We are relieved a lawsuit filed by officials in Bucks County has been dismissed.
The lawsuit targeted six major oil and gas companies, arguing the financial impact of climate change warranted a civil judgement and monetary damages.
As the judge who dismissed the case noted — and many experts agree — our society has more democratic means of regulating emissions from traditional or so-called “fossil fuel” industries.
That our election results have not produced legislatures or presidencies or governorships willing to go as far as environmental alarmists wish does not justify circumventing the process by which such industries are regulated.
We hope in this loss the advocates for such extreme courses of action can find an opportunity for contemplation. We hope they can reconsider their extremism in the face of reality.
The reality is both that, while climate change is real, bold claims about the extent to which any specific human activity contributes to it is likely impossible to conclusively determine and that American families are, by and large, not willing to commit to unproven technologies, significant job losses in the portions of the energy sector that have proven themselves to be reliable and higher expenses draining household and employers’ budgets based on paranoia about impending doom.
As we have editorialized before, we support greater research on renewable energy and on affordable battery capacity so that solar and wind power can, at some point in the future, be more viable. We support exploration of greater use of hydroelectric power — perhaps the most reliable source of renewable power. We support appropriate regulation of gas and oil and the market-driven shift to greater consumption of natural gas — a shift that already has proven to reduce carbon emissions far more effectively that grandstanding lawsuits and doomsday prophecies about the climate.
But the responsible course, we must reiterate, includes production of domestic oil and natural gas.
We are confident that enough voters, lawmakers and governors recognize that. We hope that the extremists can accept their nuanced understanding of the issue rather than hijack our court system to impose their will by lawsuit.