As the media and their alarmists like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore have shamefully convinced enough of the population that man can actually impact the climate, law firms around the nation are gearing up to sue possible offenders.
I kid you not.
As reported in Monday’s Dallas Morning News (h/t NBer alamojb, emphasis added throughout):
Top Dallas firm Thompson & Knight started a dedicated climate-change practice June 4 with 26 lawyers. Today, Dallas' Vinson & Elkins will unveil its 41-lawyer group, headed by a former senior counsel for the World Bank.
The law firms – and a dozen others nationwide – are getting ready for a predicted explosion of climate-related work tied to government regulation, lawsuits against energy companies and new markets that will trade the rights to emit carbon.
Isn’t that special? The money continues to be made off of this scam, and American media are right at the heart of it, pushing every specious claim by folks that have never taken one course on the subject, while ignoring the ongoing litany of skeptical reports and studies from around the world.
Now, the lawyers have figured out a way to capitalize on the hysteria being flamed by a press that are supposed to expose scams being perpetrated against the population rather than participate in them:
One potential opportunity is the $30 billion global market for rights to put carbon into the air; if the U.S. comes on board, the market could grow by $100 billion, and the credits are likely to become investments that draw Wall Street attention.
Vinson & Elkins' Christopher Carr, who helped the World Bank oversee its carbon finance unit, predicts a nationwide "cap" on carbon emissions in just a few years.
"It's not a question of if; it's when, and most importantly, how it will be set up," Mr. Carr said.
By their geography, the Dallas firms have a number of energy companies as clients. But they also expect to represent plaintiffs who've been harmed by global warming and pollution.
Fabulous. Can’t you envision people all around the country suing businesses, and even neighbors, for impacting their local microclimates and possibly harming their health, their lawns, and the peeling paint on their homes?
The litigious possibilities are almost endless, aren’t they? And, it’s already started:
Steve Susman of Susman Godfrey in Houston has been a pioneer in such litigation. He led the charge this year to force TXU Energy into building fewer coal-fired plants in Texas than it had planned.
Now he's among several lawyers talking with a group of Inuits in northern Canada who have seen an entire island sink under rising seas from global warming. The tribe is weighing its options, including suing carbon-emitting corporations such as power companies for heating the planet, he said.
"Melting glaciers isn't going to get that much going, but wait until the first big ski area closes because it has no snow," said Mr. Susman, who teaches a climate-change litigation course at the University of Houston Law School. "Or wait until portions of lower Manhattan and San Francisco are under water."
Some lawyers are trying to tie the damage from Hurricane Katrina to global warming – and the energy companies who may have contributed to that warming.
Mr. Susman predicts large insurance companies, which have paid out billions of dollars in claims in the past two decades because of powerful hurricanes, eventually will become plaintiffs in broad greenhouse-effect litigation against energy companies.
Isn’t that great? So, along with the likely increased cost of energy, food, virtually all products, and higher taxes if the alarmists get their way, we might also see higher insurance premiums as these companies share the risks and costs of global warming litigation with their customers.
And yet, there are still people who don’t believe this is all a scam.
Imagine that.
