Constitution a treaty, once ratified by the Senate, has the same legal force as the Constitution itself. If this is true there, someone with proper standing could probably bring a suit demanding that the KoN fulfill its treaty obligations.
Thirdly, how did any court grant standing to a non-signatory organization? Can its decision that a bunch of busybodies have standing be appealed to a higher court?
Fourthly, does the KoN have the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity? If so, it cannot be sued without its prior consent. If it doesn't have that, now, can it create that right as existing in the past, as the UK can and has done, by an Ex Post Facto law? Actually, the UK removed a right (to compensation for war damages in enemy-controlled territory) in the case that I know of, but the principle that Ex Post Facto laws are legal can be extended ad infinitum.
Fifthly, I must quote that SoB, Andrew Jackson, after the Cherokee Tribe won (in the US Supreme Court) the right to stay in the East despite the Indian Removal Act, "They have made their ruling. Now let them enforce it." The point being that the judge's marshalls, baliffs, constables, whatever they are called, are not equipped to force the government to do what its military or the rest of its police forces "decline to acquiess" (to quote Capt. Barbossa from the first Pirates Of The Carribbean movie).
Then it's up to the taxpayers to elect people who haven't promised to do things they can't afford.
A delusion which has plunged more people into poverty and in some cases slavery than anything the left has ever come up with.
But they didn't. It's a core value of democratic representation. If the obligation really doesn't exist, there is no representation at all.
Sure, because the plaintiff would have no standing in that case since it wouldn't be representing the voters that the government is beholden to.
No, I mean oil companies. As a percentage of revenue oil companies have small profit margins. What distracts people is the fact that oil companies have huge revenues, which results in their profits begin very large when expressed as a dollar figure. However, when compared to the number of dollars they spend, their profit is not so large after all.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Wait, what? Did you just say that committing to reducing CO2 emissions is "a core value of democratic representation"? And that if we don't reduce CO2 emissions we don't have democracy? And if we reduce CO2 emissions, irrespective of whether or not it's the will of the people, we will have democracy?
Yet the article gives no legal basis for this ruling. I'd rather be swamped by rising seas than live under the dictats of some random judge.
No, I didn't. I said that government's legal obligation to the people is a core value of democratic representation.
Complete bullshit since communism is the obvious counterexample. And poverty has greatly declined under the current bout of globalism.
HooDoo is a small mom & pop operation with only 3 chair lifts. They haven't needed snow making in the past.
1) The Dutch plan spreads that cost through the year 2100.
2) The Dutch plan is planning for a rise of 4.5 feet, way more than what will actually occur by that time (around foot) - so the funds allocated are vastly higher than what is required.
The current system, as is, could easily handle a sea level rise of a foot - the Dutch are just naturally over-cautious.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Communism, particularly as it has been practiced is a very tiny speck in the continuum of things which are not trickle-down economics or globalization.
Your claim is akin to me suggesting that hot dogs and soda for all three meals a day is a bad Idea and you try to refute it by pointing out that arsenic and a cyanide chaser is deadly.
than anything the left has ever come up with
I guess you shouldn't have written that then.
Communism, particularly as it has been practiced is a very tiny speck in the continuum of things which are not trickle-down economics or globalization.
We should also consider here that when the left had a huge opportunity to practice something in that "continuum of things" in the early 20th century they choose to implement something that eventually enslaved a billion people.
Those people weren't exactly living in the lap of luxury before the fake communism either. How do you think the would-be kings that called themselves communists were able to rally the public? (note, there were actual communists involved as well, but they got ousted)
So they weren't plunged into poverty, they were already there if they weren't part of the nobility.
China simply doesn't seem to know what it is anymore but they will continue to call whatever it is communism.
When I hear these phrases I grab my wallet and hang on tight. Carbon out put and the ilk is all about wealth transfer ie, from my wallet to the public coffers. More carbon just means a greener earth, more trees, grass and in turn more o2..
Paul E. Bahre
Around here, people do sue the government when they think they've been wronged by a government action or inaction, particularly when such action or inaction is likely not supported by the law. What's the difference here, except for scale?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Reality is knowing that I pay a considerably larger percentage of my income as taxes than the people considerably richer than I am. (Even if you do the common rhetorical trick of concentrating only on federal income taxes and ignoring all the more regressive taxes, note that many wealthy people get their income from capital gains, which are taxed less than money I get by working for it.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In the US, ratified treaties have the force of law.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
He didn't say it was too hot, he said there was no snow. In my area we have cold without snow quite often.
