A court in New Jersey has — correctly, in our view — dismissed a lawsuit state officials were attempting to bring against a number of the country’s larger oil companies.

As the New Jersey Business and Industry Association notes, the ruling notes both state and federal precedent that the courts are an inappropriate venue for furthering wide-ranging climate change policy.

The ability or risk that judges in one state could hinder the ability of private companies to develop and produce a critically valuable resource in all 50 states has thankfully been averted. Critics of “fossil fuels” will have to take their case to legislatures. More realistic lawmakers will have the opportunity to transparently ask questions about the economic impact of environmental extremism on the heating and electric bills of American families, about the tendency to conflate consensus that climate change is real and than human activity contributes to it with conclusions on which there is no — and likely can never be — consensus, such as the extent specific human activities contribute, how severe and how soon the impact will be seen and whether more moderate, reasonable changes would offer the American public the balanced solutions we believe they want.

We hope that, under the appropriate processes, our lawmakers are capable of improving regulatory oversight so that it is less burdensome and, more importantly, more effective. We hope — and are confident — that in the deliberative venue of our legislatures that the proven track record of the natural gas industry for cleaner emissions can be acknowledged. We trust that our legislators are better suited to asking the important questions and reaching the important compromises than judges and the legal system.