Brian Griffiths: Despite the climate lawsuit, Pittman’s a hypocrite on the environment | COMMENTARY

Last week, Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman announced that the county would be filing suit against dozens of fossil fuel companies. Pittman’s ostensible reason for filing this lawsuit is what he alleges as  “decades of deception” by these companies for perceived environmental damage that came upon the county.

This, of course, is part of the continued Democratic strategy to gum up the courts with frivolous lawsuits designed to end America’s energy independence and instead be at the whims of taxpayer-subsidized alternative energy sources. There’s no political benefit to Democrats like Pittman if they can’t make sure that their political allies get their pet projects funded by taxpayers.

Pittman’s opposition to the fossil fuel companies, sadly, does not extend to his personal life, as Pittman recently bought a massive new camper.

Will Pittman, ever the environmental champion, be towing this three-ton (unloaded) beast with an electric vehicle? Of course he won’t because no electric vehicle has a towing capacity to tow it. Pittman, by necessity, will be using a gas-guzzling or diesel-spewing SUV or truck to tow his new plaything.

Fret not: Pittman already has a big gas-guzzling truck that he’s already boasted about publicly.

That Steuart Pittman is a hypocrite on the environment should not be a surprise to you. Let us take you back to 2019 when Pittman rammed a tough new forestry bill through the Anne Arundel County Council despite the fact that Pittman clear-cut seven acres of forest on the Dodon Land Trust family land that Pittman administered so his sister could build a winery. I wrote about this in this space back in 2019.

I don’t begrudge the fact that Pittman has a camper. More power to him. But the hypocrisy of Pittman purchasing a gas-guzzling behemoth as he is suing the gas companies that get him to his destination is extremely rich and indicative of the usual Democratic hypocrisy on environmental issues. It’s akin to when Hollywood stars take private jets to climate summits. And it deserves to be called out and mocked for the hypocrisy and elitism it displays.

It is Pittman’s wealth and privilege that allows him to take these hypocritical positions in his public and private lives. But he can also afford the economic impact that his policies and his legal actions are going to have on the county. If Pittman were to be successful with his lawsuit, the county would ostensibly receive damages from the fossil fuel manufacturers. Those costs of course will be ultimately borne by average taxpayers trying to buy vehicles or buy fuel to get on with their daily lives.

And that says nothing about all of the taxpayer dollars being wasted for Pittman’s purely political suit.

The greater irony is the fact that Pittman’s agricultural and farming background has likely created more local ground level pollution caused by fossil fuels than the companies he’s suing. Lots of equipment is used in the agriculture and equine industries, and that equipment is run on gasoline and diesel.

Maybe Pittman should be suing himself instead for all of the pollution he’s probably created over the years.

Steuart Pittman could very well be sincere in his beliefs. But, like so many on the far left, his professed public positions are not ones that he employs in his private life. Instead of filing lawsuits, Pittman would be better served by being the change he wants to see in the world first.

In my next column, I will address Pittman’s development plans for the county’s future and why these development policies are bad for our county’s future and environment.

Brian Griffiths is the publisher of The Duckpin, available for free at TheDuckpin.com, and host of The Duckpin Podcast, available on YouTube and wherever podcasts are available. He can be reached via email at brian.griffiths.media@gmail.com, on Twitter @BrianGriffiths, on Instagram @briangriffithsmd, or on Facebook at facebook.com/briangriffithsmd.