August 8, 2018
Page 13
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O PINION
Kavanaugh Would be a Disaster on Climate
Record on the
environment
appalling
b asav s en
Donald Trump’s Su-
preme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh
isn’t just a likely vote against Roe, or an
enabler of brash executive authority. He’s
also a vocal supporter of a conservative le-
gal “philosophy” that’s designed to block
action on climate change.
Kavanaugh’s record on environmental
issues is appalling.
As a D.C. appeals court judge, he argued
against the EPA’s authority to regulate
greenhouse gases, and wrote the majority
opinion striking down the EPA’s attempt
to regulate hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs),
which are potent climate pollutants used in
cooling applications. He even wrote a ma-
jority opinion overturning EPA regulation
of air pollution that crosses state lines.
While focusing on these particulars is
important, it’s vital not to lose sight of the
underlying pattern.
Kavanaugh says he opposites EPA regu-
lation of greenhouse gases because the lit-
eral language of the Clean Air Act doesn’t
authorize the EPA to do so. Only a specific
mandate from Congress to curb carbon di-
by
oxide and other climate pollutants can
do that, he claims.
This is very convenient for the fossil
fuel industry and other climate pollut-
ers, which have the political clout to
ensure that such a directive will never
happen under the present Congress.
With Congress unwilling to pass
legislation curbing greenhouse gases, and
Kavanaugh’s self-proclaimed literalism
with regard to the Clean Air Act and oth-
er statutes is an attribute shared by much
of the judicial right, most notably by the
late Antonin Scalia. But it’s seldom applied
consistently.
Notably, the Supreme Court’s expansion
of corporate “free speech” rights in recent
years, such as the idea that political con-
It’s precisely judicial decisions such
as Citizens United that have opened
the floodgates for corporate money,
including from fossil fuel interests, to
corrupt our political system and
prevent congressional action on
climate change.
courts unwilling to allow regulators to take
action on climate change absent such leg-
islation, U.S. inaction on climate becomes
a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But why does the fossil fuel industry
have such political clout? Part of the an-
swer lies in the same judicial system where
Kavanaugh may now rise to the greatest
heights.
tributions count as “speech,” clearly aren’t
supported by a literal reading of the First
Amendment.
It’s precisely judicial decisions such as
Citizens United that have opened the flood-
gates for corporate money, including from
fossil fuel interests, to corrupt our political
system and prevent congressional action
on climate change.
So the courts enable the fossil-fuel in-
dustry to bribe members of Congress, who
return the favor by blocking congressio-
nal action on greenhouse gases. And then
the courts say that government agencies
cannot regulate greenhouse gases without
explicit congressional authorization. The
self-fulfilling prophecy comes full circle.
Was the court’s expansion of “corpo-
rate free speech” based on a correct legal
interpretation? I leave that debate to the
lawyers. But you have to see the obvious
inconsistency: Courts either have the pow-
er to extrapolate creatively from the liter-
al text of the law, or they’re bound by a
narrow literal reading of the law. The judi-
cial right wants to have it both ways, and
they’ve been getting away with it for years
now.
When a literal reading of the law sup-
ports the status quo or benefits the rich and
powerful, they stick to a literal reading.
When it doesn’t, they don’t.
You can call it a legal philosophy. I call
it politics. The judiciary is just another arm
of government used by powerful corpora-
tions to maintain and expand their power.
And when it comes to the fossil fuel indus-
try, maintaining and expanding their power
comes at a huge cost to humanity.
Basav Sen directs the Climate Policy
Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Distributed by OtherWords.org.
Lessons in Leadership and Movement Building
Standing up to
rampant injustice
m arian w right e Delman
My dear friend Dorothy Cotton,
who died this summer at 88, worked
tirelessly to do something about the
injustices around her that she knew were
wrong. She had a joyous, infectious spirit
that made others want to join her.
Like Septima Clark, Ella Baker, and
other great women leaders in the Civil
Rights Movement, she is too little known
compared to some of her close male col-
leagues like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and Ambassador
Andrew Young. But as Education Direc-
tor of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) Dorothy Cotton was
an indispensable member of the group’s
inner circle. And her attitude about lead-
ership has lessons for us right now.
She might have seemed an unlike-
ly “leadership” candidate growing up in
Goldsboro, N.C. with her three sisters and
their widower father, a tobacco factory
worker who “didn’t know what college
was.” She couldn’t remember ever seeing
a book at home. But she worked her way
through college and while at Virginia State
College in Petersburg, Va. she joined civ-
il rights leader Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker’s
church, where she quickly started getting
involved in local movement activities.
by
Dorothy Cotton eventually be-
came secretary of the Peters-
burg Improvement Association
founded by Rev. Walker.
When Dr. King asked Rev.
Walker to come to Atlanta and
become SCLC’s first full time
executive director in 1960,
Rev. Walker asked Dorothy Cotton to go
too. She originally intended to stay and
help for just a few weeks but as she wrote
ing music at every meeting to teach and
inspire..”
She accompanied Dr. King on his fi-
nal trip to Memphis and later worked at
the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Center
for Nonviolent Social Change before be-
ginning another phase of leadership as a
university administrator. Today the Dor-
othy Cotton Institute, part of the Center
for Transformative Action affiliated with
Cornell University, continues her legacy
Like Dorothy, we must stand up and
protest as so many are doing for as long as
it takes when we see rampant injustice all
around us. When we see something wrong,
don’t ask why doesn’t somebody do something
about it, but why don’t I do something.
in her book “If Your Back’s Not Bent,”
she realized “our work with SCLC was
not just a job, it was a life commitment.”
As SCLC’s Education Director she ran
its lauded Citizenship Education Program,
training over 6,000 people from across the
South in weeklong workshops on voter
education, literacy, and nonviolent protest
tactics to prepare them to return home and
spread the movement. She had a wonder-
ful angelic voice and was known for us-
by training a new generation to foster and
protect human rights and achieve social
change through civic participation.
Dorothy Cotton emphasized that action
doesn’t always have to stem from a formal
plan: “On a lot of college campuses where
I do workshops and talk, some young folk
think us old folk had a blueprint…We sat
up almost all night sometimes strategiz-
ing. We would take an action, and then
we would see what kind of reaction we
got, and then we would do the next ac-
tion based on the reaction we got. I just
want to say, a movement is dynamic. It’s
evolving. It’s changing. Nobody had a
blueprint, and don’t let anybody tell you
that we did.”
She added: “Action springs up in a lot
of different places at the same time…We
were sick and tired of being sick and tired,
and some folk took action and we learned
as we went.” She always reminded us
that we can’t wait for leaders – leadership
emerges from action.
Her words should be an encouragement
to the wave of brave and committed stu-
dents, other young people, and those of all
ages in communities across the country
who are speaking out today against gun
violence, horrific immigration policies
tearing children from parents, and a list of
other injustices.
Dorothy Cotton would love the resis-
tance springing up across our nation right
now and it must continue and grow and
grow. Like Dorothy, we must stand up and
protest as so many are doing for as long as
it takes when we see rampant injustice all
around us. When we see something wrong,
don’t ask why doesn’t somebody do some-
thing about it, but why don’t I do some-
thing. This is how transforming move-
ments happen – person by person speaking
out and saying no against unjust policies.
Marian Wright Edelman is president of
the Children’s Defense Fund.