Our Children's Trust

promoted to primary, hope

triple threat/ pincer/whammy: natural gas, CPP and lawsuit

see RICO GW,

also COURTS 2

capt 619

2.20 bak juliana

Fail PERC

Former PERC executive director Terry Anderson was one of the State of Montana’s expert witnesses at the Held v. Montana trial and presented himself as the founder of “free market environmentalism.”

He presented data about greenhouse gas emissions that the judge in the case wrote “was not well-supported, contained errors, and was not given weight by the Court.”

In response to questions about some of those papers and stances from the past, Dwyer said many were more than 20 years old and written by people no longer affiliated with the organization.

2 22

A group of 13 youth climate activists has filed a lawsuit accusing their home state of Virginia of backing fossil fuel projects that contribute to the climate crisis in violation of their constitutional and public trust rights. The plaintiffs are aged 10 to 19 and are represented by Our Children’s Trust. In related news, another group of young activists announced their historic climate trial against the state of Montana will begin next February.

assert 1st? 5th and 9th amendment protections

off site

https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/

2/22

November 1, 2021: Settlement Negotiations End

Settlement talks between the Juliana youth, their attorneys, and the Department of Justice, ended without resolution after five months.

The youth plaintiffs are awaiting a ruling on their Motion for Leave to File a Second Amended Complaint and the Motion to Intervene filed by 18 states, led by Alabama.

timeline:

desmog 920

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/09/03/youth-climate-lawsuit-portugal-33-european-countries

six young people from Portugal have filed an unprecedented climate change lawsuit against almost all of Europe, targeting 33 European nations for failing to take adequate action on the climate crisis that they say threatens their human rights.

It is the latest in a series of legal actions brought by young people around the world demanding urgent climate action to protect their fundamental rights and safeguard their futures.

Six young people from Portugal have filed an unprecedented climate change lawsuit against almost all of Europe, targeting 33 European nations for failing to take adequate action on the climate crisis that they say threatens their human rights.

It is the latest in a series of legal actions brought by young people around the world demanding urgent climate action to protect their fundamental rights and safeguard their futures.

The case was filed on September 3 in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. It is the first climate case brought directly to this international court. Lawyers for the youth plaintiffs will argue that European governments’ current plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient to prevent catastrophic climate change and therefore constitute human rights violations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

“If successful, the 33 countries would be legally bound, not only to ramp up emissions cuts, but also to tackle overseas contributions to climate change, including those of their multinational companies,” the charity Global Legal Action Network, which is providing legal support for the case, explained in a press release.

These 6 Portuguese young people face a devastating future of spiraling heat extremes

Today, with our support, they've filed an unprecedented climate case against 33 European states demanding deep&... Countries named as defendants in the case include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Ukraine. These nations make up the European Union plus six other countries that together are the major emitters in Europe.

According to research from Climate Action Tracker, which tracks and analyzes countries’ emissions reduction policies, the policies of these nations do not align with the Paris Agreement goals of limiting global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) and pursuing a limit of 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).

The United Nations Environment Programme refers to this misalignment between what nations of the world promised under the Paris Agreement and what their domestic policies on emissions cuts actually represent as the “emissions gap.” Under current climate policies, the world is on track for more than 3 degrees C (5.4 degrees F) of warming by 2100. An October 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of increased risks to human health, livelihoods, food and water security, and other dangerous impacts if warming exceeds 1.5 degrees C.

But top climate scientists like Dr. James Hansen have warned that even warming of 1.5 degrees C is not safe. In a 2013 paper Hansen and colleagues explained that rapid emissions reductions are needed to stabilize the climate and “avoid potentially disastrous impacts on today’s young people, future generations, and nature.” That paper pointed to the “intergenerational injustice” of the climate crisis and suggested that courts could play a key role in remedying that injustice....

Plaintiffs in Landmark Youth Climate Case Want Their Day in Court

The 21 young plaintiffs in the landmark climate lawsuit Juliana v. United States have asked for a full court review of the case's dismissal.

https://theconversation.com/the-dramatic-dismissal-of-a-landmark-youth-climate-lawsuit-might-not-close-the-book-on-that-case-130162

http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/01/17/18-36082.pdf

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon Ann L. Aiken, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted June 4, 2019 Portland, Oregon Filed January 17, 2020

Before: Mary H. Murguia and Andrew D. Hurwitz, Circuit Judges, and Josephine L. Staton,* District Judge. Opinion by Judge Hurwitz; Dissent by Judge Staton * The Honorable Josephine L. Staton, United States District Judge for the Central District of California, sitting by designation.

code ...]

https://www.ecowatch.com/juliana-v-united-states-tossed-2644863188.html

An appeals court tossed out the landmark youth climate lawsuit *Juliana v. United States* Friday, arguing that the courts are not the place to resolve the climate crisis... The Guardian explained. However, the majority ruled that the courts did not have the power to order a plan for government action to address the crisis, as the 12-to-23-year-old plaintiffs had requested.

"Reluctantly, we conclude that such relief is beyond our constitutional power," Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz wrote in the court's opinion. "Rather, the plaintiffs' impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government."

[twt]

The decision raises the question of where young people can turn to ensure their futures are protected.

"The idea that their only recourse is to go to the very branches of government that are violating their rights when half of them can't even vote is a preposterous notion," the young people's lead lawyer Julia Olson told The New York Times.

In her dissent, Judge Josephine L. Staton agreed, criticizing her colleagues for "throw[ing] up their hands."

"Where is the hope in today's decision?" she wrote. "Plaintiffs' claims are based on science, specifically, an impending point of no return. If plaintiffs' fears, backed by the government's own studies, prove true, history will not judge us kindly. When the seas envelop our coastal cities, fires and droughts haunt our interiors, and storms ravage everything between, those remaining will ask: Why did so many do so little?"

The lawsuit was filed in 2015 by the 21 plaintiffs with the support of the nonprofit Our Children's Trust, according to Climate Liability News. It argues that by supporting a fossil-fuel based economy despite evidence it was contributing to climate change, the federal government violated the public trust and the young plaintiffs' constitutional rights to life, liberty and property.

For example, plaintiff Levi Draheim, 12, has had to repeatedly evacuate his home in Satellite Beach, Florida because of more extreme storms, according to The Guardian. Jaime Butler, 19, has been separated from her home and relatives in Navajo Nation because of water insecurity.

The federal government has tried to dismiss the case several times since it was filed, according to Climate Liability News. And Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark told The New York Times that the government was "pleased with the outcome" of Friday's decision.

However, Our Children's Trust and the plaintiffs have vowed to keep fighting and to ask the full Ninth Circuit to review the decision, the group announced in a press release.

"We will continue this case because only the courts can help us," Draheim said. "We brought this lawsuit to secure our liberties and protect our lives and our homes. Much like the civil rights cases, we firmly believe the courts can vindicate our constitutional rights and we will not stop until we get a decision that says so."

If the full Ninth Circle refuses to hear the case, the group would then have to appeal to the Supreme Court, Climate Liability News explained....

2x no lnx

'Where Is the Hope?' After Juliana v. U.S. Lawsuit Gets Tossed by Federal Court

Olivia Rosane Jan. 20, 2020

Protesters attend a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court held by the group Our Children's Trust Oct. 29, 2018 in Washington, DC. The group and the plaintiffs have vowed to keep fighting and to ask the full Ninth Circuit to review Friday's decision to toss the lawsuit. Win McNamee / Getty Images

An appeals court tossed out the landmark youth climate lawsuit Juliana v. United States Friday, arguing that the courts are not the place to resolve the climate crisis.

The three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appealsagreed with the 21 young plaintiffs that the U.S. government had actively contributed to climate change by supporting a fossil-fuel based economy and that the young people had been injured by its actions, The Guardian explained. However, the majority ruled that the courts did not have the power to order a plan for government action to address the crisis, as the 12-to-23-year-old plaintiffs had requested.

"Reluctantly, we conclude that such relief is beyond our constitutional power," Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz wrote in the court's opinion. "Rather, the plaintiffs' impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government."

The decision raises the question of where young people can turn to ensure their futures are protected.

In her dissent, Judge Josephine L. Staton agreed, criticizing her colleagues for "throw[ing] up their hands."

However, Our Children's Trust and the plaintiffs have vowed to keep fighting and to ask the full Ninth Circuit to review the decision, the group announced in a press release.

If the full Ninth Circle refuses to hear the case, the group would then have to appeal to the Supreme Court, Climate Liability News explained.

Supreme Court Puts Historic Youth Climate Lawsuit on Hold ... ›

U.S. appeals court tosses children's climate lawsuit | Science | AAAS ›

Landmark Youth Climate Change Case Tossed - Rolling Stone ›

code fail

he 21 children and young adults suing the federal government over climate change argue that they and their generation are already suffering the consequences of climate change, from worsening allergies and asthma to the health risks and stress that come with hurricanes, wildfires and sea level rise threatening their homes.

With the case back in court on Tuesday, some of the heaviest hitters in the public health arena—including 15 major health organization and two former U.S. surgeons general—have been publicly backing them up.

Today's children will feel the health impacts of climate change into adulthood if the federal government doesn't transition away from fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, public health experts wrote in a letter published May 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), echoing a larger court brief signed onto by major health organizations.

"More frequent and longer heat waves, increasing intensity of extreme weather events such as droughts and wildfires, worsening infectious-disease exposures, food and water insecurity, and air pollution from fossil-fuel burning all threaten to destabilize our public health and health care infrastructure," the authors wrote.

Children and infants are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as their bodies are still developing, they said. Their respiratory rates are also higher, so particles from fossil fuel burning and ozone take a greater toll. Increasing temperatures contribute to heat stroke risk for children, and can harm babies in utero. And warming temperatures can affect the spread of disease-carrying vectors like ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease, and mosquitoes, which can carry viruses like Zika.

"These are affecting children's health now, and certainly affecting their future," said Frederica Perera, a co-author of the letter and the director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University. "It's not an abstraction, and not some future threat. It is happening now."

Researchers are only beginning to understand the magnitude of health issues caused by climate change, said Renee Salas, another co-author of the letter and an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. "We are just scratching the surface in our understanding of what those health burdens truly are," she said.

Salas said she hopes the lawsuit and letter "can continue to make climate change personal for people, because health truly is that common denominator that we all share."

Government's Climate Duties and Failures

In their lawsuit, Juliana vs. United States, the children and young adults accuse the federal government of violating their constitutional rights by failing to take action on climate change and continuing to promote and subsidize fossil fuels.

The lawsuit is based on the public trust doctrine, a legal concept that the government holds resources such as land, water or fisheries in trust for its citizens.Climate litigators contend that the government is a trustee of the atmosphere, too, and the young plaintiffs argue that the government abrogated its duty to limit fossil fuel use and cut greenhouse gas emissions, despite knowledge for decades that combustion of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and changes the climate.

The federal government has fought the case at every turn and has tried repeatedly to get it dismissed, which led to this latest hearing.

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of theU.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard the two sides' arguments, which the judges will now consider as they weigh whether the case will be allowed to move forward.

The children's lawyer, Julia Olson from Our Children's Trust, faced off against U.S. Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark, a Trump administration appointee who represented the oil giant BP in lawsuits over the nation's largest oil spill and has repeatedly challenged the science of climate change. So far, the government's lawyers haven't contested the argument that climate change is harming the plaintiffs. Instead, they have said the federal government is not responsible and have focused on arguments that the court doesn't have the authority to order the political branches to act.

During the hearing, the judges asked tough questions of both sides. The Supreme Court had warned the appeals court to tread carefully in the highly unusual and potentially precedent-setting case, and the judges were doing so.

"You present compelling evidence that we have a real problem," Judge Andrew Hurwitz told Olson. "You present compelling evidence that we have inaction by the other two branches of government. It may even rise to the level of criminal neglect. The tough question for me, and I suspect for my colleagues, is do we get to act because of that."

"You're arguing for us to break new ground," the judge said.

Clark, arguing for the government, told the judges that a ruling for the plaintiffs would be "a dagger at the separation of powers."

Olson focused on the children's constitutional rights to life and personal security, saying future generations would look back and see that "government-sanctioned climate disruption was the constitutional issue of this century."

The plaintiffs are calling for sweeping changes in federal climate efforts and in government programs that subsidize or foster the development of fossil fuels. The trial, if allowed to proceed, could bring to light decades of federal policy on fossil fuels and climate change—including information previously unknown to the public.

