In Novel Tactic on Climate Change, Citizens Sue Their Governments
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
MAY 10, 2016
Victoria Barrett, 17, is a New York high school student and a plaintiff in a climate change lawsuit brought by Our Children’s Trust. Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Global warming is already disrupting the planet’s weather. Now it is having an impact on the courts, as well, as adults and children around the world try to enlist the judiciary in their efforts to blunt climate change.
In the United States, an environmental law nonprofit is suing the federal government on behalf of 21 young plaintiffs. Individuals in Pakistan and New Zealand have sued to force their governments to take stronger action to fight climate change. A farmer in Peru has sued a giant German energy utility over its part in causing global warming.
And while the arguments can be unconventional and surprising, some of the suits are making progress.
Last month, a federal magistrate judge in Oregon startled many legal experts by allowing the lawsuit filed on behalf of 21 teenagers and children to go forward, despite motions from the Obama administration and fossil fuel companies to dismiss it; the suit would force the government to take more aggressive action against climate change. The ruling by the magistrate judge, Thomas M. Coffin, now goes to Federal District Court to be accepted or rejected.
Michael B. Gerrard, the director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, called the ruling a potential landmark.
“It is the first time a federal court has suggested that government may have a constitutional duty to combat climate change, and that individuals can sue to enforce that right,” he said.
But other legal scholars were skeptical that the case would progress much further.
“The constitutional claims are novel, to say the least,” said David M. Uhlmann, a former federal prosecutor of environmental crimes who teaches law at the University of Michigan. “I have a hard time seeing the case succeeding in the Supreme Court, if it gets that far, and it may not even survive review in the Ninth Circuit.”
The young plaintiffs, led by the environmental law nonprofit Our Children’s Trust, argued that the Obama administration and the administrations before it had ample evidence of the risks of climate change and “willfully ignored this impending harm.”
Victoria Barrett, one of the plaintiffs, from Westchester County, N.Y., said that older generations had ignored the threat to the planet even as the scientific evidence of warming became undeniable.The current plans and efforts to battle climate change are not enough, Ms. Barrett, 17, said, adding that her generation, with its passion and social media tools, would make a difference.
“We want our children to look back in the textbooks and say, ‘Oh, our parents’ generation — they really fought for us,’ ” she said.
The lawsuit calls for the courts to order the government to stop the “permitting, authorizing and subsidizing of fossil fuels” — by, for example, canceling plans for projects like a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Oregon — and “to develop a national plan to restore Earth’s energy balance, and implement that national plan so as to stabilize the climate system.”
Julia Olson, the executive director and chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, helped form the organization in 2010 in collaboration with the iMatter Youth Movement, then known as Kids vs. Global Warming.
In an interview, Ms. Olson said the goal was to pursue action against climate change in the courts as a human rights issue, and in the name of young people. “Most of them can’t vote,” she said, “and they don’t have the money to lobby.”
Youth-oriented climate groups put out calls for volunteers, and Ms. Olson found herself with more than enough enthusiastic young activists willing to be plaintiffs. The organization is financed in part by individual contributions and institutional funding from groups like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which contributes heavily to environmental causes.
An earlier federal suit from Our Children’s Trust failed in 2012; the organization is also pursuing several lawsuits at the state level and collaborating on a number of international suits.
It scored a victory in Washington State recently, when Judge Hollis R. Hill of King County Superior Court ordered the State Department of Ecology to develop an emissions reduction rule in response to a legal challenge from Our Children’s Trust.
As for the federal case, Ms. Olson said, “We are optimistic that the decision will affirm the findings and the recommendations and put us on a track to a trial.”
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