Those people weren't exactly living in the lap of luxury before the fake communism either.
I don't agree that this was "fake" communism. But the author of the previously linked story agrees that the supposed transition from capitalism to communism starts with something that isn't actually capitalism. This is the difference.
How do you think the would-be kings that called themselves communists were able to rally the public? (note, there were actual communists involved as well, but they got ousted)
In other words, it was a communist revolution that completely derailed once Lenin died. The thing is here that most such communist revolutions were by people who drank the kool aid and lived to a ripe age such as Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, and Pol Pot. Marxism has wholesale murder and dishonesty baked into the philosophy (for example, a fair number of communist revolutionaries brag about how the capitalists would gullibly assist with their own executions). And because communism completely fails to take human nature into account, it has failure baked in as well.
Capitalism doesn't have these problems. There's no murder or failure baked into the system. There's no assuming that humanity will act differently than it always has. And capitalism has elevated over the past century more people from poverty and enslavement than communism put in.
Actually the big gains have come from mixed economies. Note that when capitalism isn't sufficiently regulated, there's plenty of murder involved. For example, organized crime.
That will happen when the U.S. spends ten years or more overthrowing governments (or trying to), even if they are democratically elected.
Oh yes there is. You're demonstrating it right now. Capitalism has failure baked in BECAUSE it doesn't have murder baked in.
See, capitalist free market competition creates winners and losers (failures).
The obvious rebuttal is that the loser can win later. There's nothing forcing you to do job X forever on, especially, when you demonstrate that you aren't good enough at job X to make a career of it.
Capitalism assumes, just like how communism makes assumptions, that the people who fail during the down times would pick themselves up the capitalist way. They don't. At least some of them will become disillusioned with capitalism.
So what? Capitalism is not a system of inspiration, but rather a system for getting shit done. And how are these "disillusioned" people going to do better in any other system? They have behavioral or psychological problems. Those don't magically get better in other systems.
But capitalism doesn't have murder baked in. So instead of letting those people die off, capitalism would try to uplift them too.
Why is letting people "die off" supposedly better? You do realize that capitalism also licked the overpopulation problem too. Just employ women gainfully. There's no need to kill people off.
In other words, capitalism's baked in failure is that it provides the perfect breeding ground for communism. Marx himself was a rich boy, whose wealth came from capitalism. Didn't stop him and other rich boys from biting the hand that fed them.
No. It's status signalling, like buying a huge yacht.
My experience is contrary to your ideas. Back in the 1970s I had a small insulation company installing urea-formaldehyde foam as insulation in existing homes. The process was created and tested by the company I franchised from Isochaum Chemie from Germany. They had worked in Alaska with the US government to test the product in extreme environments and had gotten the all-clear to begin installation in residences. I was given one of their franchises to break into a market that was pretty tightly held by the Owens Corning--Johns Manville fiberglass contractors who had been in business for 20+ years in the area. They hated me. They tried all kinds of nasty practices, but the product was solid, so the head offices stepped in.
Owens Corning owned Bordens, the glue company which produced a cheap version of the urea-formaldehyde resin. They put together a really cheap installation system and started to sell them to any yahoo who could pay for it-- no franchise. It wasn't two months before they had complaints and I was being asked to appear in court to discuss the problems that they had created and how to solve them. The only solution was to strip the house from the inside and replace the insulation and then replace the sheetrock or whatever the interior wall was made of. The retired post office worker who started that company went bankrupt before his business was a year old.
Johns Manville had a similar plan where they just sold the materials and suggested that you mix them (this is where it gets totally unreal) with an electric trolling motor in a 55 gallon drum. (Isochaum Chemie had their production plant in South Carolina, and it was a real plant with QA and consistent product.) OK, has anyone guessed what the real goal of these companies that OC and JM helped to spawn really was?
Spin the dial back to 1979and the consumer's product safety commission hearings on the safety and dangers of urea-formaldehyde foam to consumers. Yes, you guessed it. Even though Isochaum Chemie franchisees had no complaints or problems in 5 years of installations, the volume of problems and complaints created by the OC and JM spawn from hell nailed the coffin on the industry for 20 years-- urea-formaldehyde insulation was banned in the US and became synonymous with toxic house syndrome. It is back, but pretty much a niche market, when I, in less than a year, had become one of the most successful companies in the area. And went bankrupt the year after the CPSC decision.
So, I look at companies trying to get into solar or wind and say: "Watch your back"
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.