Net Zero and the threat to the rule of law

Yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that governments have a duty to protect their citizens from climate change. This was apparently based on an astonishingly broad reading of the legislation, the judges using the article on “right to respect for private and family life” as the basis of their decision.

The impact of the ruling, which is binding on all signatory countries, including the UK, is that climate change policies must be put in place, regardless of the costs and benefits. It is therefore, by definition, irrational.

We shouldn’t be surprised. It is now clear that climate catastrophism is a religion, and as Andy West explained in his recent GWPF book [1], religions are not rational things, operating instead by generating feelings of fear in the subconscious mind.

West also points out corruption of institutions, including the legal system, is normal expected behaviour for upstart religions:

The nature of the assault on the law can also vary, from head-on challenges – lobbying politicians for new statutes or attempts to change the interpretation of existing ones through the courts – to subversion of the legal system – circumventing and demonising laws, preventing them from being upheld, recruiting officials who can be proselytised and undermining those who cannot.

This applies just as much to secular religions – extreme political ideologies, such as Communism and Fascism – as it does to traditional, theistic ones. A paper by the legal scholar Cynthia Fountaine [2], about the corruption of the legal profession under the National Socialist government in Germany in the 1930s, has some extraordinary parallels to the European Court ruling. Take, for example, her thoughts on the activism of the President of the German Supreme Court, Erwin Bumke:

Bumke’s vision of statutory interpretation for Germany emphasized an evolving interpretive standard over originalism in interpreting German law. This signaled a significant shift in German judicial interpretive philosophy that gave judges more room to interpret the law in ways consistent with Nazi philosophies.

And she goes on to show that the corruption was eventually complete:

By failing to uphold the integrity and independence of the profession, lawyers and judges permitted and ultimately collaborated in the subversion of the basic lawyer–client relationship, the abrogation of the lawyer’s role as advocate, and the elimination of judicial independence. As a result, while there was an elaborate facade of laws, the fundamental features of the Rule of Law no longer existed and in their place had grown an arbitrary and chaotic system leaving people without any protection from a violent, totalitarian government.

In response to the European Court ruling, the Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho expressed her ‘concern’. This is woefully inadequate. We are facing a direct threat to democracy and the rule of law. Those in charge need to wake up.

Notes

[1] Andy A West, The Grip of Culture. Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2023. https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/culture/

[2] Cynthia Fountaine, ‘Complicity in the Perversion of Justice: The Role of Lawyers in Eroding the Rule of Law in the Third Reich’, 10 St. Mary's J. on Legal Malpractice & Ethics 198 (2020). https://commons.stmarytx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=lmej