'They Were Born Into This Problem'

The NEJM letter echoed an amicus brief filed in support of the young plaintiffs' lawsuit by nearly 80 physicians and researchers and 15 health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Heart Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

"There's a really robust body of scientific literature that supports each of these different kinds of health impacts that are already being observed and are projected to get worse and worse," said Shaun Goho, deputy director of the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School and one of the attorneys who filed the amicus brief.

"The Juliana generation is going to feel and suffer from those impacts in a way that's really different and more extreme than what any previous generation has felt," Goho said.

Two former U.S. surgeons general also weighed in, publishing an op-ed in The New York Times on Monday. Drs. Richard Carmona and David Satcher warned about several effects of climate change on health, from cognitive impairments due to malnutrition to lost school days and mental health concerns.

"The country has eliminated polio, reduced cancer death rates and raised life expectancy over time," they wrote. "Now, as the country faces the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change, the country needs to understand the public health implications of a warming climate."

The former surgeons general, like the NEJM letter, pointed out that children inherited the changing climate that threatens their future.

"They were born into this problem; they did not create it," they wrote. "They are uniquely vulnerable: their developing bodies suffer disproportionately from climate change's most serious and deadly harms."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

ACTIVISM

REGULATION

CHILDREN'S CLIMATE LAWSUIT

LITIGATION

HEALTH

CLIMATE CHANGE

chevron takes lead in defense (state city lawsuits for damage agw) b/c exxon and others KNEW; using 1st amend defense cf drilled season 2

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15012019/colorado-oil-gas-drilling-supreme-court-ruling-climate-change-public-health

gov polis goes for law change

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/27/oil-manufacturers-accountability-project-trade-group-climate-suits

no lnx pix many lnx

Battling for Big Oil: Manufacturing Trade Group Leads Assault on Climate Suits

Read time: 12 mins

By Guest • Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - 11:09

By Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Crossposted from Climate Liability News.

In its fight to stave off a wave of climate change-related lawsuits, the fossil fuel industry has found a vocal and unapologetic ally in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).The 123-year old trade group represents a wide range of the nation’s manufacturing companies, but it has frequently gone to bat for select segments of its membership during major liability battles. Currently, it is Big Oil’s staunchest defender.

The group has filed briefs defending oil companies in liability lawsuits, launched campaigns to discredit the communities filing them, and has worked to stop shareholders from pressing the oil companies to disclose climate risks. In these roles, NAM has put itself front and center in the effort to keep fossil fuel companies from being held liable for their role in climate change, and from paying for the related damages that will run in the hundreds of billions of dollars to communities across the country.

“Taxpayer resources should not be used for baseless lawsuits that are designed to enrich trial lawyers and grab headlines for politicians,” Lindsey de la Torre, executive director of NAM’s spinoff group, theManufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP), said in a statement after Rhode Island filed one of the climate liability lawsuits last year. NAM launched MAP in 2017 as a response to the increasing number of climate liability suits.

Those suits, according to NAM, are a result of a coordinated campaign by activists “to disparage U.S. manufacturers with a focus on America’s largest energy manufacturers.”

MAP is now attempting to convince the American public — as well as judges who might hear those liability cases — that attempts to hold companies accountable for their role in climate change will harm business, said Richard Daynard, president of Northeastern University Law School’s Public Health Advocacy Institute and chair of its Tobacco Products Liability Project.

Manufacturers' Accountability Project logo

The Manufacturers' Accountability Project (MAP) was launched in November 2017 to push back against climate-change-related lawsuits affecting the manufacturing industry. ]

“This is essentially the PR front for the defendants in climate litigation,” Daynard said, adding that MAP is also working to discourage municipalities from filing future suits.

“This is all part of a long history of tort reformpropaganda,” he said, adding that NAM has worked for decades to reign in all types of liability litigation, including against the tobacco industry.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that NAM’s defense of fossil fuel companies has begun to look increasingly like its support for the tobacco industry in the 1980s. Similar tactics were used when tobacco companies were facing hundreds of lawsuits and were charged with racketeering by the federal government for deceiving the public about the catastrophic health hazards of smoking. NAM has even hired the same law firm that defended the tobacco industry to launch an assault on the climate liability lawsuits.

NAM recently named Phil Goldberg, a former coal lobbyist as special counsel for MAP. Goldberg is a managing partner in the Washington office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, which gained notoriety for defending the tobacco industry, and is the co-chair of the firm’s public policy group.

Some say Shook, Hardy & Bacon went beyond defending tobacco companies, actively coordinating efforts by its clients to deliberately deceive the public about the ruinous health effects of smoking.

Judge Gladys Kessler, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who found 10 tobacco companies guilty of violating racketeering laws in 2006, said the company’s lawyers “played an absolute central role in the creation and perpetuation” of the companies’ “fraudulent schemes,” calling it a “sad and disquieting chapter” in the legal profession.

Even before Goldberg was hired, MAP had launched an offensive against climate suits, filing friend-of-the-court briefs and intervening in a landmark constitutional suit brought by21 young people against the U.S. government. MAP has also submitted public records requests and coordinated a public relations campaign to discredit the municipalities behind the liability lawsuits.

Sharon Eubanks, a former Department of Justice lawyer who led the government’s racketeering case against the tobacco industry, said MAP is launching a direct attack on climate litigation suits.

“It’s very similar what they’re doing, only the tobacco industry at least didn’t come right out and say ‘We’re going to target these lawsuits directly,’” Eubanks said. “They did so indirectly. But NAM and MAP, they’re like, ‘We’re targeting the lawsuits.’”

Michael Barnett, a professor of management & global business at Rutgers Business School who has studied trade associations, said groups like NAM exist to defend the interests of their industry.

“It’s sort of an outsourced arm of those firms, rather than doing it all on their own, there’s strength in numbers,” Barnett said. “There’s some efficiency to having one centralized legal defense that attacks on behalf of the whole industry in addition to each of the individual firms taking on these issues.”

No Stranger to the Liability Battlefield

The addition of Goldberg to MAP’s legal team indicates a continuing commitment to defending NAM’s fossil fuel defendants. In addition to being the go-to law firm for tobacco companies, Shook, Hardy & Bacon has a long history with NAM, partnering as far back as 2007 to support firms facing product liability suits. The firm worked so closelywith the tobacco industry to attack the science showing the dangers of smoking it was named in several cases along with their clients, charging them with deceiving the public by fraudulently concealing the health effects of smoking. Oklahoma’s attorney general called Shook, Hardy & Bacon an “aider and abettor” of fraud in one suit.

“[The Department of Justice] considered suing them and making them defendants because they were so much a part of the RICO violations we alleged,” Eubanks said.

“They’re not even hiding from anything, they’re just saying ‘we want to influence what’s happening in these cases the best way that we can.’”

She said she’s seen no evidence that MAP’s tactics are illegal, but they are similar to some of what was alleged in the tobacco cases.

Goldberg did not respond to a request for comment. In a NAM press release he said, “The NAM and its Manufacturers’ Accountability Project are the tip of the spear in the fight against the wave of unfounded public nuisance lawsuits targeting America’s manufacturers.”

Goldberg said climate liability suits get in the way of finding real solutions and “are more about politics than addressing the global challenge of climate change.” He did not elaborate on what the solutions are or how municipalities will pay for the infrastructure needed to protect their residents, costs that are projected to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars nationwide.

A History of Advocating for Fossil Fuel Members

NAM, which was founded in 1895, describes itself as the largest manufacturing association in the United States. It doesn’t publicly disclose its membership list, but its board includes some of the oil and gas industry’s most powerful executives.

Exxon senior vice president and management committee member Neil Chapman joined NAM’s executive committee in 2015, taking over the position vacated by current Exxon chief executive Darren Woods. Chapman, who donated $10,000 to NAM’s political action committee during the 2018 election cycle, also serves as NAM’s southwest regional vice chair.

Chapman and Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.

For decades, the association has promoted climate denial, founding the Global Climate Coalition in 1989 and sharing offices until 1992 while the Global Climate Coalition and its members — primarily energy companies and automobile manufacturers — worked to cast doubt on what was fast becoming overwhelming scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels drives climate change. The goal was to change the public’s perception and cast doubt on climate science.

The Global Climate Coalition was disbanded in 2002 after several of its largest corporate members pulled out under public pressure to accept that climate change — and the projected catastrophic effects — was an undeniable global threat.

More recently, NAM’s focus has shifted from promoting climate deception to defending member companies from efforts to hold them accountable for years of deceiving the public and damaging the climate.

Along with the American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, NAM in 2015 joined the landmark youth climate lawsuit Juliana v. United States as an intervenor on the side of the federal government.

Calling the suit a “direct threat to businesses,” the trade associations said the “significant reduction in [greenhouse gas] emissions would cause a significant negative effect on [their] members by constraining the sale of the product they have specialized in developing and selling.” When the court asked intervenors to explain their views on climate change, NAM quickly backed out.

When the liability lawsuits began — and now total more than a dozen from communities across the country and one state (Rhode Island) — NAM responded by launching MAP to “set the record straight and highlight foundations and other activists who have sought to undermine and weaken manufacturing in the United States” by engaging in climate change-related litigation.

MAP came out swinging, claiming that then-New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s use of the Martin Act to investigate Exxon for possible climate change-related fraud was “politically motivated.” It demanded New York Mayor Bill de Blasio apologize to New Yorkers for using an outside firm to file its suit against five major oil companies and launched a campaign to highlight what it called de Blasio’s “politically-motivated attacks on manufacturers.”

Eubanks said that rhetoric doesn’t add up.

“Lawsuits are to enforce the law, to ensure that people are following the law and it takes you out of a political process and puts you before a neutral person, a judge,” she said, adding that Shook, Hardy & Bacon also does a good bit of political lobbying.

“They say, ‘We think these matters should be handled by legislation, not litigation, and by regulations that will come out of any statutes that are enacted,” she said. “Then they fight real hard to make sure there are no statutes that come down the pike because regulations come out of regulatory authority, so it sounds real good, but that’s wholly inconsistent with their approach.”

NAM and MAP have made a big deal out of the potential for future RICO charges against the fossil fuel industry— the same racketeering laws that ultimately ensnared the tobacco industry — and contend that a conspiracy is being waged on the other side by a “group of politically motivated activists” who are “trying to take down America’s energy manufacturers.”

“Right now, there are groups of trial lawyers slinking around the country tantalizing elected officials in cities and states with unrealistic promises of jackpot justice if they will only agree to sue energy manufacturers over climate change,” said NAM president and chief executive Jay Timmons in NAM’s State of Manufacturing Address last week in Houston. “These lawyers — they want to get rich at the expense of manufacturing workers.”

Daynard said this type of messaging is used in an effort to control the narrative around — and media coverage of — climate litigation.

“They have this notion that if they can get continue to get news coverage and establish themselves, they can make sure when cases are filed journalists will look, go to them and they can then get in some comment on how this is all worthless crazy stuff stirred up by ‘greedy lawyers’ or ‘ideologically driven NGO’s,’” Daynard said.

To try and substantiate its view that litigation is part of a vast conspiracy — and in what some say is an attempt to have a chilling effect on municipalities that file lawsuits — MAP has also submitted extensive public record requests to plaintiffs in the suits, seeking documents and communication between the municipalities and their attorneys, prior records requests that include those attorneys, certain communication regarding the defendant companies and communication between the municipalities and billionaire Tom Steyer, founder of NextGen, a progressive organization working to stem the risks of climate change for future generations.

When Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin filed the first state-level suit last July, MAP denounced it.

Eubanks said ensuring manufacturers abide by state law is exactly what attorneys general should do.

“We have consumer protection statutes, we have consumer protection agencies, that’s part of what makes this country great,” Eubanks said. “You can’t just come in and roll over people with deceptive and unfair methods of competition, you can’t just lie about things without consequences and we have organizations to protect that. That’s what I find so alarming about this — the whole idea that there’s something wrong with enforcing the law.”

NAM did not respond to a request for comment. De la Torre could not be reached for comment.

Perhaps NAM’s biggest attack on liability suits thus far has been its accusations against several California municipalities.

Not long after the suits were filed, Exxon went on the offensive,accusing plaintiffs of failing to disclose climate risks to their bond investors.

