Our View - Thursday

Punctured pretensions

Judge lets gas out of climate-change suit

Amodicum of judicial restraint was shown this week by a federal judge who threw out the state of California’s lawsuit seeking billions of dollars in damages from six major auto manufacturers for their vehicles’ alleged contribution to global warming.

We welcome this voice of reason amid the loud drumbeat of demands for oppressive regulations and excessive economic penalties to curb an alleged problem that may be no problem after all.

U.S. District Judge Martin J. Jenkins ruled that the courts aren’t the venue to settle arguments over how much automobiles contribute to greenhouse gases, which the state contends damage the environment by heating the atmosphere. Congress and the federal Environmental Protection Agency are the proper bodies to take up that issue, the judge ruled.

The state asked the court to “balance the competing interests of reducing global-warming emissions and the interests of advancing and preserving economic and industrial development.” But “balancing of those competing interests is the type of initial policy determination to be made by the political branches, not this court,” Jenkins wrote.

The lawsuit alleged that the “scientific debate is over,” and “there is clear scientific consensus that global warming has begun and that most of the current global warming is caused by emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel combustion.” But that is far from the case. The state also alleged man-made global warming has reduced mountain snowpacks, increased flooding risks, caused sea levels to rise and more frequent and longer “heat events.” But those claims also are much debated in the scientific community.

Jenkins wouldn’t be stampeded into rash, inappropriate action. We would like to see other authorities show similar restraint. The ruling was a blow to the state’s aggressive litigation over global warming. A separate federal case is pending to force automakers to reduce vehicle emissions starting in 2009.

We hope Congress reconsiders the rush to fix what may not be broken. The debate isn’t over, and the evidence is not all in, let alone conclusive. The only disasters caused by global warming exist in contrived computer models so unreliable they can’t replicate yesterday’s weather, let alone the next century’s temperatures. Almost daily, new evidence is offered to refute the claims of global warming alarmists.

“An abundance of new peer-reviewed studies, analysis and data error discoveries in the last several months has prompted scientists to declare that fear of catastrophic man-made global warming ‘bites the dust,’ and the scientific underpinnings for alarm may be ‘falling apart,’ ” according to U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.

The Bush administration rightly opposed a Kyoto treaty which would impose drastic CO2 reductions, because it omits developing nations, who are major emitters, fails to address other major pollutants and it would devastate the U.S. economy. The Senate more than a decade ago voted 95-0 against ratifying Kyoto, and continues to debate what — if anything — should be done to address global warming.

Meantime, ground-level temperature measurements in the continental United States, cited as evidence for accelerated warming over the past decade, recently were discovered to be in error. When corrected they showed half the hottest annual temperatures for the past century occurred before the recent increases in CO2 created from industrialization and increase in automobiles.

Huge fines for legal industries are as inappropriate as the economy-killing restraints of the Kyoto Protocol. We urge government officials to let research and debate continue, but we wish they’d cool it with attempted judicial bullying.

Truck ban undermines treaty

The Senate has joined the House in voting effectively to ban Mexican trucks from U.S. highways. The lawmakers did it in backdoor fashion by banning the U.S. Department of Transportation from spending any money to administer the program and to perform the necessary inspections to allow the trucks in.

This is just the latest runaround the United States has given Mexico to avoid our having to live up to the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which began in 1994. Under that treaty, Mexican trucks were to have full access to U.S. highways by 2000, the same access that Canada has long enjoyed.

In 2002, President Bush ordered DOT to begin allowing the trucks in. To date, exactly one has, and that was last week on a one-time trial basis. Opponents, led by the Teamsters union, have thrown one roadblock after another in the path of the trucks, challenging their entry on safety, environmental and economic considerations. Mainly, the union fears the competition.

No amount of U.S. government pledges of stiff licensing requirements for the drivers and regular inspections of the trucks satisfies opponents. They don’t want Mexican trucks in the country, period. The congressional votes reflected a combination of growing Democratic protectionism and catering to organized labor, laced with a dose of anti-Mexican animus stemming from the immigration battles.

This ban does no credit to the United States. We’ve reneged on an agreement we freely entered into. We’ve called into question our trustworthiness as a negotiating partner on other trade agreements. And it gives ammunition to our growing number of critics in the World Trade Organization and the Doha round of trade talks who say we’re hypocrites. On this particular issue they have a point.