• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • TP について/About
  • Topics/トピクス
    • Gender/ジェンダー
    • Globalisation/グローバリゼーション
    • Japan and Asia/日本とアジア
    • Japanese/日本語
    • Media/メディア
    • News/ニュース
    • Social Justice/社会正義
    • War and Empire/戦争&支配権力
    • Environment/環境
    • Other Stories/他の記事
  • Links/リンク
  • Contact

TokyoProgressive

Linking Progressives East and West Since 1997

東西のプログレッシブをつなぐ − 1997年設立  |  Linking Progressives East and West Since 1997

Pressed on Climate Views and Ties to Shell Oil, Barrett Once Again Calls Established Climate Science 'Controversial'

October 21, 2020 by Leave a Comment

 

From CommonDreams

Published on
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
by
Common Dreams

Pressed on Climate Views and Ties to Shell Oil, Barrett Once Again Calls Established Climate Science 'Controversial'

“Barrett again followed the standard script of climate denialists, repeatedly attempting to cast climate science as unsettled and a matter of controversy that she could not offer an opinion on.”

by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
0 Comments

Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett is sworn in on the first day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on October 12, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Edelman-Pool/Getty Images)

In answers to follow-up questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett once again falsely characterized the science behind human-caused climate change as “controversial” and declined to acknowledge the established link between carbon emissions and global warming.

Barrett invoked (pdf) previous Supreme Court decisions describing the climate crisis as a “controversial subject” and a “sensitive political topic” to justify her persistent refusal to answer straightforward questions about the scientific consensus tying human activity to the warming planet, doubling down on the denialist position she staked out during her confirmation hearings last week.

“It would be inappropriate for me, as a sitting judge and as a judicial nominee, to opine further on any subject of political controversy,” Barrett wrote, an answer she repeated several times with slight variations in response to the Judiciary Committee’s follow-up questionnaire, which was made public late Tuesday.

“Because this question raises matters that could be the subject of litigation, it would not be appropriate for me as a sitting judge to opine further,” Barrett replied when asked whether “power plants that burn coal emit pollutants into the air when operated.”

Throughout the questionnaire, as The Daily Poster’s David Sirota and Andrew Perez wrote late Tuesday, “Barrett again followed the standard script of climate denialists, repeatedly attempting to cast climate science as unsettled and a matter of controversy that she could not offer an opinion on.”

A moment that stood out in Amy Coney Barrett’s hearing is when she wouldn’t say if climate change is real.

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

Never Miss a Beat.

Get our best delivered to your inbox.

In her responses to the Judiciary committee’s follow-up Qs, released tonight, she said SCOTUS has said climate change is controversial so she can’t discuss it. pic.twitter.com/P7CLBE9WsI

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) October 21, 2020

In the wake of recent reporting by The Daily Poster, Barrett was also pressed on her ties to Shell Oil, where her father worked as an attorney for decades.

Pressed in writing by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Barrett acknowledged that her “father worked at Shell Oil Company for many years, and while on the Seventh Circuit, in an abundance of caution, I have recused myself from cases involving those Shell entities with which he was involved.”

When Whitehouse asked whether she would be required to recuse herself from cases involving any other oil companies, Barrett dodged the question, writing: “The question of recusal is a threshold question of law that must be addressed in the context of the facts of each case.”

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

This is the world we live in. This is the world we cover.

Because of people like you, another world is possible. There are many battles to be won, but we will battle them together—all of us. Common Dreams is not your normal news site. We don’t survive on clicks. We don’t want advertising dollars. We want the world to be a better place. But we can’t do it alone. It doesn’t work that way. We need you. If you can help today—because every gift of every size matters—please do. Without Your Support We Simply Don’t Exist.

Please select a donation method:



Related Articles

Biden Must Become the Climate-Commander-in-Chief

Burning Fossil Fuels Made Coronavirus Death Rate Worse, and Kills 200K Americans Per Year, Not to Mention Global Heating

Only Oversight of Oversight Will Keep Profiteers From Siphoning Stimulus Money Into Their Own Wallets

The Last Stimulus Ignored Climate. Activists Are Determined That Won't Happen in the Next One.

More in:
Climate, U.S.
,
Amy Coney Barrett, US Supreme Court, US Senate, Environment, Shell, Big Oil

Top Comments

(Click to see more comments or to join the conversation)

Filed Under: Common Dreams, Social Justice/社会正義

Join the Discussion

Comment on this article or respond to others' comments.

You can post below or send to the mailing list at discuss@list.tokyoprogressive.org.

a) Please sign you name at the bottom of your comment, so that we know who wrote it.

b) To prevent spam, comments need to be manually approved.

c) Comments which are insulting, racist, homophobic or submitted in bad faith will not be published.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

Search the site

Archives

Main Categories (old and most recent)

Alternative News Contributors/投稿者 creative Democracy Now Environment/環境 Featured Gender/ジェンダー Globalisation/グローバリゼーション Jacobin Japan/日本 Japan and Asia/日本とアジア Japanese/日本語 Japan Focus Japan News Korea/韓国 latest latest-j links Media/メディア Mp3 National Security Archive neoliberalism new News/ニュース Other Stories/他の記事 Social Justice/社会正義 Topics Uncategorized Video War and Empire/戦争&支配権力

Search deeper

Abe activities, protests, films, events Afghanistan alternative news Bush class issues and homelessness Environmental research fukushima gaza health care Henoko human rights Iraq Iraq, Afganistan and the War on Terror Iraq and Afghanistan, opposing the wars Israel Japan Korea labor issues Latin America Middle East military North Korea nuclear nuclear waste Obama Okinawa Okinawa Palestine peace protest protest and resistance racism/human rights radiation state crimes Syria Takae Tepco Trump U.S. War world news English ニュース/社会問題 人権 平和、憲法9条

Design and Hosting for Progressives

Donate/寄付

Please support our work. This includes costs involved in producing this news site as well as our free hosting service for activists, teachers and students. Donations/寄付 can be sent to us via PayPal or Donately. You can also click on the buttons below to make a one-time donation.




Work with us

TokyoProgressive
supports and participates in projects of like-minded people and groups directly (technical, editing, design) and not-so directly (financial or moral support). Likewise, we also welcome contributions by readers that are consistent with promoting social justice. If you have a project you would like help with, or if you would like to submit an article, link, or report on a protest activity, please contact us here.

Footer

All opinions are those of the original authors and may not reflect the views of TokyoProgressive. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for by copyright law in several countries. The material on this site is distributed without profit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyleft 1997-present: tokyoprogressive dot org

TokyoProgressive supports and participates in projects of like-minded people and groups directly (technical, editing, design) and not-so directly (financial or moral support). Likewise, we also welcome contributions by readers that are consistent with promoting social justice. If you have a project you would like help with, or if you would like to submit an article, link, or report on a protest activity, please contact us here.

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in