To try to bolster that allegation, NAM — along with the industry ally Competitive Enterprise Institute — asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether several cities and counties that filed climate suits misled investors when they stated in bond offerings that they couldn’t predict the impacts of climate change.

A report by the former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s municipal bonds division later found the municipalities did not mislead potential investors.

In another instance, NAM partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to back Exxon, filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the oil giant’s quest to stop investigations by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.

New York has since filed a lawsuit against Exxon based on that investigation, alleging the oil giant for years deceived investors by deliberately downplaying the climate risks to its business and long-term financial health. The Supreme Court recently ruled against Exxon’s attempt to stop Massachusetts’ investigation, which now continues.

This is the first in a series of articles on the trade group coordinating opposition to climate liability suits.

ct loss

1/19

https://www.ecowatch.com/colorado-youth-fracking-case-2626070704.html

A Surge of Climate Lawsuits Targets Human Rights, Damage from Fossil Fuels

Cities, states and the fishing industry want courts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for global warming. Others argue government inaction violates rights.

By Nicholas Kusnetz

Follow @nkus

Jan 4, 2019

Rhode Island in 2018 became the first state to sue the fossil fuel industry over climate change, citing the growing risks from sea level rise and extreme weather. Credit: John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images]

A climate denier is in the White House, pushing policies that will boost emissions. Congress is doing nothing to stop him. So citizens and local governments who are facing the impacts of rising seas, worsening heat waves and extreme weather are increasingly looking to the courts for help.

[1]

The past year saw a surge in new lawsuits filed against fossil fuel companies, and major developments in cases pressing governments for action in the United States and abroad.And while the plaintiffs haven't secured any substantial victories in U.S. courts, they may be scoring a different victory by drawing attention to the inaction of Congress and the Executive Branch, said Michael Gerrard, faculty director at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

"Lawsuits, even if unsuccessful, can help shape public opinion," he said. "Mr. Scopes lost the monkey trial, but it led to a lot more awareness about the issue of teaching evolution."

In Colombia [2] and the Netherlands [3], citizens won rulings in 2018 ordering their governments to cut emissions and protect forests. By framing climate change in terms of human rights, those cases and similar ones filed in the U.S. and other countries are transforming how the courts address the issue, said Patrick Parenteau, senior counsel in the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic at Vermont Law School and an informal adviser to some of the plaintiffs' lawyers.

"It's pushing the boundaries of law everywhere," he said. "Climate change is changing the law."

There are currently a couple of dozen significant lawsuits around the worldthat are asking courts to order actions by governments or the fossil fuel industry in response to climate change. Here's a round-up of the various approaches.

Climate Liability

Whatbegan with a handful of California cities and counties in 2017 spread across the country this past year, as New York City [5], Baltimore [6], Rhode Island [7] and local governments in Colorado [8] and Washington State [9] sued fossil fuel companies.

The plaintiffs are seeking compensation to help pay the costs of protecting residents from rising seas, worsening wildfires, extreme heat and other effects of climate change. Two law firms are arguing most of these cases. They allege that energy companies knew about the dangers associated with their products, but lobbied against capping emissions anyway while sowing doubt about climate science.

In November, the West Coast's largest commercial fishing association filed a similar suit[10]. Algal blooms tied to warming waters have led to closures of the crab fishery in recent years, and the plaintiffs are seeking compensation from the fossil fuel industry for the associated losses.

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations sued several fossil fuel companies, seeking damages on behalf of crab fishers and local communities hurt by climate change in California and Oregon. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

Parenteau said it may be harder for energy companies to dismiss the case as a political stunt, a tack they've taken against the lawsuits filed by local governments.

"The 'industry versus industry' does put another spin on it," Parenteau said. "This is real cold dollars and sense."

The only substantive rulings have been dismissals of cases brought by San Francisco and Oakland [11]—whose cases were joined—and New York City [12]. The judges, both in federal district courts, wrote that it was ultimately up to Congress to regulate emissions, and that climate change, as a global issue, would be better addressed by diplomats and the Executive Branch than U.S. courts. The cities have appealed the rulings, and those appeals are some of the cases to watch this year.

Despite limited success so far, these liability lawsuits may continue to spread. At the annual international climate negotiations in Poland, the foreign minister of Vanuatu—a small island nation at risk of losing much of its territory to rising seas—said his country is forming a coalition to explore legal action [13] against fossil fuel companies and governments that have supported them.

Gerrard also said that worsening natural disasters tied to climate change could prompt new lawsuits.

"It'll be interesting to see whether anybody brings climate claims in any of the lawsuits that will arise from the California wildfires or any of the multiple hurricanes we've been having every year," he said. "There might be claims that a company or a government agency should have anticipated these extreme events in designing or constructing buildings or other infrastructure."

Constitutional and Human Rights

The lawsuits filed against fossil fuel companies target one of the world's most powerful and lucrative industries. But a separate class of cases is seeking something much broader: They're arguing that governments have a legal obligation to protect their citizens from climate change.

A group of nearly 900Dutch citizens and a nonprofit were among the first to make the claim, arguing that their government was failing to meet its own goals for emissions cuts and violating their rights in the process. In October, a Dutch appeals court upheld a lower court ruling [3] ordering the government to cut emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. The government said it will appeal the most recent decision, even as it works to meet the emissions goal.

In the U.S., a group of children and young adults who are suing the federal government were poised to go to trial in October in a similar case. The plaintiffs are trying to establish a Constitutional right to a stable climate and are seeking a court order that the government come up with a plan to phase out fossil fuels. Simply holding a trial would be a major victory for the children, but the Supreme Court put the trial on hold less than two weeks before the scheduled opening arguments. The case is now in the hands of appeals court judges [14] with the Ninth Circuit, who will decide whether to allow a trial.

"This is the blockbuster for the U.S.," said Melissa Scanlan, director of the New Economy Law Center at Vermont Law School. "It's the first case in the U.S. that would recognize that there's a protected Constitutional right to a climate capable of supporting human life. We never thought we needed that before."

Twenty-one children and young adults are suing the federal government to force action on climate change. Their case had been scheduled for trial in October but is on hold while the Ninth Circuit Court considers a request by the Trump administration to throw the case out. Credit: Robin Loznak]

Similar cases have been filed in a few state courts, too. All face long odds.

"There are very, very few judges that would be willing to push these climate issues in court," Parenteau said. "But all roads lead to the Supreme Court, and that's where it would die. There's no chance."

In Colombia, however, a nonprofit won a court order in April [2] directing the government to develop a plan for protecting the nation's Amazon forest, which saw deforestation rates rise in recent years and, along with areas in neighboring countries, is one of the planet's largest stores of carbon.

Human rights cases are pending in Norway, Canada, Belgium and other countries. In the Philippines, the nation's Commission on Human Rights concluded an investigation [15] into whether fossil fuel companies played a role in violating the rights of the country's citizens by knowingly contributing to climate change. The Commission will issue a report this year.

Securities Fraud

In October, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood capped a three-year investigation into ExxonMobil by suing the company in state court [16], accusing it of misrepresented the financial risks that climate change poses to its business. It may be legal to lie to the public, the case effectively argues, but not to shareholders.

The lawsuit was a significant development because, unlike most of the local and state claims, it relies on a state law that gives prosecutors great powers to go after companies for financial fraud. A New York judge set a trial date for October 2019.

It wasn't the first case to charge Exxon with securities fraud,. In 2016, a shareholder filed a class action suit against the company in a Texas federal court, saying corporate officers had made false and misleading statements about how the company was assessing climate risks, artificially inflating the company's stock price. That lawsuit cleared a hurdle in August when a federal judge denied a motion [17] by Exxon to dismiss the case.

Tried and True Tactics Remain

As cities, states and citizens press the courts to address climate change with novel legal arguments, dozens of more conventional lawsuits continue to churn too, challenging oil pipelines and coal facilities for their greenhouse gas emissions and the Trump administration as it rolls back the nation's climate regulations.

Gerrard noted that it is these traditional legal challenges that, so far, have had a greater effect on the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. Rules limiting methane emissions by the oil and gas industry, for example, remain in place for the time being[18] despite efforts by the Trump administration to repeal them.

Legal experts say the unconventional cases, whether cities suing oil companies, children suing the government or a state suing Exxon for fraud, may face skepticism from judges, and it's far too early to say what effect they will have.

"Lots is happening, lots of boom and bang," Parenteau said. "But the carbon keeps going up and up. There you have it."

Published Under:

Business and Accountability [19]

Regulation [20]

Extreme Weather [21]

Litigation [22]

Climate Change [23]

Children's Climate Lawsuit [24]

Exxon Climate [25]

2018 Year in Review [1]

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26102018/children-climate-change-lawsuit-trial-delayed-supreme-court-kavanaugh

A federal judge in Oregon has delayed a lawsuit brought by 21 children and young adults to force government action on climate change, pending a decision by the Supreme Court on whether to dismiss the case before trial. Opening arguments had been set for Monday.

The government has repeatedly tried to halt the case. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to a temporary stay while it considers the Justice Department's argument that a trial would cause the government "irreparable harm." The decision to delay the case at this early stage was highly unusual.

The plaintiffs and their lawyers say the government is trying to deprive them of their right to a fair hearing.

"Since the early days of the Republic, our judiciary has grown to be the last line of defense against governance that threatens the public good and destroys the lives of our people," Julia Olson, co-counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. "These young people deserve that chance to present their case against those who govern and let the light fall where it may."

If successful, the lawsuit could result in a court order that the federal government develop and implement a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. If the plaintiffs ultimately lose, a trial would still present a public forum on climate change and the grave risks it poses to the nation. A trial could also force the Trump administration into the embarrassing position of publicly admitting the facts about climate change while arguing that it need not address the problem.

The government's lawyers haven't contested the children's central claims—that climate change is real and is causing them harm. Instead, the lawyers have argued that the federal government is not responsible and that the court has no place ordering political branches what to do.

The Supreme Court is now considering those questions. In July, the court denied an earlier attempt by government lawyers to halt the case. It's unclear why the court changed its position now.

David Bookbinder, chief counsel for the libertarian Niskanen Center, which filed a brief supporting the youths' case, said the only thing that has changed is the replacement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump's controversial pick whose record as a federal judge includes ruling against some environmental regulations.

"They're willing to step in and look at this earlier than the court normally would because it's a climate case," he said. One of the few other cases in which justices have issued such a ruling at this stage, he said, was when they halted implementation of President Barack Obama's proposal to limit emissions from the electricity sector. "Climate is just different."

Like Brown v. Board of Education with school integration or Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a right to marriage for same-sex couples, the case is pushing a novel claim for constitutional rights, legal experts say. It will also test core questions about the separations of powers. The plaintiffs argue that, as in Brown, the Constitution's checks and balances require the courts to step in because the political branches are failing citizens, in this case by neglecting to protect them from climate harm. The government has argued that existing laws and environmental regulations take precedence and any action by the court would overstep its authority.

"For three years, my co-plaintiffs and I have been waiting for our voices to be heard in court," Hazel V., a 14-year-old plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. "But the U.S. government is doing everything it can to silence us, all while we watch it continue to make the climate crisis worse.

https://www.ecowatch.com/youth-climate-lawsuit-oregon-trump-2613558303.html

Trump Team Again Asks SCOTUS to Stop Youth Climate Case as Trial Nears

Once again, the Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a groundbreaking constitutional climate lawsuit brought by 21 youth plaintiffs, just over a week before the case heads to trial in Eugene, Oregon.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice filed a second "writ of mandamus" petition— an uncommonly used legal maneuver—and application for stay with the high court.

Department of Justice attorneys described the "impending harm" to the defendants as follows:

"Absent relief from this Court, the government imminently will be forced to participate in a 50-day trial that would violate bedrock requirements for agency decisionmaking and judicial review imposed by the [Administrative Procedure Act] and the separation of powers."

In July, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration's motion to dismiss the case was "premature." However, that order was issued before Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation.

Juliana v. United States, originally filed in 2015 against the Obama administration, targets the government for creating policies that encouraged climate change, and for violating the country's youngest citizens their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property, as well as failing to protect essential public trust resources. The Trump administration inherited the case and both administrations have tried to throw out it out.

"We are 6 business days from a trial we have been preparing for for three years," Vic Barrett, a 19-year-old plaintiff from White Plains, New York, said in a press release in response to the government's petition. "The lengths my own government is going to to get this case thrown out and avoid trial is absurd and offensive."

