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Carbon dioxide lawsuit

Eight states and New York City are suing five of the nation's power companies to force them to decrease carbon dioxide emissions. (link)

This is the kind of stuff that gets me really mad and is an example of how our nation is totally messed up.

Carbon dioxide is what happens when you burn hydrocarbons. They react with oxygen in the air and turn into carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). Why not sue God for making the universe that way?

Carbon dioxide is not "pollution," it's part of our air, and all plant life on the planet would die if there wasn't any carbon dioxide in the air, and then all the animals would die becuase there wouldn't be any plants to eat.

This is just a huge waste of our money. Taxpayers have to pay for the lawsuit, and they have to pay again for the higher electricity prices because the energy companies will pass on the costs of the lawsuit to consumers.

If anyone should be sued, it should be Mario Cuomo and New York State for shutting down the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station after more than $5 billion was spent to build it (with most of the expenses blamed on litigation and having to comply with regulatory changes during the course of construction).

posted Wednesday, July 21, 2004

4 Comments:

By xxxx:

I'm sorry, I have to disagree with you. The only way to get anyone to do anything in this country is to give them a financial incentive. You have to make it more expensive for them to perpetuate the status quo than it would be to effect change. It seems to me that we have an inherent responsibility to leave the planet more or less as we found it. When we do damage, we need to try to rehabilitate. These corporations don't share that philosophy. They just want to make a quick buck. Period. Their greed is matched only by their incompetence. The thing that really annoys me about the prevalence of lawsuits in this country is that the lawyers are getting exceedingly rich off them. That probably won't happen so much in this case, since the plaintiffs aren't requesting damages. But it really irks me in personal injury and malpractice cases when the lawyers take 50-60 percent of the judgment. I don't know how they can morally accept such a large percentage of the award, when the suffering has been endured by someone else.

posted at 7/21/2004 10:57 PM

By el diablo:

Sure, CO2 is a naturally occurring substance, but certainly not in the levels produced by modern industry. That fact that it is "natural" is irrelevent in determining whether or not the CO2 produced by these companies is excessively harmful to the environment.

posted at 7/22/2004 11:44 AM

By Calico Cat:

Donna,

The legislatures should decide financial incentives. If Congress wanted to impose a tax on consumption of electricity and gasoline, that would discourage consumption. The attorneys general of 8 states have no business trying to impose their will on the entire nation.

Our government decided NOT to lower carbon dioxide when it didn't sign the Kyoto treaty.

Electricity companies aren't "greedier" than any other companies. They are selling a product that people want to buy and trying to produce it at the lowest cost, just like all other companies. This is how capitalism works.

David,

The atmosphere is 0.03% carbon dioxide according to Microsoft Encarta, and this is a 31% increase from 1750 which is well before the industrial revolution according to the same source. So carbon dioxide naturally occurs to an extent much greater than what industry has added to it over the course of 150 years of industrial activity.

Carbon dioxide will naturally disappear over time as it's absorbed into plants, until it once again reaches an equilibrium.

posted at 7/22/2004 7:28 PM

By Alicia:

I'm pretty sure God has sovereign immunity.

posted at 7/23/2004 12:09 AM