NOW RICO TURNED AGAINST CLIMATE-CHANGE ACTIVISTS
BY BOB UNRUH
It was a year ago when a long list of scientists wrote to the Obama administration urging the federal government to use RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, against global-warming skeptics.
They said in a letter addressed to President Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren they “appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a recalcitrant Congress.”
“One additional tool – recently proposed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change,” they wrote, according to Politico.
Now the tables are turned.
A mathematician and software engineer has filed a lawsuit in Texas naming dozens of environmental groups and others seeking to influence public action and expenditures regarding global warming programs in an action alleging violations of RICO.
Plaintiff Leonid Goldstein explains at the outset of his complaint, “This is a civil suit against Climate Action Network and other corporations, who engaged in a long-term criminal scheme, involving a false claim that anthropogenic release (or emissions) of carbon dioxide caused a dangerous ‘global warming’ or a dangerous ‘climate change,’ and persecution of the dissidents or demanding government actions, based on this false claim, including money transfer.
“In fact, the anthropogenic release of carbon dioxide significantly increases agricultural production worldwide. The surface warming, theoretically caused by increased concentration of carbon dioxide, is insignificant and almost undetectable, and is expected to be globally beneficial.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/now-rico-turned-against-climate-change-activists/#mHUc1xApAvBQj0JT.99…
Global deal reached to limit greenhouse gases from fridges and air conditioners
KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) — Nearly 200 nations have reached a deal, announced Saturday morning after all-night negotiations, to limit the use of greenhouse gases far more powerful than carbon dioxide in a major effort to fight climate change.
The talks on hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, were called the first test of global will since the historic Paris Agreement to cut carbon emissions was reached last year. HFCs are described as the world’s fastest-growing climate pollutant and are used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Experts say cutting them is the fastest way to reduce global warming.
President Barack Obama, in a statement Saturday, called the new deal “an ambitious and far-reaching solution to this looming crisis.” The spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it “critically important.”
The agreement, unlike the broader Paris one, is legally binding. It caps and reduces the use of HFCs in a gradual process beginning by 2019 with action by developed countries including the United States, the world’s second-worst polluter. More than 100 developing countries, including China, the world’s top carbon emitter, will start taking action by 2024, when HFC consumption levels should peak.
A small group of countries including India, Pakistan and some Gulf states pushed for and secured a later start in 2028, saying their economies need more time to grow. That’s three years earlier than India, the world’s third-worst polluter, had first proposed.
“It’s a very historic moment, and we are all very delighted that we have come to this point where we can reach a consensus and agree to most of the issues that were on the table,” said India’s chief delegate, Ajay Narayan Jha.
Environmental groups had hoped that the deal could reduce global warming by a half-degree Celsius by the end of this century. This agreement gets about 90 percent of the way there, said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.…