Ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court hearing oral arguments in Boulder’s climate lawsuit against major energy companies next month, more than 60 amicus briefs were filed in support of each side. Eight Colorado counties — Archuleta, Delta, Garfield, Grand, Mesa, Montezuma, Montrose, and Rio Blanco — filed a brief opposing Boulder’s lawsuit, along with the Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado.
How many Colorado cities and counties filed briefs in support of Boulder more than eight years after the case was first introduced? Zero.
That is a striking fact, given the effort from environmental groups and Boulder itself to portray the lawsuit as a defense of Colorado communities. Boulder’s lawsuit has become a national cause célèbre for climate activists. Democratic attorneys general from around the country and party leaders in Washington, D.C., support it. Deep-pocketed environmental activist organizations support it. Plaintiffs’ lawyers looking for big payouts support it.
All the while, Boulder has struggled to find comparable support at home.
Even Phil Weiser, as he campaigns for governor, appears determined to avoid taking a position on the substance of Boulder’s claims. That creates an obvious problem for Boulder. So, the national supporters of climate litigation needed a more sympathetic Colorado face.
Agriculture contributes approximately $47 billion annually to Colorado’s economy, making it one of the nation’s leading agricultural states, and maintaining agriculture’s historical significance as one of Colorado’s leading economic industries. Nearly 200,000 jobs are dependent on the more than 36,000 Colorado farms and ranches.
Yet, in a state with a nearly two-century legacy of farming and ranching, the plaintiffs’ bar found a grand total of only seven self-professed ranchers to file an amicus brief in support of Boulder.
But these aren’t ordinary rural Coloradans who have wandered into a Supreme Court fight simply because they care about the environment.
One rancher sits on the board of Conservation Colorado, one of the state’s most powerful environmental advocacy organizations, which boasts a high-powered political operation that campaigns for imposing greater costs on energy companies. Several have spent years operating within national political, environmental, or issue-advocacy networks. One ran for office as a Democrat, while another served in the legislature and worked as a lobbyist.
One even led a political outreach organization in Florida. That’s a long way from the cattle herds roaming rural Colorado.
While everyone is entitled to participate in the process, those affiliations matter enormously when national activist groups falsely present these individuals as credible evidence that rural Colorado is rallying behind Boulder. What this small, politically motivated group also ignores are the real problems that the 30,000-plus authentic ranchers and farmers face, including the rising cost of energy. Instead of addressing that issue, Boulder’s lawsuit only tries to make the problem worse by targeting the energy industry for the lawful production of oil and natural gas with a possible multibillion-dollar penalty that would only cause prices to rise even higher.
Boulder’s attempt to dismantle the energy industry would deeply imperil the ranching community. Trucks, tractors, irrigation pumps, and all kinds of farm equipment are powered by diesel or gasoline. Radical environmental activists might romanticize about reverting to the horse and buggy days, hand tools, subsistence farming, and other fantasies, but the world gets fed by farmers and ranchers whose work requires affordable, sustainable supplies of energy.
Natural gas is the key ingredient for the production of commercial fertilizer, which increases crop yields by up to 50%. Without it, the price of food would skyrocket, and hunger would spread across America and the globe. That isn’t hyperbole, that’s fact. The same radicals waging war on the energy and agriculture industries also howl the loudest about the suffering and hungry poor in the world without understanding what it really takes to produce and distribute massive amounts of safe, affordable, nutritious food.
Then there are the lawyers.
The ranchers’ Supreme Court brief was prepared pro bono not by a local Colorado law firm, but by a New York impact-litigation firm that advertises its work representing activists, progressive nonprofit groups, and organizations seeking large financial payouts from American companies. Boulder’s climate lawsuit is itself part of a national campaign.
Similar lawsuits have been filed across the country with the support of well-financed environmental activist groups, an army of California and New York-based plaintiffs’ lawyers, and Ivy League academics who have spent years developing and promoting the legal theories behind them. Still, not one additional Colorado county was willing to join Boulder before the Supreme Court, nor did the thousands of other bona fide ranchers around Colorado feel compelled to join the New York attorney-led brief.
TWELVE JURORS IN BOULDER SHOULDN’T CONTROL AMERICA’S ENERGY GRID
The extreme drought conditions throughout most of the Western U.S., labor costs and shortages, tariffs, and already escalating energy costs have farmers and ranchers once again in a big pinch. They don’t need yet another financial fast-ball tossed their way.
That group of seven has the right to speak for themselves, but they do not speak for the majority in Colorado, and they surely are not representative of the salt-of-the-earth farmers and ranchers that have always been and still are the heart and soul of Colorado.
Bob Beauprez is a fifth-generation Coloradoan. He enjoyed careers as a dairy farmer, banker, real estate developer, member of the U.S. House of Representatives 2003-07, and was the Republican candidate for governor in 2006 and 2014. Today, he operates a bison breeding ranch in Jackson County with his wife, son, and daughter-in-law.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
