Fighting for their lives: Why children are taking the battle over climate change to court

Children worldwide are the victims of a profoundly fundamental injustice. They and future generations are victims of a carbon cartel in which governments and the fossil fuel industry are ruining their hopes for the future.

The world’s governments keep feeding the industry’s insatiable greed, giving it trillions of dollars annually in direct and indirect subsidies to keep producing oil, natural gas and coal — $6 trillion in 2020 alone. They know that fossil energy causes climate change, yet the world and the United States still obtain 80 percent of their energy from these fuels.

Children have the most to lose but the least power to stop it. They can’t vote; most can’t assert control as shareholders. They can and do protest, but moral arguments have had little effect. Their best and only legal recourse is in the courts.

Decades ago, Oregon environmental attorney Julia Olson took this personally after becoming a mother. She founded a nonprofit, Our Children’s Trust, to help children file lawsuits against government policies that promote fossil fuels. The result is litigation in 50 states and against the federal government, alleging that support for fossil fuel production violates youth’s constitutional right to life.

The first of these suits began last week in Montana, a state with a third of America’s recoverable coal reserves and a constitution that guarantees a “clean and healthful environment” for its citizens. Olson is the youngsters’ lead attorney.

In an even more consequential lawsuit, Olson and her team are helping 21 young Americans challenge the constitutionality of federal government policies that promote fossil fuel production and consumption. For eight years, the U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden have used legal maneuvers to keep the case from going to court.

Now, a federal judge has ruled the lawsuit, Juliana v. the United States, can proceed. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland shouldn’t continue standing in the way — the youth deserve the chance to defend their futures.

Observers doubt that either case, even if successful, will force changes in government energy policies. The carbon cartel is formidable. The industry buys the loyalty of Congress with unlimited monetary contributions to political campaigns. Last year it spent more than $130 million on congressional elections, with 83 percent going to Republicans. It spent another $124 million to lobby the federal government for more oil and gas subsidies, infrastructure spending, and so on.

Yet, a victory in Juliana could influence the outcome of 685 other lawsuits against climate-related government policies worldwide. The children’s goals in Montana are a declaration by the court that they are entitled to a future free of catastrophic climate change. In addition, they want the court to affirm that public officials have a fiduciary duty to protect vital natural resources like the atmosphere for current and future generations — a legal principle called the Public Trust Doctrine.

Further, they want the judge to establish that climate stability requires dramatically reducing the atmosphere’s concentration of greenhouse gases. Scientists say the climate would be stable at 350 parts per million. It is now 420 ppm and climbing. Concentrations of the principal gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), have increased 100 times faster than during the Earth’s last warming period, with half the increase in the last 40 years.

Scientists now predict that warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius next year, the preferred limit of the Paris climate agreement. Nevertheless, the International Monetary Fund reports that direct and indirect fossil energy subsidies in the United States totaled $662 billion in 2020 — 33 times the $20 billion usually cited in the media.

As the trial began in Montana last week, an unscheduled witness appeared to underscore the importance of the children’s case. Smoke from 437 active wildfires in Canada — the same smoke that turned New York City’s air into an opaque orange toxic soup — crossed into Montana and triggered warnings it was dangerous to breathe in the Big Sky state.

Wildfires are one of several types of weather disasters providing indisputable evidence our climate is becoming more violent and rapidly making life in the United States more dangerous. As June began, there had been nine climate-related weather disasters this year, with losses exceeding $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and Space Administration (NOAA). Nearly 150 million people were at risk of flooding as spring began. In April, 25 inches of rain fell over 12 hours, triggering flash floods in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It was an event with a statistical likelihood of happening only once every 1,000-2,000 years.

The right to life in the Constitution is not well defined. But it certainly must include the fundamental rights necessary for life: clean air, unpolluted water, toxin-free foods, and reasonable safety from human-caused deadly weather. The fossil energy industry and governments that support it are violating those rights.

Air pollution has dropped 78 percent since Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970. However, the American Lung Association (ALA) says 64 million Americans — one in three of us — still live where fossil fuel pollution makes breathing dangerous. About 7.5 million American children suffer from asthma, often because of poor air quality. The ALA says frequent and intense heat, drought and wildfires are making it more difficult to protect air quality. One study estimates air pollution causes as many as 200,000 deaths annually in the United States, about half from fossil fuel combustion.

The World Economic Forum acknowledges that water is a “fundamental human right.” However, climate-induced drought threatens water availability. So does fossil energy production and consumption, which account for about 40 percent of all water withdrawals in the U.S. 2.2 million Americans lack running water, and 44 million have inadequate water systems.

Climate change is a “primary driver” of global hunger, according to World Food Program (WFP). Researchers warn that 120 million people worldwide may be exposed to severe compound droughts yearly by the end of the century. Climate shocks like droughts and floods kill crops and livestock, degrade soils, damage infrastructure and drive up food prices. When that happens, conflict, displacement and mass migration follow.

These are only some of the threats to the lives of present and future generations. Climate change also compromises the pursuit of happiness, another unalienable right the Declaration of Independence calls self-evident. The carbon cartel is openly and profitably threatening it.

While the Montana lawsuit is the first of its kind in U.S. history, it must not be the last. And because greenhouse gases don’t stop at state boundaries, litigation should not be limited to state energy policies. The U.S. government and governments worldwide need to fulfill their obligation to fundamental human rights by ending fossil fuel pollution.

Our children deserve credit and all the support we can give them for trying to hold governments accountable.

William Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP), a nonpartisan initiative founded in 2007 that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations for the White House and Congress on climate and energy policies. PCAP is not affiliated with the White House.