A federal judge on Monday issued another ruling that preserved the trial's start date on Oct. 29, unless the Supreme Court or the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit intervenes.

In the 62-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken largely rejected the government's arguments to stop the case but granted a motion to dismiss President Donald Trump as a defendant.

On Friday, government attorneys filed a third writ of mandamus petition to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to stay district court proceedings. The Ninth Circuit has not yet issued a decision on those filings, according to Our Children's Trust, the non-profit group supporting the youth plaintiffs. Judges with the Ninth Circuit denied the first two petitions, saying the petitions were not justified.

"If the United States Supreme Court allows the federal branch of government to act in this manner, stops this case and denies us our right as young people to be heard in a court of law, the institutional legitimacy of this highest court will be harmed," Aji Piper, an 18-year-old plaintiff from Seattle, added in the press release. "At this moment in our country's history when we are so divided, it is more important than ever that the judicial branch of our government maintains the trust and respect of the American public. There is nothing great about a country that abandons its children and future generations."

Washington's Climate Action Wasn't Fast Enough

The Washington lawsuit followed another that had been filed there in 2014 by a group of eight young people, including some of the same plaintiffs, who sought to force the state to require carbon reductions.

The following year, the King County Superior Court ruled that the state had a "mandatory duty" to reduce emissions. That ruling led to the state's Clean Air Rule. In March of this year, however, another court ruled that part of the rule was invalid. The state has appealed.

Washington state's leaders have supported climate action in recent years. In 2015, then-Gov. Jay Inslee committed the state to an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. In 2017, he joined with other governors in the multi-state U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition that aims to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

But the young plaintiffs said the state wasn't moving fast enough, prompting the latest suit, filed this February.

Judge Urges Young Plaintiffs to Keep Fighting

In his ruling to dismiss the case, Scott urged the young plaintiffs to keep pressure on state lawmakers, writing that the young advocates "can (and must) continue to help solve the problems related to climate change." For example, he wrote in his order, they could urge state lawmakers to enact policies such as a carbon tax and measures that support development of clean energy.

The children's attorney, Andrea Rodgers, noted the climate change impacts already being felt this summer in a statement issued after the ruling: "On a day when the sun in Seattle is shrouded in smoke from wildfires, the youth plaintiffs are devastated that Judge Scott declined to give them an opportunity to present their constitutional claims in a court of law. By deferring to the Executive and Legislative branches of government that have affirmatively placed these plaintiffs in harm's way, without an appropriate legal analysis, the court has unfortunately chosen not to engage to protect the rights of these plaintiffs, to their detriment."

The young people in the case also expressed disappointment but said they hope to win on appeal.

"My rights as a Native American person are being taken away because of climate change," Kailani, a 13-year-old plaintiff from Spokane, wrote in a statement. "Camas, huckleberries, salmon, and other traditional foods are disappearing and this is because of climate change that the government continues to contribute to. How long are people going to ignore that climate change is a real threat to my life and my culture?"

PUBLISHED UNDER:

ACTIVISM

CHILDREN'S CLIMATE LAWSUIT

CLIMATE CHANGE

https://www.ecowatch.com/supreme-court-youth-climate-case-2591440617.html

Supreme Court Rules Trump Administration Can’t Stop Youth Climate Case

In a glimmer of hope for climate change litigation, the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration's attempt to block a ground-breaking lawsuit brought by 21 young people against the U.S. government for crafting policies that support climate-changing fossil fuels, The Huffington Post reported.

The high court ruled that the administration's motion to dismiss the case was "premature."

"This decision should give young people courage and hope that their third branch of government, all the way up to the Supreme Court, has given them the greenlight to go to trial in this critical case on their inalienable rights," Our Children's Trust Executive Director and Chief Legal Counsel Julia Olsen said in a statement reported by The Huffington Post.

Our Children's Trust is the non-profit that helped the young people behind the case file the suit.

The ruling comes as historic cases around the country are determining what role the courts can play in responding to the climate crisis.

In the past two months, federal judges in New York and San Francisco have dismissed cases brought by cities suing oil companies for the cost of adapting to climate change.

In dismissing the cities' cases, the judges argued that the executive and legislative branches should determine climate policy, not the courts.

The children's lawsuit, *Juliana v. United States*, is different from the cities' suits in that it targets the government, not oil companies, for creating policies that encouraged climate change.

However, the government's lawyers have argued that it goes beyond the scope of the courts.

The administration argued that the trial judge who had permitted the case to proceed had acknowledged "a never-before-recognized fundamental right to a particular climate system that lacks any support in the Constitution, this court's precedents, or this nation's history and tradition," Bloomberg reported.

The young people's lawyers, in contrast, say the changes to the climate violate rights that are enshrined in the Constitution, since those changes "threaten the very foundation of life, including the personal security, liberties, and property," according to The Huffington Post.

The Supreme Court did caution in its ruling that the breadth of the lawsuit was "striking" and that the question of whether the matters it raised belonged in the courts "presents substantial grounds for difference of opinion," Bloomberg reported. The court also urged the trial judge to respond promptly to other government attempts to halt the case's progress.

As of now, though, the Supreme Court's ruling means the trial will still begin in U.S. District Court on October 29, 2018, something for which the young plaintiffs are grateful.

"The constitutional rights of my fellow plaintiffs and I are at stake in this case, and I am glad that the Supreme Court of the United States agrees that those rights should be evaluated at trial," 19-year-old plaintiff Victoria B. said in an Our Children's Trust press release. "This lawsuit becomes more urgent every day as climate change increasingly harms us. I have reaffirmed confidence now that all levels of the federal judiciary have ruled in our favor that there should be no more delay in getting to our trial."

The case was first filed in Oregon in 2015. The Obama administration moved to dismiss it in 2016, and the decision of an Oregon U.S. District Court judge to deny that motion is one the Trump administration continued to challenge, leading to Monday's Supreme Court ruling, Pacific Standard reported.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11072018/joseph-stiglitz-kids-climate-change-lawsuit-global-warming-costs-economic-impact

spreading, winning

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-lawsuits-2561769770.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-lawsuit-2547843097.html

Two Major Climate Change Lawsuits Move Forward

By Ken Kimmell

A major front in the climate change debate has moved to the courtroom, as I've previously discussed. Last week, plaintiffs in two separate cases won significant procedural victories—one against major fossil fuel companies, and a second against the Trump administration. Here are the latest developments and their implications.

Bay Area vs. Big Oil

In this suit, The People of the State of California v. BP et al.,the cities of San Francisco and Oakland sued five major oil companies (BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco Phillips and Shell), charging that these companies created a public nuisance by extracting and selling oil, coal and gas while misleading the public about the harms that these products cause.

The two cities filed in state court and under state law. This was an important strategic choice, as the U.S. Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers California) had dismissed prior cases brought in federal court, holding that congress enacted the Clean Air Act to comprehensively address the emission of greenhouse gases, and that therefore there was no role for federal lawsuits of this kind.

Citing the precedent of these earlier rulings, the defendant oil companies transferred the cities' cases to federal court, and argued that the cities' claims were preempted by federal law. In response, the cities claimed that they had a right to file in state court and that their claims under state law were not preempted by federal law, and they asked the judge to send the cases back to state court.

A federal district court judge issued a decision that neither side argued for. The court decided in the oil companies' favor that the case was properly in federal court, reasoning—with some logic—that climate change is an international problem, that state courts might apply inconsistent standards if allowed to adjudicate these cases, and that only the federal court could apply a uniform standard.

But, the court went on to find that the two earlier cases which had dismissed federal court suits did not apply to this case. The court found that while the Clean Air Act addresses the emissions from fossil fuel combustion, the San Francisco/Oakland case was not about emissions of pollutants, but rather an alleged scheme to sell a product through deception. The court reasoned—again with some logic—that the Clean Air Act offered no remedy for that conduct, and therefore did not preempt this lawsuit.

This part of the ruling was a major win for the plaintiffs, as it seems to take away the key defense of preemption that the oil companies seemed to be counting on.

On top of this, the court also ordered the parties to participate in a five-hour "climate science" tutorial for the court, to be held on Mar. 21. The judge ordered the parties to "trace the history of scientific study of climate change, beginning with scientific inquiry into the formation and melting of the ice ages, periods of historic cooling and warming, smog, ozone, nuclear winter, volcanoes and global warming." And further, to inform the court of "the best science now available on global warming, glacier melt, sea rise and coastal flooding."

This is fascinating and highly unusual. As anyone who has seen a trial on television or in the movies knows, courts don't conduct tutorials; they oversee trials, in which lawyers present the testimony of witnesses under oath and each side gets to examine and cross examine. The sheer novelty of this procedure is a good sign for the plaintiffs. Why would the judge invest time and energy to learn about climate science unless he thought the plaintiffs' legal claims might rest on a durable foundation? Also, the fact that the court asked for a climate science timeline suggests the court is honing in on some key questions: what did the fossil fuel companies know about climate change, when did they know it, and how did their public statements square with the scientific consensus at the time?

All eyes will be on this climate science tutorial, which will presumably be open to the public. To my knowledge, this is the first time climate science will be presented to a court in this fashion, and it offers an excellent opportunity to highlight the longstanding and well-supported scientific consensus.

It is too early to confidently predict what lies ahead but, on the basis of the judge's initial opinion, one can say this: the courtroom door is open now on these issues as it never has been before.

Kids sue to protect themselves and future generations.

In this case, *Juliana v. the United States*, a group of kids are suing the Trump administration for failing to protect them against the harms of climate change. I wrote about the novelty of this case last fall, and its early success when a federal district court judge in Oregon ordered the case to trial, rejecting all the Trump administration's procedural defenses.

Since that time, the Trump administration asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal to dismiss the case. This was an unusual move because, ordinarily, a party to a lawsuit cannot appeal until the trial court has issued a final judgment. In this case, however, the district court had not done so. Predictably, the court of appeals ruled that the appeal was therefore premature, and sent the case back to the district court.

(Full disclosure: UCS joined a friend of the court brief on this issue, ably authored by Earthjustice attorneys).

The case was originally set for trial in February, 2018, but the Trump administration's appeal delayed that. Presumably, the next step will be for the court to set another trial date.

This is not good news for the Trump administration. At a minimum, a trial on this will be a public relations nightmare in which an appealing group of kids, represented by experienced attorneys, will have the opportunity to question Trump administration officials in open court. They will no doubt ask questions that the administration will find extremely difficult to answer, such as: Why has the Trump administration sought to withdraw from the Paris agreement, rolled back regulations to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and promoted subsidies for coal? Does the Trump administration not accept climate science? Does it not care about the harm of runaway climate change?

Further down the line, if the plaintiffs are successful in district court and if the court of appeals or the supreme court affirms the ruling (all very big "ifs," of course), the Trump administration faces the prospect of being forced under court order to develop and implement a plan to address climate change.

Chickens coming home to roost.

...

win

3/18

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/03/08/see-you-court-kids-climate-lawsuit-moves-forward-after-judge-denies-trump

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-lawsuit-washington-youth-2536683798.html

13 kids wa state

...

In their suit (pdf), filed Friday in King County Superior Court, the plaintiffs, aged seven to 17, say the state, Gov. Jay Inslee, and several state agencies have created and propped up fossil fuel-based energy and transportation systems, thereby fueling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the climate crisis. In so doing, they have created "unconstitutional conditions"—depriving the young people of their rights to a healthful and pleasant environment, and their rights to life, liberty and property.

The climate-fueling actions, the suit says, have put the young people "in a position of danger with deliberate indifference to their safety in a manner that shocks the conscience."

The state's current GHG reduction limits "are not consistent with what the scientific consensus says is needed to stabilize the climate system," the suit states. Rather than take action to address climate change, the suit says the state and the agencies "have acted with shocking deliberate indifference and abdication of duty to address this crisis." That's despite fact that the defendants were aware of the impacts of the climate crisis "[s]ince at least the late 1980s, well before these plaintiffs were born."

The youths were forced to bring the suit "because the fossil fuel-based energy and transportation system created, supported, and operated by the defendants, and the systematic, affirmative aggregate actions which make up and support that system, severely endangers plaintiffs and their ability to grow to adulthood safely and enjoy the rights, benefits, and privileges of past generations of Washingtonians due to the resulting climate change."

