Climate Change Radicalism Is Colliding With “Not In My Back Yard” Environmental Lawsuits

Talk about cognitive dissonance. For the last forty years, the left has used every legal tactic known to man to stop economic development projects – from wastewater treatment plants to airports to pipelines and even hospitals and electric transmission lines.

But uh oh, now those tactics are being used against the Climate Change Industrial Complex. This excerpt from the Atlantic Magazine is worth reading because a) it shows the depths of the climate change derangement in calling for a whole new economic system in America and b) the frustration of the modern-day greens whose plans for a new world order are being disrupted by the very tools the left invented. The term that comes to mind is hoisted with one’s own petard:

Since the 1960s, fighting for the environment has frequently meant fighting against corporations. To curb pollution, activists have worked to thwart new oil drilling, coal-fired power plants, fracking for natural gas, and fuel pipelines. But today, Americans face a climate challenge that can’t be solved by just saying no again and again.

Decarbonizing the economy will require an unprecedented amount of new energy investment. Fossil-fuel infrastructure built over centuries needs to be replaced within the next few decades by clean-energy alternatives. The United States will need to build hundreds of thousands of square miles of wind and solar farms; deploy enough battery storage to keep power flowing through the grid even on calm, cloudy days; and at least double the country’s transmission-line capacity. And the same lawsthat environmental groups leveraged in the past to block or delay fossil-fuel projects are now being exploited by NIMBYs in ways that, however well intended, will slow the country’s transition to clean energy. Windmills off Cape Cod, a geothermal facility in Nevada, and what could have been the largest solar farm in America have all been blocked by an endless series of environmental reviews and lawsuits.

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