A key reason that anxiety is booming among young people today is their intuitive understanding that the planet’s ecosystem is in distress and most of us adults are doing nothing meaningful to help. Think our descendants will not hold us responsible for our failure of fiduciary duty owed to them in managing humanity’s most critical resource: a healthy, sustainable planet? Think again. All other human rights are meaningless in a toxic biosphere. This will not be just about moral blame for our reckless disregard for their health and viability, this will also be expressed in lawsuits that will exact pecuniary reparations from governments, corporations, agencies and individuals who knew better, could have made a difference, but chose to perpetrate the status quo anyway.
A decision from the US District Court in Eugene, Oregon yesterday offers a flavour. See Can a surprise lawsuit in Oregon save American climate policy:
In 2015, a group of young Americans filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration, claiming that the United States government had failed to take sufficient action on climate change, and that this failure was unconstitutional. The Obama administration moved to dismiss the lawsuit, but, yesterday, Judge Ann Aiken of the U.S. District Court in Eugene, Oregon, rejected the administration’s motion, in an extraordinary decision that could prove consequential for U.S. climate policy.
In brief, the plaintiffs — 21 Americans between the ages of nine and 20, with legal guidance from Our Children’s Trust — allege that the U.S. government’s knowing inaction on climate has violated their right to “life, liberty, and property” as enshrined in the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The case will go to trial in 2017. Elizabeth Brown, staff attorney at Our Children’s Trust, says the plaintiffs will establish that government officials knowingly ignored an existential threat to its citizens.
Here are the Judge’s key findings:
