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Young Climate Activists Sue Obama Over Climate Change Inaction (cnn.com)

EmagGeek writes A recent lawsuit against Obama alleges he has a legal duty to act against climate change, and young climate activists, including 15-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh, are taking him to task on it. CNN reports: "Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh became a climate change activist at age 6 when he saw an environmental documentary. He asked his mom to find a way for him to speak at a rally. Now 15, the long-haired, hip-hop-savvy Coloradan is one of 21 young activists joining climate scientist James Hansen in suing the Obama administration for failing to ditch fossil fuels. 'It's basically a bunch of kids saying you're not doing your job,' he told me here at the U.N. COP21 climate change summit in Paris. 'You're failing, you know. F-minus. We're holding you accountable for your lack of action.'"

22 of 475 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Who cares by avandesande · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He's hip hop savy. That makes it important.

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  2. Not doing his job? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hmm... I checked The Constitution and it doesn't say anything about it being the President's job to "ditch fossil fuels". Heck, it doesn't even mention "climate change". Perhaps this kid should take a Civics / Government class and learn that it's Congress that passes these things called "laws"...

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Not doing his job? by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I would proffer it's even more important for Congress to know when it should NOT pass laws... Often the proper answer is "no", especially when it comes to political winds and short term trends.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  3. This is great news! by timholman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now that the precedent has been set, I'm looking forward to suing all of these students twenty years from now for their terrible career choices which have made them unemployable, thus depriving me of the tax revenue needed to support my Social Security and Medicare.

  4. No standing by selectspec · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In order to prove standing, he will have to prove that he's sustained damages. He will find that hard to do. The kid might as well sue for having his financial future mortgaged to a hilt while he is at it. At least in that case, he could document how he is being royally screwed.

     

    --

    Someone you trust is one of us.

  5. Re:15 years old? by presidenteloco · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "If you have (or are getting) a STEM degree, you are likely to get shunned" (by environmentalists)

    Rubbish.
    Most environmental concern is BASED on the findings of science,
    whereas lack of environmental concern is based on either ignorance or selfish greed.

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
  6. Re:15 years old? by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I see this and his age, and I can only think, "does he realize that, while Obama can make some action, the majority of such a thing has to come from Congress?"

    I can only see him as being a brat trying to make a name for himself targeting a well targeted person.

    The biggest thing on his table politically about climate change recently, might have been Keystone, which he didn't let go through

    WTF does the Keystone pipeline have to do with climate change? The Canadians are selling the oil to China, anyway, it'll just take a different route.

    So tired of this mindless repetition of "facts" from partisans on both sides.

  7. So what has he done? by sbaker · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to https://www.whitehouse.gov/ene..., since Obama took office:

    * The EPA released the Clean Power Plan — the first-ever carbon pollution standards for existing power plants,
    * The U.S. increased solar electricity generation by more than ten-fold, and tripled electricity production from wind power.
    * The DOI has approved over 50 wind, solar, and geothermal utility-scale projects on public or tribal lands.
    * Obama put forth initiatives to help develop principles for establishing energy corridors; encourage the use of designated energy corridors in western states; expedite the review of transmission projects in non-western states; and improve the overall transmission siting
    * Created the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)
    * Proposed the toughest fuel economy standards for passenger vehicles in U.S. history
    * Finalized the first-ever fuel economy standards for commercial trucks, vans, and buses for model years 2014-2018.
    * The EPA proposed two new rules in 2014 under the Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program to curb HFC's.
    * Released a Strategy to Reduce Methane Emissions that builds on progress to date and takes steps to further cut methane emissions from landfills, coal mining, agriculture, and oil and gas systems.
    * Committed to deploying 3 gigawatts of renewable energy on military installations, including solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal, by 2025.
    * Directed federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from sources such as building energy use and fuel consumption by 28 percent by 2020 and increase deployment of renewable energy. ...and on and on.

    What's the common thread here? Well, things Obama *can* do (EPA regulations, federal programs) he did - what required House & Senate to write laws, he made proposals - largely in agreement of the relevant industry groups...but if no laws are written as a result of all this work - is that Obama's fault?

    --
    www.sjbaker.org
  8. Re: Idiot by erapert · · Score: 3, Funny

    Gee whiz, you don't suppose that all those crazy right wingers nattering on about "limited government" and other such foolish notions might have something of a point do you?

  9. Re:15 years old? by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because he's an ACTIVIST!!!

    Or more accurately, he's like 99.99% of activists out there--in that he wants someone else to fix the problem while he pats himself on the back for making no real sacrifice whatsoever.

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  10. James Hansen is a becoming shameful by BCGlorfindel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I get how as a scientist watching things you want to push people to action. That being said, James Hansen has gone a little overboard IMHO and into the realm of damaging the credibility of scientists in general be politicizing things himself. He's written things like:
    Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear - practically all of the glaciers could be gone within 50 years
    This despite the IPCC estimates that gain/loss in glaciers will be regionally dependant on precipitation changes(and this based on admittedly poorly modelled precipitation).

    The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.
    This isn't precisely a statement backed by peer reviewed evidence either...

    When people are angry about the science being politicized, it does NOT help for the scientists to go over board politicizing things themselves in the hope of being a counter-balance. It doesn't work between FOX and MSNBC counter balancing each other from Rep-Dem sides of things, and it doesn't work for educating people on the science either. You just get more and more grandiose hyperbole, half truths and flat out propaganda from both sides.

  11. Re:Idiot by CaptainLard · · Score: 5, Funny

    He's probably getting laid for this shit.

    Perhaps we can all learn something from him after all....