The suit lists the specific dangers the climate crisis is causing the plaintiffs.

For 17-year-old James, for example, a member of the Quinault Indian Nation, his coastal village of Taholah has to be relocated because of sea level rise. "This critical loss of his place-based heritage, a heritage that dates back to time immemorial, is irreplaceable, and permanent," the suit states. The traditional clamming activities he takes part in are also becoming limited because of climate change impacts including algal blooms, ocean acidification, and warming waters. Increasingly severe storms have also had an impact on his family, causing power outages. All these impacts, the suit says, are causing mental and emotional stress, and without meaningful action to address the climate crisis, the impacts are set to worsen.

A plan for state-level energy and transportation systems that support a healthy climate system is feasible, the suit says:

"A zero-CO2 energy and transportation system for Washington state can be achieved by 2050 without acquiring carbon credits from other states or countries. In other words, actual physical emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels can be eliminated with technologies that are now available or under development.

Experts have already concluded the feasibility of, and prepared a roadmap for, the transition of all of Washington's energy use (for electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, and industry) to a 100 percent renewable energy system by 2050. In addition to the direct benefits of avoiding a destabilized climate system, this transition will reduce air pollution and save lives and costs associated with air pollution.

Seventeen-year-old plaintiff Aji Piper, for one, is optimistic.

"I feel hopeful because of this lawsuit, like grass tips emerging from thawing snow. This is my state government's chance to rise up and take responsibility for their actions. This is also a chance for my government to use real science in the policy they create. This lawsuit gives the Washington state government a chance to take the lead and commit to the citizens it serves and the lives it must protect," he said in a statement.

The lawsuit is being supported by the Oregon-based nonprofit Our Children's Trust, which has other similar state-level legal actions underway as well as the landmark *Juliana v. United States*, in which Aji Piper is also a plaintiff.

A trial date for the new lawsuit, Aji P. v. State of Washington, is set for Feb. 19, 2019.

Reposted with permission from our media associate Common Dreams.

North Carolina Youth File Climate Petition to Protect Their Futures

Tuesday, three teenagers filed a climate change petition for rulemaking with the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission. The petition calls on the commission to reduce North Carolina's CO2 emissions to zero by 2050, in accordance with the best available science.

Youth petitioners argue that the commission has statutory, public trust and constitutional obligations to protect North Carolina's essential natural resources, including the atmosphere, for present and future generations. As detailed in the petition, the proposed rule could create jobs, reduce energy costs and avoid billions in climate damages.

With the support of Our Children's Trust, Alliance for Climate Education and represented by Duke's Environmental Law & Policy Clinic, the petitioners are the latest group of young people from across the country to file legal action seeking science-based action by governments to secure a safe climate and healthy future.

"With a family history of lung disease and a love for hiking, I have personally experienced both the negative health impacts of pollution and the steady destruction of our most important natural resources, our national and state parks, due to climate change and higher CO2 emissions," Arya Pontula, 17-year-old petitioner and Alliance for Climate Education fellow from Raleigh, said.

"I hope this petition pushes our state to take concrete steps to reduce CO2 emissions, thus ensuring cleaner air for all generations. The bottom line is that, when it comes to our health, we have no other choice but to set our differences aside and work towards a common goal for cleaner, breathable air and preservation of our natural resources," Pontula added.

"North Carolina's laws declare that the Environmental Management Commission must protect water and air resources for the benefit of all, not shield polluters through delaying tactics," Ryke Longest, Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic director, said. "It is long past time for the commission to act on the best available science and commit to reducing carbon dioxide emissions to zero in time for the climate to stabilize."

The North Carolina petition is one of many related legal actions supported by Our Children's Trust and brought by youth in several states and countries, including Juliana v. United States, seeking science-based action by governments to secure a safe climate and healthy atmosphere for present and future generations.

https://www.ecowatch.com/youth-climate-intervenors-2500282730.html

enbridge minnesota

pruitt epa changes rules of settle lawsuits? 10/17

https://www.ecowatch.com/portugal-fires-lawsuit-kids-2498506245.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/portugal-kids-climate-lawsuit-2489744489.html

EPA SAB nom boasted beat OCT in montana?

https://www.ecowatch.com/james-hansen-climate-lawsuit-2461920577.html

2/5/18

https://www.ecowatch.com/our-childrens-trust-trial-date-2450252842.html

===

https://www.ecowatch.com/youth-climate-lawsuit-trial-2437891411.html

no link

Kids Climate Lawsuit Heads to Trial, Judge Denies Trump Administration's Appeal

U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken issued an order Thursday denying motions filed by the Trump administration and the fossil fuel industry that sought to appeal her Nov. 10, 2016 order in Juliana v. United States to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The order follows the Trump administration's remarkable Tuesday night filing of a notice giving Judge Aiken a deadline of June 9 to issue her order.

In that notice, the Department of Justice threatened, "In the absence of such resolution by this Court, the United States will seek … review and relief in the Court of Appeals." The Trump administration is alluding to an intention to seek a writ of mandamus, an extraordinary remedy that is rarely granted, from the higher court.

"We are on our way to trial!" said Julia Olson, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs and executive director of Our Children's Trust. "With industry walking away from the case and the Trump administration's effort at procedural delay firmly rejected, we can focus on the merits of these youths' constitutional claims."

From Judge Aiken's June 8 order:

"Defendants' threat to run directly to the Ninth Circuit if this Court does not abide by a unilaterally imposed 'deadline' is another matter … belief that it is legally entitled to an immediate ruling on a motion it submitted three months ago is rather ironic given that it waited four months to file the request for interlocutory certification in the first place."

Judge Aiken's order was an adoption of the May 1 findings and recommendation issued by Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin, who is overseeing the pretrial and discovery portion of the case. Judge Coffin has ruled that an interlocutory appeal "would put the cart before the horse, and thus fail to satisfy the standards for interlocutory appeal."

"The more evidence we gather for our case, the more I realize how decisively we can win at trial," said 20-year-old Alex Loznak of Roseburg, Oregon, one of 21 youth plaintiffs. "It's no wonder the Trump administration wants to avoid the trial by seeking an unwarranted, premature appeal. Today's ruling brings us one step closer to trial and to winning our lawsuit."

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority of the Supreme Court, has explained that mandamus is a "drastic and extraordinary remedy" reserved for "only exceptional circumstances." Cheney v. U.S. Dist. Court for D.C., 542 U.S. 367, 380 (2004).

Last month, motions were filed by three fossil fuel industry intervenor-defendants: the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, and the American Fuel & and Petrochemical Manufacturers, requesting the court's permission to withdraw from the litigation. For any defendant to leave the litigation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin must grant permission. That matter is still pending.

Juliana v. United States was brought by 21 young plaintiffs who argue that their constitutional and public trust rights are being violated by the government's creation of climate danger. The case is one of many related legal actions brought by youth in several states and countries, all supported by Our Children's Trust, seeking science-based action by governments to stabilize the climate system.

https://www.ecowatch.com/our-childrens-trust-motions-2422789150.html

Fossil Fuel Associations Scramble to Quit Kids Climate Lawsuit Before Discovery Deadline

In an unusual procedural move, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers filed motions Thursday requesting the court's permission to withdraw from the Juliana v. USclimate lawsuit, brought by 21 young people. The associations are following the lead of the National Association of Manufacturers, who filed a similar motion to withdraw on May 22.

Now, all three trade association intervenor defendants have filed motions to withdraw from the case, evading last night's discovery deadline. These motions are especially unusual after numerous legal efforts have tried to get a federal court in Oregon to throw out the lawsuit. For any defendant to leave the litigation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin must grant permission.

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"API and its members will not come clean on the facts of climate change because they know it exposes them to liability for the damage they too have caused to the global climate system," Julia Olson, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs and executive director of Our Children's Trust, said.

"After these youths sued the government, the trade associations pleaded their members' interests would be destroyed if they weren't allowed to be in the case, but now they are running for the hills. Now, they've decided they're better off being on the sidelines than subjecting themselves to discovery,."

When youth plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in August 2015, only the federal government and government agencies were named as defendants. In November 2015, the associations intervened in the case on the side of the U.S. government defendants, calling the lawsuit a "direct threat to [their] businesses."

"What is noticeably absent from these withdrawal motions is the reason why the fossil fuel industry wants to leave the case," Philip L. Gregory, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs and a party with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy LLP of Burlingame, California, said. "They plead with the court to let them out, yet fail to give Judge Coffin any reason behind their change of heart,"

In a January 2016 proceeding before Judge Coffin, an attorney representing all three trade associations explained how these associations would speak with "one voice" if permitted to join the litigation:

"...having the associations participate as associations in this litigation effectively represents those interests without a multiplicity of disparate viewpoints and voices. Rather, in fact, they have joined to speak with one voice through this intervention motion."

The federal court allowed these fossil fuel industry associations to become full party defendants. However, when these intervenor defendants filed their answer to the allegations in young plaintiffs' complaint, the industry claimed it lacked "sufficient knowledge" to take a position on the science of climate change, and most of the claims in the complaint.

Intervenor defendants since agreed to set forth their positions on the scientific facts by responding to requests for admissions, which Plaintiffs subsequently served on March 24. When the fossil fuel defendants had not submitted their responses, Judge Coffin ordered that they be electronically-filed with the court. At the May 18 case management conference, Judge Coffin granted intervenor defendants an extension to submit their responses until the end of the day, May 25. Rather than take a position on the science or the effects of climate change, the fossil fuel industry chose to seek to back out of the case.

Attorneys for youth plaintiffs have already collected evidence through informal discovery that shows all three associations and their members have had long-standing knowledge of climate danger, and at the same time, used their undue influence over the U.S. government to sabotage efforts to address the urgent problem.

"Our government is a trustee over the atmosphere, and yet the Trump administration is wrongfully colluding with the intervenors to increase carbon emissions," Alex Loznak, 20, of Roseburg, Oregon and one of the youth plaintiffs in the case, said. "These industry groups can't be allowed to interfere with our democracy or our climate system without consequences."

http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-lawsuit-rex-tillerson-2322025689.html

tracker

http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-climate-lawsuit-appeal-2311050109.html

Fossil Fuel Defendants Join Trump in Move to Appeal Kid's Groundbreaking Climate Lawsuit

Mar. 11, 2017 09:40PM EST

Our Childrens Trust

Lawyers representing fossil fuel defendants in a youth climate lawsuit filed a motion Friday with a U.S. District Court seeking an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on a Nov. 10, 2016 order in Juliana v. United States. As reported by The Washington Post, the Trump Administration filed a similar motion requesting appeal on Tuesday. Fossil fuel defendants support the Trump Administration's motion.

Fossil fuel defendants claim Judge Ann Aiken erred when ruling that "the political question doctrine is not a barrier to plaintiffs' claims." The fossil fuel defendants argue the executive and legislative branches of government, and not the judiciary, should resolve the issues presented by plaintiffs in this case.

Attorneys with Sidley Austin represent the fossil fuel defendants, who are members of trade associations API (formerly directed by now Secretary of State Rex Tillerson), AFPM and NAM. From their motion filed on Friday:

"If the case proceeds to expert discovery, that phase will certainly be complicated and protracted, given the complex scientific debate that swirls around the issues raised by the plaintiffs' lawsuit. The resources required to engage in fact and expert discovery will be enormous, and those resources will be preserved if the intervenor-defendants prevail on interlocutory appeal."

Judge Aiken, informed by Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin's recommendation, holds the power to decide whether or not to certify the questions for appeal sought with defendants' motions.

But Judge Aiken has already made her position clear on the political question issue. From her Nov. 10 order that the government and fossil fuel defendants are seeking to appeal, Judge Aiken wrote:

"However, the scope of the political question doctrine should not be overstated. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, [t]here is hardly any political question in the United States that sooner or later does not turn into a judicial question." Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 440 (Liberty Fund 2012)."

In fact, more than 11 pages of Judge Aiken's order thoughtfully and judicially analyzed and concluded on the political question issue. Her order walked through all six "Baker factors" from the Supreme Court's 1962 opinion in Baker v. Carr, a case recently featured in a 2016 podcast produced as part of the RadioLab Series "More Perfect." Following her analysis, Judge Aiken included a section entitled "Summary: This Case Does Not Raise a Nonjusticiable Political Question." From that section, the order reads:

"There is no need to step outside the core role of the judiciary to decide this case. At its heart, this lawsuit asks this Court to determine whether defendants have violated plaintiffs' constitutional rights. That question is squarely within the purview of the judiciary.

