Suing For Attention

What to Know: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio continues to push a climate change lawsuit that judges have dismissed.

“On January 10, 2018, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he was suing five energy companies, seeking damages to pay for harm the city has faced as a result of climate change,” Jude Clemente writes for Real Clear Energy. “In conjunction, the city also announced that it planned to divest its pension fund from fossil fuels. A year later, the city is seeking to revamp its legal strategy after the lawsuit’s swift dismissal in federal court and is no closer to divesting than it was before its big announcement. While New York City has failed to achieve actionable results on these fronts, Mayor de Blasio has succeeded in one regard: boosting his liberal credentials as he contemplates a 2020 presidential run, a goal that may have been the motivation behind both announcements in the first place.”

The TPPF Take: Such lawsuits are really all about the notoriety and liberal credentials, not the well-being of citizens.

“Critics of fossil fuels are ignoring the lives saved and the lives improved by the availability of abundant, reliable and affordable energy sources,” says TPPF’s Kathleen Hartnett-White. “In a ruling in which he threw out two similar California lawsuits, the judge wrote that ‘Without those fuels, virtually all of our monumental progress would have been impossible. All of us have benefitted.’ He was right.”

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