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By the same argument, couldn't you make the State liable for all scientific research it's been funding? So if some researcher published an article 50 years ago

By the same argument, couldn't you make the State liable for all scientific research it's been funding? So if some researcher published an article 50 years ago predicting a climate disaster, and even 1 random legislator at any time since votes against oil industry regulation, then you can presume the State knowingly chose to trade off future flooding and wildfires for short-term benefit and dismiss their case. In general, this would be an incentive to never talk to scientists if you think you're doing something with negative consequences. Don't deploy any mitigations at all, because mitigations are evidence you think there's something to mitigate. Never read any scientific research, except for the minimum to accomplish specific tasks, because anything more is infohazardous. That seems worse than a world where they try to find a cheap solution that mitigates environmental damage, even if the search is unsuccessful and they decide to cause the same damage anyways.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Many nations are being sued for not living up to their responisibilities in regard to climate change, so yes.
apocalypstyx 4y ago
An interesting question might be perhaps --- when is there a dereliction of duty? We tend to think in terms of 'just vote them out', however, there is this category of active ignorance that can't truly be established as seemingly actively maliciousness, a category of behavior that ultimately undermines social structures such as government in a way we haven't accounted for prior. In North Carolina, for example, in 2012, a law was passed that sea level rise could only be predicted from historical trends and only projected within a 30 year period with regards to the coast development policy. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647559482/north-carolina-coastal-development-policy https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647559482/north-carolina-coas...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Many nations are being sued for not living up to their responisibilities in regard to climate change, so yes.

apocalypstyx 4y ago

An interesting question might be perhaps --- when is there a dereliction of duty? We tend to think in terms of 'just vote them out', however, there is this category of active ignorance that can't truly be established as seemingly actively maliciousness, a category of behavior that ultimately undermines social structures such as government in a way we haven't accounted for prior. In North Carolina, for example, in 2012, a law was passed that sea level rise could only be predicted from historical trends and only projected within a 30 year period with regards to the coast development policy. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647559482/north-carolina-coastal-development-policy https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647559482/north-carolina-coas...