"This case shares some key features with Baker itself. In Baker, a group of voters challenged a statute governing the apportionment of state legislative districts. 369 U.S. at 188-95. Sixty years of population growth without legislative reapportionment had led to legislative districts had led to some votes carrying much more weight than others. Id. at 192-93. Here, the majority of youth plaintiffs are minors who cannot vote and must depend on others to protect their political interests. Thus, as amicus the League of Women Voters persuasively argues, the youth plaintiffs' claims are similar to the Baker claims because they are 'rooted in a 'debasement of their votes' and an accompanying diminishment of their voice in representational government." Br. for the League of Women Voters in the United States et al. as Amici Curiae at 19-20 (doc 79-1).

"In Baker, the Court acknowledged that the plaintiffs' claims had political dimensions and ramifications - but nonetheless concluded none of the Baker factors was inextricable from the case. 369 U.S. at 209. Similarly as discussed in detail above, this case raises political questions yet is not barred by the political question doctrine."

"The political question argument is a last ditch effort to avoid judicial review,"Julia Olson, plaintiffs' counsel and executive director of Our Children's Trust, said. "When our political branches deny our plaintiffs their fundamental rights, it is absolutely the court's job to step in. This is well-settled and this defense is dead."

Juliana v. United States was filed in 2015 by 21 young plaintiffs who argue that their constitutional and public trust rights are being violated by the government's creation of climate danger. Judge Ann Aiken's November order denied motions to dismiss brought by both the Obama administration and fossil fuel industry defendants.

Juliana v. United States is one of many related legal actions brought by youth in several states and countries, all supported by Our Children's Trust, seeking science-based action by governments to stabilize the climate system.

http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-climate-change-lawsuit-2307504755.html

The Trump administration filed a motion Tuesday seeking an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on a federal judge's Nov. 10, 2016 order in Juliana v. United States. The Trump administration also filed a motion to delay trial preparation until after its appeal is considered.

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Further, the Trump administration asked for expedited review of both motions, arguing the plaintiffs'Jan. 24 letter requesting the government to retain records relating to climate change and communications between the government and the fossil fuel industry was overly burdensome. The excerpt from the government's stay motion said:

"Plaintiffs … intend to seek discovery relating to virtually all of the federal government's activities relating to control of CO2 emissions ... Compounding the United States' burdens, Plaintiffs have indicated that their intended discovery has a temporal scope of more than sixty years ... Absent relief, there will most certainly be depositions of federal government fact witnesses ... that will explore the extraordinarily broad topic of climate change and the federal government's putative knowledge over the past seven decades."

Yet, in another complex case regarding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and BP, the U.S. produced more than 17 million pages of documents from April to September of 2011. Plaintiffs maintain that their requests are limited, reasonable and aimed at getting to trial this fall.

Appeals typically do not occur until a trial court has issued final rulings following the presentation of evidence, but the Trump administration is asking federal Magistrate Judge Coffin to exercise his discretion to allow the case to proceed to the Court of Appeals before final judgment.

Attorneys representing fossil fuel industry defendants are expected to file papers supporting the government's motions on Friday.

"The Trump administration argues that this is a big case and so the burdens of preserving government documents warrant an expedited review," Julia Olson, plaintiffs' counsel and executive director of Our Children's Trust, said. "They're right. It is a big case. We have a classic example of the government's misplaced priorities: They prefer to minimize their procedural obligations of not destroying government documents over the urgency of not destroying our climate system for our youth plaintiffs and all future generations?"

In the government's answer to the youth plaintiffs' complaint, they admitted that "the use of fossil fuels is a major source of [carbon dioxide] emissions, placing our nation on an increasingly costly, insecure and environmentally dangerous path."

The case was brought by 21 young plaintiffs who argue that their constitutional and public trust rights are being violated by the government's creation of climate danger. Judge Ann Aiken's November order denied motions to dismiss brought by both the Obama administration and fossil fuel industry defendants.

"This request for appeal is an attempt to cover up the federal government's long-running collusion with the fossil fuel industry," Alex Loznak, 20-year-old plaintiff and Columbia University student, said. "My generation cannot wait for the truth to be revealed. These documents must be uncovered with all deliberate speed, so that our trial can force federal action on climate change."

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Other pre-trial developments

During Wednesday's telephonic case management conference between attorneys for the parties and Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) took the view that the Trump administration, will have the opportunity to use executive privilege to prevent the release of evidence in the possession of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

DOJ attorneys said they recently informed the White House that NARA was in the process of gathering documents requested by the plaintiffs. It is the DOJ's view that former Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, will have the opportunity to bar release of the records of their respective administrations, but President Trump will ultimately have the authority to bar release of any and all NARA records.

The next Juliana v. United States case management conference with Judge Coffin is scheduled for April 7 and will be telephonic.

Attorneys for youth plaintiffs are in the process of compiling a list of prospective witnesses to be deposed, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and expect to provide that list to defendants next week.

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Juliana v. United Statesis one of many related legal actions brought by youth in several states and countries, all supported by Our Children's Trust, seeking science-based action by governments to stabilize the climate system.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01032017/childrens-trust-climate-change-lawsuit-api

Attorneys representing 21 children who are suing the federal government over its responsibility to slow climate change are seeking answers from the oil and gas industry. The plaintiffs want to uncover what role fossil fuel interests played in shaping government climate policies.

The plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States fileda request for documents from the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest U.S. trade group for the oil and gas industry and an intervenor on behalf of the U.S. government in the case.

The request seeks a wide range of documents, including any from internal API groups related to climate change and government lobbying. Examples noted in the request include API's CO2 and Climate Change Task Force, its Environmental Strategy Team and its Climate Change Steering Group. It also seeks communications with Exxon and other oil companies discussing climate.

The request specifically seeks memoranda written by individual industry researchers, lobbyists, trade association employees and other fossil fuel advocates. Those people were engaged in early research into climate change and in attempts by the industry to sow doubt about the emerging consensus that global warming is caused by emissions from fossil fuels.

Many of those named figured in an investigation by InsideClimate News in 2015, which included revelations that API's CO2 and Climate Change Task Force monitored and shared climate research between 1979 and 1983. The investigation showed that scientists from nearly every major oil company, including Exxon, Texaco and Shell, were aware of the oil industry's possible impact on the world's climate far earlier than previously known.

Shell warned of the catastrophic risks of climate change more than a quarter of century ago in a 1991 film that was rediscovered and posted online by the Correspondent, a Dutch news outlet, on Feb. 28.

Ties between industry and government strengthened during the early years of the George W. Bush administration when fossil fuel advocates like former API lobbyist Philip A. Cooney gained influence over U.S. government policy regarding climate change.

Cooney became chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, an office that drove climate policy. Government scientists accused Cooney of rewriting federal research reports to sow doubt about man-made climate change. Cooney resigned in 2005 and went to work for Exxon.

In their lawsuit, which was originally filed in September 2015 andupdated to include President Trump as a defendant after his inauguration, the plaintiffs accuse the federal government of violating their constitutional rights by knowing about the dangerous climate impacts of burning fossil fuels while supporting their development.

The litigation, under something calledthe public trust doctrine, is an unusual approach to fighting climate change by holding the government accountable, but it could uncover key documents in the role industry played in shaping U.S. policies related to the issue. (The other causes of action in the complaint are substantive due process under the 5th amendment and equal protection.)

"The truth will come out in this case," Julia Olson, counsel for plaintiffs and executive director of Our Children's Trustsaid in a statement. "We intend to hold the defendants accountable for their longstanding role in causing climate change, and their clear knowledge about the price the planet would pay for the sake of their profits."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

EXXON CLIMATE

CLIMATE CHANGE

API

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09022017/climate-change-lawsuit-donald-trump-children

A lawsuit filed by 21 kids challenging the federal government to slow climate change wasupdated on Thursday to list President Donald Trumpas a defendant, replacing former President Barack Obama.

In the lawsuit, originally filed in September 2015, the young plaintiffs have accused the federal government of violating their constitutional rights by knowing about the dangerous climate impacts of burning fossil fuels and supporting the development of fossil fuel production anyway.

The federal government under the Obama administration, along with fossil fuel companies, requested dismissal of the case, but a federal district court judge in Oregon ruled last fall that the case could proceed. Now, Juliana v. United States could go to trial as early as this year, possibly proving to be a check against the Trump administration's pro-fossil fuel agenda.

"I am hopeful that our case will reverse or prevent all damage our current president may inflict," Aji Piper, 16-year-old plaintiff from Seattle, said in a statement. "I hope that our trial may shed light upon the issue of climate change, and educate the American populace on the difference between real and 'alternative' facts."

The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

In the coming weeks, notice of deposition is expected to be given to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, according to Julia Olson, the lead counsel for the plaintiffs and executive director of the advocacy group Our Children's Trust. A judge ruled last month that the plaintiffs could depose Tillerson, the former chief executive of ExxonMobil Corp., if he was confirmed. Tillerson was subsequently confirmed

Children's climate lawsuit to Donald Trump: See you in court

ThinkProgress-Feb 10, 2017

United States, a federal lawsuit brought against the U.S. government by a group of kids and young adults concerned about climate change.

Trump Named as a Defendant in Landmark Climate Lawsuit

Scientific American-Feb 10, 2017

View all

Story image for kids climate lawsuit from InsideClimate News

Children's Climate Lawsuit Against US Adds Trump as Defendant

InsideClimate News-Feb 9, 2017

The young plaintiffs in a climate change lawsuit against the U.S. government say they hope the suit prevents future damage to the planet by ...

Kids Name Trump as Defendant in Landmark Climate Case

EcoWatch-Feb 9, 2017

View all

Story image for kids climate lawsuit from BillMoyers.com

These Kids Will See Trump in Court

BillMoyers.com-Feb 10, 2017

Twenty-one kids and climate scientist James Hansen were suing the Obama ... Donald Trump has yet another lawsuit to deal with. Twenty-one ...

Story image for kids climate lawsuit from WNYC

Donald Trump Faces Lawsuit From Local Teen Over Climate Change

WNYC-Feb 1, 2017

Donald Trump Faces Lawsuit From Local Teen Over Climate Change ... The complaint also alleges that kids are being discriminated against for ...

Story image for kids climate lawsuit from Mashable

How 21 kids could keep climate websites from going completely dark

Mashable-Jan 26, 2017

Their lawsuit against the federal government and fossil fuel companies seeks to hold them accountable for failing to adequately address ...

http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-case-youth-2150917311.html

win 12/16

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American Youth Make Fossil Fuel Industry Confront Climate Science in Federal Court

The Conversation

By Mary Wood, Charles W. Woodward, IV and Michael C. Blumm

At a time when humanity must reverse course before plunging over a climate cliff, the American public has elected a president who seems to have both feet on the fossil fuel accelerator. If there is a mechanism to force the Trump Administration to put the brakes on dirty energy policy, a lawsuit brought by 21 young people against the Obama administration may hold the key.

Two days after the presidential election, on Nov. 10, a federal district court in Oregon issued a path-breaking decision in Juliana v. U.S. declaring that youth—indeed, all citizens—hold constitutional rights to a stable climate system.

The youth, aged nine to 20 years old, seek a court-supervised plan to lower carbon dioxide emissions at a rate set by a science-based prescription. The judicial role is analogous to court-supervised remedies protecting equal opportunity for students after Brown v. Board of Education.

The Juliana v. U.S. decision could be a legal game-changer, as it challenges the entire fossil-fuel policy of the U.S.

Cruel Irony

Environmental lawsuits typically rely on statutes or regulations. But Juliana is a human rights case that bores down to legal bedrock by asserting constitutional rights to inherit a stable climate system.

The court, which ruled the suit can proceed to trial, rightly described the case as a "civil rights action"—an action "of a different order than the typical environmental case"—because it alleges that government actions "have so profoundly damaged our home planet that they threaten plaintiffs' constitutional rights to life and liberty." The litigation, variously called "a "ray of hope," a legal "long shot" and a "Hail Mary pass," yielded its groundbreaking decision not a moment too soon.

At a rally for action on climate in 2014. The decisions made by adults will have broad implications for the planet today's youth will live on as adults.

Joe Brusky / Flickr

The year 2016 is the hottest year on record and Arctic sea ice has hit its lowest recorded level. Heated ocean waters threaten coral reefs and marine ecosystems.

To have any hope of reversing or stalling these effects of climate change, the world must restrict fossil fuel production and ultimately switch to safe renewable energy. Even continued production solely from currently operating oil and gas fields will push the planet to 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial temperatures, beyond the aspirational limit set by the global Paris agreement on climate change.

President-elect Trump, who notoriously claimed that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, has said he plans to immediately approve the highly contentious Keystone pipeline, open public land to drilling, rescind Obama's Clean Power Plan, eliminate NASA's climate research and withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. He intends to spur production of US$50 trillion worth of shale, oil, coal and natural gas.

The 70-year-old president-elect will not live long enough to witness the worst consequences of rapidly expanding fossil fuel development. The cruel irony for young people is that actions taken during Trump's time in office will lock in a future of severe disruptions within their projected lifetimes—and sea level rise that could make coastal cities uninhabitable. James Hansen, formerly the nation's chief climate scientist at NASA, has warned, "Failure to act with all deliberate speed …functionally becomes a decision to eliminate the option of preserving a habitable climate system."

Sea levels are projected to rise at least three feet, and perhaps much more, in the lifetime of children today, inundating some locations and making storm surges more dangerous. The Juliana lawsuit and others like it argue that citizens have a right to a stable climate.

NOAA

Constitutional Argument

For decades, the political branches have promoted fossil fuel consumption despite longstanding knowledge about the climate danger. President Obama ignored warnings when he charted a disastrous course of increased fossil fuel production early in office. In a last moment of opportunity to avert climate tipping points, Americans should recall an elementary school civics lesson: The U.S. has three, not two, branches of government. The founders wisely vested an independent judiciary with the responsibility of upholding the fundamental liberties of citizens against infringement by the other branches.

As the president-elect promises to ramp up fossil fuel production and dismantle Obama's recent climate measures, and with no obvious statutory law to prevent him from doing so, only a fundamental rights approach carries any hope of trumping Trump.

In Juliana, the youth asserted their fundamental rights under the Constitution's substantive due process clause and the public trust doctrine. This is an ancient principle requiring government to hold and protect essential resources as a sustaining endowment for citizens. They contended that government infringed on their rights to life, liberty, and property by promoting fossil fuel policies that threaten runaway planetary heating—thereby jeopardizing human life, private property and civilization itself.

The principle of public trust law, dating to the time of Roman Emperor Justinian, holds that natural resources, including the sea, the shores of the sea, the air and running water, are common to everyone. It has since become part of U.S. jurisprudence.

Petar Miloševic / Wikipedia

Judge Ann Aiken's Juliana decision in November upheld both public trust and substantive due process rights under the Constitution and allowed the case to go forward. "I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society," she wrote, explaining that public trust rights, which "both predated the Constitution and are secured by it," cannot be "legislated away."

The opinion is bound to have a rippling effect. The case is actually part of a wave of atmospheric trust litigation (ATL) cases and petitions across the U.S. and in other countries. Launched by the group Our Children's Trust in 2011, the legal campaign asserts youths' rights to a stable climate system and seeks court-supervised climate recovery plans.

Recent victories in Massachusetts, Pakistan, the Netherlands and Washington state indicate widespread judicial concern over the political branches' failure to confront the climate emergency. The youth plaintiffs hope that the dominoes continue to fall in their favor in time to thwart climate catastrophe.

As ATL moves forward globally, the Juliana case will proceed to trial as early as next summer or fall. The plaintiffs' attorneys aim to show the government's deliberate indifference to mounting climate danger.

Already dubbed "the trial of the century," this is the first time that U.S. fossil fuel policy will confront climate science in court. Any government denial of climate change will have to confront the scrutiny of a fact-finding judge.

Consent Degree From Obama?

The case also offers President Obama a fleeting opportunity.

Five days after the election, Sec. of State Kerry proclaimed that President Obama would use his last days in office to "do everything possible to meet our responsibility to future generations to be able to address this threat to life itself on the planet."

If so, the most viable way might be to offer a partial settlement of the Juliana case before going to trial. One form of settlement could be an enforceable consent decree consisting of interim steps to halt further fossil-fuel mining and infrastructure development. Such a settlement would help secure Obama's measures to close the Arctic to drilling and halt coal leasing on federal lands.

Young Americans could use a down payment on the colossal climate mortgage hanging over their future. And President Obama could use a climate legacy. It may be worth his time now to sit down with the "plucky millennials" who sued him to save the planet—before his time in office runs out.

Mary Wood is the Philip H. Knight Professor of Law at the University of Oregon. Charles W. Woodward, IV is a post graduate research fellow at University of Oregon. Michael C. Blumm is the Jeffrey Bain Scholar & Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark. Reposted with permission from our media associate The Conversation.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/california-and-epa-poised-expand-pollution-potential-drinking-water-reserves

...

Suing because asking hasn’t worked.

In Washington state, a group of 12- to 16-year-olds supported by environmental nonprofit Our Children’s Trust has repeatedly asked the Department of Ecology to more strictly regulate carbon emissions. But the state has repeatedly refused, saying it lacks the authority and buying more time. Washington’s latest rendition of the Clean Air Rule—proposed legislation that would limit carbon pollution—fails to go far enough.

The kids are asking for something that, surprisingly, does not exist: a rule that caps emissions and requires reductions based on the best available science. The Department of Ecology, which is charged by statute and state and federal constitutions to manage and protect the environment, has not challenged the validity of the science the kids have presented in court—numbers on graphs and charts based on recent research, all thoroughly cross-checked by some of the nation’s leading climate scientists.

Yet the state’s current plan is based on outdated science. It calls for a reduction of statewide greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This would require an annual reduction in emissions of 1.7 percent. Today’s experts say we’ll need to slash our emissions by about four times more than that. In addition, the state’s plan includes allowances for some businesses to drag their feet meeting the goals and credits given for out-of-state and past sustainable investments. There’s even a dubious mechanism that allows some carbon credits to be counted twice.

The state has not only denied pleas for a rule that would require quicker action but challenged recent court direction to do so. Finding that the state had a “constitutional obligation to protect the public’s interest in natural resources held in trust for the common benefit of the people,” the King County Superior Court ordered the department to create such a rule by the end of 2016.

But Gov. Jay Inslee's administration appealed the order. Although he’s considered a “climate hero,” said Andrea Rodgers, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center who represents the kids in court, “he missed a tremendous opportunity.”

It is an election year, after all. Facing tight races in November, state Democrats may be wary that strong climate action will appear anti-business. And so, two quintessential American ideals have again butted heads: private enterprise versus the public good.

Ultimately, that’s what this case is about—the public trust.

The public trust doctrine is a legal concept in which governments protect resources—including air, water, and land—for the benefit of citizens as a whole. It’s an ancient idea with roots in indigenous cultures and Roman law’s res communes, addressing things owned by no one and available to all.

It’s also the backbone of modern environmental law. Embedded in statutes back in 1892 when the U.S. Supreme Court found that the public, not a private railroad company, owned the submerged tidelands along Lake Michigan, this idea of public trust has since been invoked over water, oil, beaches, fish stocks, shellfish beds, and so on....

http://projectcensored.org/young-plaintiffs-invoke-constitutional-grounds-climate-protection-federal-court/

August 17, 2016

In April 2016, twenty-one plaintiffs, aged eight to nineteen, brought a lawsuit against the federal government and the fossil fuel industry to the United States Federal District Court in Eugene, Oregon. Judge Thomas Coffin ruled in favor of theplaintiffs’ charge that the federal government violates constitutional and public trust rights by its ongoing promotion of fossil fuels that destabilize the earth’s climate.In a report published byForbes, James Conca wrote that the lawsuit was the first of its kind, connecting climate change and the US Constitution.

The court agreed to the plaintiffs’ assertion that it is the government’s duty to abide by the rules of the public trust doctrine, protecting essential natural resources.

In his ruling, Justice Coffin wrote, “The debate about climate change and its impact has been before various political bodies for some time now. Plaintiffs give this debate justiciability by asserting harms that befall or will befall them personally and to a greater extent than older segments of society… [T]he intractability of the debates before Congress and state legislatures and the alleged valuing of short-term economic interest despite the cost to human life, necessitates a need for the courts to evaluate the constitutional parameters of the action or inaction taken by the government.”

As Conca reported, the decision “upheld the youthPlaintiffs’ claims in the Fifth and Ninth Amendments ‘by denying them protections afforded to previous generations and by favoring the short-term economic interests of certain citizens.’”

In January 2016, three fossil fuel industry trade associations, representing nearly all of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, called the case “a direct, substantial threat to our businesses.”

According to sixteen-year old plaintiff Victoria Barrett, “Our generation will continue to be a force for the world.”

The corporate media coverage of this lawsuit included two pieces form the New York Times,one by John Schwartz and a shorter opinion piece by Anna North, both published in early May. In November 2015, MSNBC described the lawsuit as an “unusual case” that is “long on symbolism” but “unlikely” to win, while noting the risks associated with any decision that might diminish the fossil fuel industry’s interests.

In September 2016, Judge Ann Aiken, another judge in the same Federal Court, is scheduled to review Judge Coffin’s decision.

Source:

James Conca, “Federal Court Rules on Climate Change in Favor of Today’s Children”Forbes, April 10, 2016, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/04/10/federal-court-rules-on-climate-change-in-favor-of-todays-children/#5e5973246219.

Student Researchers:Sabrina Salinas and Eric Osterberg (Citrus College)

Faculty Evaluator:Andy Lee Roth (Citrus College)

http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/10/kids-get-day-in-court/

no links

Kids Get Their Day in Court: 21 Youth Sue U.S. Government in Landmark Climate Lawsuit

Our Children's Trust | June 10, 2016 9:22 am |

U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken scheduled Wednesday an oral argument for the youths’ landmark climate lawsuit for Sept. 13 at 10 a.m. PST in Eugene, Oregon.

The youth plaintiffs after the hearing on March 9 in Eugene, Oregon. Photo credit: Our Children’s Trust

The 21 young plaintiffs received a favorable decision in their case brought against the federal government and fossil fuel industry from U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin in April. Now, they are looking forward to their next opportunity to appear in court to fight for climate justice.

“I am excited that Judge Aiken is interested in hearing our oral argument this September,” plaintiff Kiran Oommen, a 19-year-old from Eugene, said. “The U.S. government’s continued support of the fossil fuel industry, despite the obvious high risks, is hurting people all the time and it’s getting worse. With incidents like the oil train derailment and proceeding disaster in Mosier, Oregon this month, we can see the direct negative consequences of the government’s blatant disregard for the health and safety of the people. The longer this case lasts, the greater the evidence will be condemning their actions.”

[Oil Train Derails in Columbia River Gorge, Rally Calls for Ban on 'Bomb Trains' http://ow.ly/XKtS300WjhE @tarsandsRESIST

3:30 PM - 5 Jun 2016

Photo published for Oil Train Derails in Columbia River Gorge, Rally Calls for Ban on 'Bomb Trains'

Oil Train Derails in Columbia River Gorge, Rally Calls for Ban on 'Bomb Trains'

A unit train carrying crude oil on the Union Pacific rail derailed near Mosier, Oregon. The use of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area as a fossil

ecowatch.com]

The plaintiffs are suing the federal government for violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property and their right to essential public trust resources, by permitting, encouraging and otherwise enabling continued exploitation, production and combustion of fossil fuels. The case is one of multiple related legal actions brought by youth in several states and countries, all supported by Our Children’s Trust, seeking science-based action by governments to stabilize the climate system. Recently, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the King County Superior Court in Seattle, Washington, also ruled in favor of youth in related actions.

21 Kids Take on the Feds and Big #Oil in Historic #Climate Lawsuit http://ow.ly/Zk1UZ via @ecowatch

3:30 PM - 14 Mar 2016

Photo published for 21 Kids Take on the Feds and Big Oil in Historic Climate Lawsuit

21 Kids Take on the Feds and Big Oil in Historic Climate Lawsuit

The judge asked the flustered DOJ attorney, “Are you robbing Peter to pay Paul?”

ecowatch.com

“We look forward to the opportunity to argue this case before Judge Aiken,” Julia Olson, counsel for the plaintiffs and executive director of Our Children’s Trust, said. “The more these brave young climate advocates appear in court, with the tremendous public support we anticipate for this September 13 hearing, the better. This is another chance to tell the egregious story of this case: that for more than 50 years our government has exploited fossil fuels, hand in hand with industry, knowing it would destroy our climate system and the healthy futures for these young people. We are eager to show the court how these youth’s fundamental constitutional rights are being infringed.”