  12. Re:15 years old? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At 15 years old he'll have to live most of his life with the effects of climate change, unlike the mostly old-fart climate conspiracy theorists who don't care what happens after they die.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  13. Re:Idiot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This kid started giving speeches and organizing rallies at 6. He's the creation of an adult. It took a while to figure out who, because they changed his name from Roske-Martinez to something Aztec. His mother is executive director of Earth Guardians and her name is Tamara Roske. If you Google her, you can see she's the activist behind all of this. Oh, and she wants you to pay for his high technology. Maybe they should get him some more vegetable scraps for his compost pile instead.

  14. Ah the right wing story progression by presidenteloco · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not happening
    It's uncertain
    It may be happening but it's not us
    Ok it's happening, but it's all those poor people who are trying to catch up with us
    Ok it's happening, but there's nothing we can do about it.
    Ok it happened, but there was nothing we could have done about it.

    Yes. You could have done something. Finding yourself it a hole, you could have stopped digging.
    You could have kept your friggin' traps shut with your destructive obstructionist bullshit and got the hell out of the way of the smart and motivated people trying to solve the problem.
    You've already cost us 35 years of inaction since the problem was well known in scientific circles to exist.
    So I say again, shut up and get out of the way.

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
    1. Re:Ah the right wing story progression by erapert · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So you were screaming at the top of your lungs about this problem forty years ago but nobody listened?
      Forty years ago did you put forth a viable solution to the problem?
      Have you been living in a carbon-neutral cabin in the woods ever since?
      Do you have a car? Do you drive it frequently?
      Do you have a computer? (yes, because you're on the internet) Where do you think that computer came from?
      Do you have an air conditioner? Do you run it during the summer?
      Do you buy food from the super market?
      Do you buy clothes from a store?

      Basically, unless you're Amish then you're every bit as responsible for "this mess" as the people you're railing against.
      So get off your high horse and be reasonable. Your unreasonableness and histrionic screeching is detrimental to your cause.
      So, to paraphrase something I read once: Shut up and get out of the way of your own cause.

    2. Re:Ah the right wing story progression by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What, so that you can spend a crap load of MY money trying to fix the unfixable?

      Sorry, no thanks.

      Your choice is spend money or spend more money. There is no option to spend no money.
      Another way to look at it is this: Assume Global Warming is complete fiction, but we go with it anyway. We create an entire new clean energy industry, which stimulates the economy, and creates more jobs and therefore more wealth, less poverty, and less crime.
      The worst case case is we have less pollution, generate cleaner energy, more efficiently, and create more jobs for more people.
      Even hard-core conservatives love creating new jobs. What other plan do you have that could achieve this?

  15. Re:15 years old? by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most environmental concern is BASED on the findings of science,
    whereas lack of environmental concern is based on either ignorance or selfish greed.

    Your statements and his are not mutually exclusive. The bulk of people who are environmentalists or who think climate change is bunk form their positions on these issues for philosophical or economic reasons, not rational reasons. I'm an engineer and I spend a lot of time "educating" them. If you don't know the difference between kilowatts and kilowatt-hours (as most of these people don't), you have no business trying to influence energy policy. It's completely obvious you're basing your opinion on things other than facts.

    The environmental scientists who research this stuff do so with a fairly neutral approach. A lot of engineers are environmentally conscientious as well because it correlates with energy efficiency, and engineers love optimizing for efficiency. But they're realistic about it. That's why such a large segment of slashdot readers are both pro-environment and pro-nuclear. They're realistic enough to realize that although nuclear has its drawbacks, the drawbacks of opposing it resulting in continued use of coal and oil are much, much worse (because wind and solar technologies are not yet capable of taking over base load, and probably won't be for another 20 years). Go ahead. Ask anyone who's pro-solar how many square meters of solar panels they'll need on average to charge their EV every night (using batteries as interim storage). Most of them have no clue, and wouldn't even know how to start figuring it out. Heck, most of them don't even have the faintest concept of how big a solar panel it takes to light a light bulb. How can you compare a technology to alternatives and come to a decision to advocate it if you don't even understand these basic things?

  16. Re:15 years old? by nightfire-unique · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not that I agree or disagree, but I've heard this argument advanced: by building a pipeline, you increase overall production cost efficiency; the supply and demand curve meet at a lower pricepoint, and oil is consumed at a higher rate.

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
  17. Re:15 years old? by GodelEscherBlecch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Whenever the stark reality of data flies in the face of warmists agenda they get hostile and to ad hominem.

    That was quite masterful the way you used satire to demonstrate the same logical fallacy you were decrying. And with a dash of strawman thrown in, too - are you a former Colbert writer?

    I also love the way you use ridiculous hyperbole to lampoon the layman who thinks he knows so much about such a vastly complicated issue that he is fully confident in calling it black or white, and calling anybody an idiot who does not agree with the stark color of his vehemently stated but argumentatively void comments.

    The more I read your post, the more I think you might just be this century's Voltaire - a true master. I mean you lit this fucker up like a winning bingo card:

    https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...

    I'm truly impressed. A+.

  18. Re:15 years old? by riverat1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    If he's 15 years old there hasn't been any statistically significant temperature increase in his lifetime. What is he complaining about?

    Maybe if you only look at the atmosphere. But if you look at the oceans they have continued to warm without pause and over 90% of the climate warming is going into the oceans anyway. But you're going to have to retire that "no significant warming" meme after the end of this year because 2015 is going to blow the old records out of the water.

  19. Re:15 years old? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well good news! People don't eat uranium, carbon fiber or semiconductor materials, so my plan won't starve people! I was thinking about nuclear, wind and solar rather than running the planet on ethanol. You know what will starve people though? The droughts and floods that come with climate change. Those and other natural disasters HURT PEOPLE.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel