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I began writing this introduction on a record-breaking September day in New York City. It was 93 degrees (and humid as hell). Until then, my hometown had largely missed the worst of this summer's record heatwaves that swept through so much of this country and the northern hemisphere. In fact, for that hemisphere, it's been the hottest summer in history. And here's the saddest thing of all: barring some surprising developments, I could be writing such lines for the rest of my life.
Admittedly, at age 79, that may not be all that long. Still, I have children and grandchildren, and when I think of them, as I do all too often, my heart sinks as I try to imagine what they might have to endure. Joe Biden has, at least, tried in significant ways (just not hard enough) to be a climate-change-defeating president. Nonetheless, U.S. oil production in 2023 is expected to break the record set during Donald Trump's time in office. How's that for depressing in climate-change terms?
Meanwhile, a major war is underway in Eurasia and the two greatest greenhouse-gas-producing countries on the planet, China (which consumes more coal than the rest of the world combined) and the U.S., are increasingly at each other's throats. Worse yet, global greenhouse gas emissions are expected to hit record levels this year and next, probably putting the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord out of reach.
Yes, the planet's economy is indeed greening relatively rapidly in terms of the growth of renewable energy sources and their ever more striking affordability. Still, nothing is happening fast enough in a world that seems to be breaking heat records weekly. In truth, I just don't want life to be an eternal weather horror show for my grandkids and that's why I find today's piece by TomDispatch regular Stan Cox encouraging. It's good to know that the young aren't going to take what their elders have done to them sitting down (so to speak). Tom
A Future Generation Shows Up Ahead of Schedule
Young Montanans Fight Climate Change for All of Us
By Stan Cox
The wording in Article IX, Section 1, of Montana's constitution couldn't be clearer: "The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations." Accordingly, in April, a district court judge in Yellowstone County voided a permit for a natural-gas-fired power plant under construction there. Over its lifetime, it would have released an estimated 23 million tons of planet-roasting carbon dioxide and that, ruled the judge, was incompatible with a "clean and healthful environment" in Montana or, for that matter, anywhere else.
Within a week, the state legislature had voted to reinforce a 2011 law barring the consideration of climate change in policymaking and so allowing the construction of the power plant to resume. But that wasn't the end of the matter. Last month, the lawmakers were slapped down a second time when another district judge ruled in favor of a group of 16 youthful Montanans in a suit filed in 2020 seeking to strike down that very 2011 anti-climate legislation.
In her ruling, Judge Kathy Seeley wrote, "Montana's climate, environment, and natural resources are unconstitutionally degraded and depleted due to the current atmospheric concentration of [greenhouse gases] and climate change." She added that "every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions exacerbates Plaintiffs' injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries." The state, she made it abundantly clear, is obligated to correct such a situation.
The plaintiffs, who were all in their teens or younger when their suit, Held v. Montana, was filed three years ago, are represented by a nonprofit group, Our Children's Trust. Since 2011, it has been pursuing climate action on behalf of this country's youth in the courts of all 50 states. The Montana case was simply the first to go to trial. The second, a climate case against the Hawaii Department of Transportation, is scheduled to begin next summer.
Matt Rosendale, a Montana Republican serving in the House of Representatives, responded to the Held v. Montana decision with the worst sort of condescending bluster. "This is not a school project," he insisted. "It's a courtroom" Judge Seeley did a huge disservice to the courts and to these youths by allowing them to be used as pawns in the Left's poorly thought-out plan to ruin our power grid and compromise our national security in the name of their Green New Fantasy."
The only fantasy, however, was Rosendale's characterization of the proceedings. The plaintiffs' case was overwhelmingly persuasive, with extensive testimony from climate and pediatric health experts showing that people younger than 25 were going to be especially vulnerable to the many impacts climate change is going to have on physical and psychological health. In her ruling, Seeley summarized some of the damages to which the plaintiffs had testified.
All of the young people in the suit were afflicted with allergies and asthma (three especially severely) and had suffered significant health problems thanks to the unavoidable inhalation of smoke from North America's ever-increasing wildfires. Much of that damage had occurred during Montana's horrendous fire seasons of 2017 (when more than 2,400 fires burned across 1.4 million acres of the state) and 2021 (when more than 2,500 fires burned almost 1 million more), followed, of course, by the smoke from the devastating and ongoing Canadian wildfires of this spring and summer.
Three Indigenous plaintiffs testified that climate disruption has already ensured that their traditional sources of food and medicinal plants would become ever scarcer. As a result, it is preventing them from taking part in their usual cultural practices, including ones involving increasingly scarce snow. As the lawsuit put it, the changing planet has "disrupted tribal spiritual practices and longstanding rhythms of tribal life by changing the timing of natural events like bird migration."
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