Kids Sue The Government For Not Protecting Them From Climate Change
A group of juvenile activists in Washington state are the latest youths to bring their concerns over climate change inaction to the courts.
In Seattle on Tuesday, eight petitioners between the ages of 12 and 16 asked a judge to find Washington state in contempt for failing to fulfill court orders from April and last November to protect the constitutional rights of young people and future generations from climate pollution.
They’re awaiting a decision from King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill, who said she needed more time to make a decision, The Associated Press reported. But Our Children’s Trust, the Oregon-based nonprofit behind the lawsuit and similar efforts nationwide, is hopeful on the case’s outlook.
“Judge Hill didn’t rule from the bench, but this hearing definitely went good,” the group wrote in a Facebook update Tuesday.
The plaintiffs want the court to intervene and force the state’s Department of Ecology to require more drastic emissions reductions. The Clean Air Rule the department released, the youth group argues, only requires 19 companies in the state to reduce emissions by 1.7 percent ― a “grossly inadequate” amount for addressing climate change that doesn’t fulfill the previous court orders.
In court, the AP reported, the state’s lawyers argued that the previous court did not make any specific requirements for the Clean Air Rule. The policy the state adopted, the department told The Huffington Post, is one of the country’s most pioneering.
“We agree, taking action on climate change is imperative and a priority for the Department of Ecology,” the department’s climate policy and communications manager Camille St. Onge said. “We have acted in good faith and adopted one of the nation’s most progressive regulations to reduce carbon pollution. It will take local governments and state agencies working together to make the deep carbon reductions needed to do our part to help slow climate change.
Lawsuits like these, the plaintiffs argued, are crucial given the poor outlook for climate change policy under a Donald Trump presidency.
“It’s a pretty grim time for people in this country who breathe air and drink water,” petitioner Aji Piper, 16, said outside the courthouse before the hearing. “Our president-elect is somebody who blatantly denies climate change and it’s a fact that makes the future of the children, my future, look pretty bleak.”
Piper is a plaintiff in both the Washington case and a case out of Oregon against the Obama administration also supported by Our Children’s Trust. The latter was brought by 21 activists ages 9 to 20 and alleges that the federal government violated their rights by allowing climate-polluting activities. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Eugene, Oregon, decided to allow the case to proceed.
Our Children’s Trust Executive Director Julia Olson told Climate Central that Trump’s administration will probably be substituted in as defendants if the case is not decided by the end of Obama’s term.
“This could be ― both of these cases ― the last chance we have to establish ... a path back to climate stability and safety for my generation and all generations to come,” Piper said.
This story has been updated to include comment from St. Onge.
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He does not believe in climate change.
More than 97 percent of scientists agree that the world's climate is warming and it’s caused by human activities. Yet Ebell believes this consensus of climate experts is “phony” and “not based on science.”
In 2015, Ebell called Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change “scientifically ill informed, economically illiterate, intellectually incoherent and morally obtuse.”
“It is also theologically suspect, and large parts of it are leftist drivel,” he added.
Even if climate change is real, he believes there’ll be 'benefits.'
“Yes, rising sea levels, if they happen, would be bad for a lot of people. But a warming trend would be good for other people,” he wrote.
There would be “fewer and less severe big winter storms,” he claimed. And “life in many places would become more pleasant. Instead of 20 below zero in January in Saskatoon, it might be only 10 below. And I don’t think too many people would complain if winters in Minneapolis became more like winters in Kansas City.”
Ebell’s op-ed was full of fallacies.
For one, according to the EPA (which, again, is the agency that Ebell has been tapped to lead the transition of), climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including winter storms.
No surprise, he's not a scientist.
The fossil fuel industry helps finance his advocacy group.
The CEI has a long track record of taking money from the fossil fuel industry. It received $2 million from ExxonMobil from 1998 to 2005, according to Vanity Fair.
The Washington Post reported in 2013 that Marathon Petroleum, Koch Industries, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers were among the donors for CEI’s annual dinner.
Murray Energy Corporation, America’s largest underground coal mining company (and a critic and litigant of the EPA), was the biggest energy donor of the night.
When asked about this on C-Span in 2015, Ebell — who had at first insisted that he doesn’t “represent” companies — admitted that he wasn’t getting as much money from energy firms as he’d like.
“I’d like to see a lot more funding from all of those companies, but unfortunately many of the coal companies are now going bankrupt,” he said. “I would like to have more funding so that I can combat the nonsense put out by the environmental movement.”
He chairs a group focused on 'dispelling the myths of global warming.'
He opposes the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Ebell has been a vocal critic of the deal, calling Obama’s joining of the treaty “unconstitutional.”
He’s worked to reduce protections for endangered species.
He’s proud to be loathed
"The Clean Air Trust in March 2001 named Mr. Ebell its 'Villain of the Month' for his role in convincing the Bush Administration not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions," the bio continued.
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