ArcaMax

Long before man walked the Earth, God in His providence created the animals, then sent a massive asteroid that collided with the Earth, wiped out the dinosaurs and other large animals, piled rubble, heat and pressure on top of them and turned them into fossil fuels. Or something like that. God, generously, provided a source of energy a long, long time before Henry Ford rolled the Model T off his assembly line.

Take the creation story however you want, but the bottom line is that the world runs on fossil fuels. They are necessary for more than just the internal combustion engine. They power our homes. They provide components for plastics and other beneficial items used by people. Environmental agitators insist we run our lives on sunlight and wind. The last time we did that, it was called the Dark Ages for a reason. The environmentalists insist we regress.

One of the core components of the environmental left is the reliance on the trust funds of wealth progressives, many of whom get their money from the inheritance of the fossil fuel industry. With that money, the left has engaged in lawfare against oil companies nationwide.

Just this week, a court in South Carolina threw out a case by the City of Charleston, which, egged on by these environmentalists, sued major oil companies over global warming. The Court of Common Pleas for the Ninth Judicial Circuit ruled, "The U.S. Constitution makes certain matters the exclusive domain of federal law for good reason. If all fifty states, let alone the tens of thousands of political subdivisions therein, were permitted to apply their own laws to such federal issues as interstate and international emissions, the result would be conflicting state standards that would be impossible for energy companies to navigate -- what the U.S. Supreme Court called a 'chaotic confrontation between sovereign states.'" That chaos would hamstring national energy production, which the Executive Branch has highlighted as a priority across administrations.

"The ranks of this chorus are swelling for sound public policy reasons. While the scope of the state-law claims alleged here exceeds the recognized bounds of South Carolina law, Plaintiff's theory of liability appears almost limitless. Under Plaintiff's theory, virtually anyone could be a plaintiff -- and a defendant -- in what would effectively amount to a perpetual series of lawsuits that reset after every storm ... " Already, scores of states, counties, and municipalities have sued a hodgepodge of oil-and-gas companies for the alleged weather-related effects of climate change. If these lawsuits were successful, municipalities, companies, and individuals across the country could bring suits for injuries after every weather event. The list of potential plaintiffs is unbounded.

Even in progressive enclaves like New York, New Jersey, Maryland and California, judges are tossing the litigation, but the environmentalists keep coming. What also keeps coming is the oil, long ago predicted to run out.

Chevron has claim to a massive oil discovery in Guyana, located on the northern part of South America. British Petroleum ("BP"), which tried to placate the left with a shift to "clean energy," has just discovered a massive pocket of oil in Brazil. Ironically, even as United Nations delegates convene in Brazil for a climate change summit, the Brazilian government now argues BP should extract and sell the oil as a good for Brazil.

Despite decades of alarmism, fear, lawsuits and even terrorism by environmentalists, global dependence on fossil fuels is not going away. Proving they are more regressive than progressive, most ardent environmentalists also insist nuclear power should be off the table. At some point, it must start to dawn on people that the privileged trust fund brats who want the rest of us to give up a comfortable existence, so they do not have to, are not forward-thinking or committed to progress. They are religious zealots in a cult that would regress humanity, decrease our quality of life and harm the future with a dystopia they insist is paradise.

They have funded lawsuits and turned their children into neurotics, convinced the world is going to end. But the world is still going and will continue to harness fossil fuels. That is real progress.

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To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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