grow up

The young person featured in the Vancouver Sun La Rose v. Canada story, who is suing government for not doing more about Climate Change, appears to live a comfortable lifestyle with family on a Vancouver Island farm. That kind of idyllic existence, blending bucolic nature with modern convenience, is largely due to technology and medical advances that have taken place in the last 150 years thanks primarily to abundant energy and products made from oil.

Health is a good way to measure successful civilization. Prior to the industrial revolution life expectancy was half of what it is now, including about one-third of childbirths ending in death. If that world had continued to today, assuming the youthful litigants survived infancy, they would be challenged to stay alive in a feudal reality of uncontrollable disease, while expecting the imminent deaths of their middle-aged parents.

Oblivious to the fortunate period of history they live in, these inexperienced complainants want to disable Canada’s economy and lead the country back towards subsistence existence. If successful, they will be the same people demanding upgraded infrastructure, healthcare, etc. when there is no money available to maintain their standard of living.
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The minors involved didn’t come up with the lawsuit as part of some grassroots movement. They were enticed to do so by a US organization called Our Children’s Trust (OCT) that trolls for legal participants as young as eight years old. Their New Client Interest Form sets out:

If you’re between the ages of 8-18 and want to learn more about new potential youth-led legal actions represented or supported by Our Children’s Trust, and what it would mean to sign on as a plaintiff, please fill out the below fields.

OCT has similar youth legal actions taking place now in all 50 states and a number of other countries in the world. The organization affiliates with local eco-lawyers and activist-organizations (David Suzuki in our case) to get the on-location work done.

Involving 8-year-old kids in lawsuits against their own country, when they only just found out about the Easter Bunny, is pretty close to being child abuse. Do such children really know what they are doing and the toll it may take on them over the years? They are being cast into activist roles that will shape their futures before they ever begin to weigh the complicated issues they are now defiantly taking to the highest courts of the land. Their parents apparently believe in the “Climate Crisis” so completely that they are willing to sacrifice their own on the altar of Greta.
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The irony in all this is that the money behind OCT, which funds the La Rose v. Canada case and all the others, comes from fortunes originally established in the oil business and/or sustained by stock market funds invested in the growth of companies exploiting oil products for corporate profits. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund arose from their grandfather’s Standard Oil empire and is a major contributor to OCT’s revenue:

The industry that La Rose v. Canada want to harm is the progeny of Standard Oil, which established the base assets for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The investment income now sustaining that Fund may not arise from the actual production of oil today, but the public companies involved certainly demand and use vast amounts of fossil fuel to make profits for their stakeholders.
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La Rose v. Canada is child-lawfare waged by local climate mercenaries who are being directed and funded by foreign interests. The tolerance of our legal system for this attack on the Canadian economy under the insincere pretext that it is “for the children” is being tested. Hopefully the appeal will fail, and the child-pawns can go back to growing up.