The Western Environmental Law Center ("WELC") is a nonprofit public interest law firm that works to protect and restore western wildlands and advocates for a healthy environment on behalf of communities throughout the West.

WELC started in the early 1990s by public interest attorneys Michael Axline and John Bonine. It grew out of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Oregon.

External links

Western Environmental Law Center - official site

ron arnold Db hit: http://www.undueinfluence.com/western_environmental_law_center.htm

http://ecowatch.com/2016/04/29/climate-lawsuit-washington/

Today, in a surprise ruling from the bench in the critical climate case brought by youths against the State of Washington’s Department of Ecology, King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill ordered the Department of Ecology to promulgate an emissions reduction rule by the end of 2016 and make recommendations to the state legislature on science-based greenhouse gas reductions in the 2017 legislative session.

Judge Hill also ordered the Department of Ecology to consult with the youth petitioners in advance of that recommendation. The youths were forced back to court after the Department of Ecology unexpectedly withdrew the very rulemaking efforts to reduce carbon emissions the agency told the judge it had underway. This case is one of several similar state, federal and international cases, all supported by Our Children’s Trust, seeking the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate.

“For the first time, a U.S. court not only recognized the extraordinary harms young people are facing due to climate change, but ordered an agency to do something about it,” Andrea Rodgers, the Western Environmental Law Center attorney representing the seven youths, said. “Ecology is now court-ordered to issue a rule that fulfills its constitutional and public trust duty to ensure Washington does its part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the planet.”

In granting the youth a remedy, Judge Hill noted the extraordinary circumstances of the climate crisis, saying, “This is an urgent situation … these kids can’t wait.” The court discussed the catastrophic impacts of climate destabilization globally, including the impending loss of polar bears and low-lying countries like Bangladesh. The court explained that while it had no jurisdiction outside of Washington state, it did have jurisdiction over the Department of Ecology and would order the agency to comply with the law and do its part to address the crisis.

21 Kids Take on the Feds and Big #Oil in Historic #Climate Lawsuit https://t.co/CXWK7rs3Ia via @ecowatch

— DeSmogBlog (@DeSmogBlog) March 14, 2016

“It was absurd for Ecology to withdraw its proposed rule to reduce carbon emissions,” petitioner Aji Piper, who is also a plaintiff on the federal constitutional climate lawsuit, supported by Our Children’s Trust, said. “Especially after Judge Hill declared last fall that our ‘very survival depends upon the will of [our] elders to act now … to stem the tide of global warming.’ I think Ecology should be ashamed by its reversal of potentially powerful action and today, Judge Hill issued a significant ruling that should go down in history books. Our government must act to protect our climate for benefit of us and future generations.”

After a landmark November, 2015 decision, in which Judge Hill found that the state has a “mandatory duty” to “preserve, protect and enhance the air quality for the current and future generations” and found the state’s current standards to fail that standard dramatically, the Department of Ecology nonetheless unilaterally withdrew its proposed rule to reduce carbon emissions in the state in February, just months after Judge Hill specifically underscored the urgency of the climate crisis.

“This case explains why youth around this country and in several other countries, are forced to bring their governments to court to secure a healthy atmosphere and stable climate,” Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel at Our Children’s Trust, said. “Despite clear scientific evidence and judicial recognition of the urgency of the climate crisis, Washington and most governments across the U.S. and other countries are failing to take correspondingly urgent, science-based action. That failure unfairly consigns youth to a disproportionately bleak future against which they can only reasonably ask the courts to step in to address this most time sensitive issue of our time.”

Related cases brought by youth to protect the atmosphere are pending before other U.S. courts in the federal district court in Oregon and in the state courts of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Massachusetts and Oregon.

“This is a massive victory,” petitioner Gabe Mandell said.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/11/kids-sue-climate-change/

Courtrooms usually aren’t jovial places, but with 21 youth plaintiffs and two busloads of supporting junior high-school students in tow, the air in the U.S. District Courthouse here on Wednesday felt more field trip than federal court.

The occasion for the youthful energy was a hearing on a complaint filed on behalf of the plaintiffs, aged 8 – 19, by Oregon nonprofit Our Children’s Trust. The kids’ lawyers assert that their clients and the younger generation as a whole, have been deprived of key rights by their own government. By failing to act on climate change, they argue, the U.S. government—including President Obama and a baker’s dozen federal agencies—has valued its own generation more than future generations, who will bear a greater burden with respect to the climate crisis.

The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the complaint and Wednesday’s hearing had a federal judge considering that motion. The youth plaintiffs’ counsel sparred with government lawyers as well as attorneys representing fossil fuel interests. This kind of case might sound, well, juvenile, but trade groups with ties to the oil and gas lobby—the American Petroleum Institute, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and the National Association of Manufacturers—were concerned enough about it that they joined as co-defendants in November of last year. Now, the Oregon U.S. District Court will decide whether or not the complaint will proceed to trial.

Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh Martinez, a 15-year-old indigenous activist and a plaintiff on the case, summed up the kids’ perspective at a press conference after the hearing. “We are valuing our futures over profits,” he said. “We are valuing this planet over corporate greed.”

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This isn’t the first time Our Children’s Trust has brought forth a youth climate lawsuit. Indeed, the group has at one time or another filed suit in all 50 states and currently has cases pending in five states. Back in November, in a case brought by a coalition of Seattle teenagers, a Washington judge ruled that the state was constitutionally obligated to protect its natural resources “for the common benefit of the people of the State”—a notable win for the young plaintiffs—but she did not go so far as to rule that the state’s carbon emissions-limiting standards in question needed to adhere to the “best available science.” A 2011 suit, which the youth plaintiffs ended up losing, also targeted the federal government for failing to keep the atmosphere safe for future generations. It perhaps goes without saying that these types of complaints are incredible long shots.

Julia Olson, a lawyer with Wild Earth Advocates and Our Children’s Trust who argued the plaintiffs’ case on Wednesday, is optimistic about the outcome of this complaint, though. “I believe in our Constitution and I think it can work to address even the most systemic, intractable problem of our generation,” she told me.

The complaint alleges violation of the kids’ Fifth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection. By failing to act on climate change, it argues, the government discriminates against youth as a class. Without access to a healthy climate, they’re deprived of their fundamental rights to life, liberty and property.

The complaint is also built on the public trust doctrine, a carryover from English common law that says a government has the duty to protect certain natural resources and systems on behalf of current and future generations. “It originated with Emperor Justinian in Rome,” Alex Loznak, a 19-year-old plaintiff, explained to the press. “It’s reflected in the Magna Carta, the writings of Thomas Jefferson and cited in U.S. court decisions dating back to the 1800s.”

An important question at hand on Wednesday was whether the public trust doctrine applies to the federal government. The U.S. government and its fossil-fuel industry co-defendants argued that legal precedent only considers it to apply to states. That’s a crucial distinction, because it will help determine whether or not the plaintiffs even have standing in the federal court system.

The defendants also contend that if the federal court took on the case, it would amount to an egregious overstep of authority by the judiciary. “This is the type of problem that is designed to be solved by the political branches,” argued U.S. counsel Sean C. Duffy at the hearing. He said that denying the U.S. government’s motion for dismissal would effectively turn the judicial branch into a “de facto super-agency.”

Another core argument of the defense is that all cases addressing constitutional rights must demonstrate that the government, through its actions, has infringed upon these rights or exceeded its authority. Instead, the defense argued, the kids’ case alleges a failure to act and you can’t require the government to simply “do more.” “Our Constitution is one that limits the power of government,” argued intervenor counsel Quin Sorenson, who represented industry interests at the hearing.

That’s not how Olson sees it, though. “What we have today is not just a failure to act,” she told the press after the hearing. “The government is not just sitting by and doing nothing. They are doing everything to cause this problem.” Indeed, the complaint calls out the government for its continued actions to “permit, authorize and subsidize fossil fuel extraction, development, consumption and exportation.”

Supporters of the youth plaintiffs assemble on the steps of the US District Courthouse in Eugene, OR, after the hearing. The banner reads, “Our future is a constitutional right.” Photo credit: Clayton Aldern / Grist

It’s also not unprecedented for a court to demand that the government meet a specific standard to ensure its citizens’ safety, she said. In Brown v. Plata, for example, a 2010 Supreme Court case concerning prison reform, the court required a mandatory limit on prison populations for the sake of health and safety. Summarizing the decision, she said that while the Supreme Court had no scientific standards to apply at the time, it ruled that it could rely on expert evidence. “The Court selected the number—it set the standard—to keep those prisoners safe.” And when it comes to determining the safe level of climate pollution in the atmosphere, “we have scientific standards,” she said.

“The way I hope it will go is that the judicial branch will say, ‘You’ve got to do something,’” said Dr. James Hansen, adjunct professor at Columbia Universityand former director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen’s granddaughter is a plaintiff in the case and he’s formally listed in the complaint as the legal guardian of “Future Generations.” He continued, “Hopefully the court will ask for a plan: How are you going to ensure the rights of young people?”

In a time of gridlock and sorely needed climate action, the case couldn’t come soon enough, Hansen said. “It gets harder and harder to stabilize the climate if you go longer and longer without turning the curve.”

Addressing climate change is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time and it necessarily causes us to ask some big questions. Is there a constitutional right to be free from climate change? Is there a constitutional right to a safe climate? Is youth a class or simply a mutable trait? If the federal government takes actions that worsen the climate crisis, does that amount to an abuse of its power?

Said Olson: “We are not just in a climate crisis. We will have a significant constitutional crisis and a crisis in our democracy if this doesn’t work.”

...Significantly, similar legal issues are being considered in a federal lawsuit brought in August 2015 against the federal government by 21 young people from across the U.S. and Dr. James Hansen as guardian for all future generations, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Just last week in that case, the world’s largest fossil fuel industry representatives filed a request to intervene to protect their commercial economic interests in fossil fuel exploitation and to thwart the youth’s request for protection of their fundamental constitutional rights. The proposed intervenors, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (representing members ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Koch Industries and virtually all other major refiners and petrochemical manufacturers), the American Petroleum Institute (representing 625 oil and natural gas companies) and the National Association of Manufacturers, called the youth’s case “a direct threat to [their] businesses.”...

http://ecowatch.com/2015/11/20/stem-tide-climate-change/

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Two teenagers from Eugene, Oregon appealed Judge Karsten Rasmussen’s adverse decision yesterday to their climate change lawsuit.In its decision, the court ruled that the state of Oregon has no responsibility to preserve Oregon’s iconic rivers and beaches, fish, wildlife, shorelands or the atmosphere for future generations.

Without addressing any of the evidence presented in expert declarations supporting the youth, including statements from the state’s own scientists, the court questioned “whether the atmosphere is a ‘natural resource’ at all.” Last year, Judge Rasmussen decision was reversed by the Oregon Court of Appeals in the same case brought by the teens, and plaintiffs Kelsey Juliana and Olivia Chernaik are hopeful that the most recent decision will be overturned again.

Juliana and Chernaik’s appeal comes less than two weeks after two landmark climate wins in the courts. On June 23, Washington state youth, who along with Juliana and Chernaik are part of a global youth-driven legal campaign, won an unprecedented decision in their climate change lawsuit. Hours later, after the win in Washington, the Dutch Urgenda Foundation and hundreds of Dutch citizens won a climate case that forces the Netherlands government to adopt stringent climate policies.

Back in Oregon, youth aren’t seeing similar victories—yet. The Oregon legislature ends its session this week without passing or even putting to a floor vote Oregon’s Climate Stability and Justice Act (HB 3470), which would have been the most comprehensive climate law in the state.

yahoo news 12/14

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Proponents of an Oregon ballot measure requiring labels on genetically modified foods conceded defeat Thursday after a judge ruled against them and an automatic recount appeared unlikely to sway the outcome.

The Yes on 92 campaign said there are no legal options remaining that could lead them to victory.