2023-06-28 07:39:54
Young people are suing Montana to defend their constitutional right to a healthy environment.
Montana, known as the “Big Sky Country”, attracts some 12 million tourists each year who come to admire its magnificent mountains and canyons, river valleys, forests and plains, caverns, famous “badlands” and visit national parks, Glacier and Yellowstone. With an area the size of Norway, it is the fourth largest state in the United States, but its population is only regarding one million. From the mountains, one can contemplate plains where cattle graze on grass, where huge fields of wheat, barley and oats grow, and where farms produce a wide variety of vegetables. Montana residents love their state for its natural beauty, productive land, camping, hiking, and regulated hunting of elk, antelope, black bear, bison, wolf, bighorn sheep, to mountain goat and white-tailed deer.
“A healthy environment for present and future generations”
A group of 16 young people, ages 5 to 22, have filed a lawsuit once morest the state of Montana to protect people and their own health, and that of future generations, from two major industries in the state. : coal and oil. The State Constitution, rewritten in 1972, included, under the impact of the first wave of environmental activism, a clause stating that: “The state and every person must maintain and improve a clean and healthy environment in Montana for present and future generations. »
But state authorities, almost entirely controlled by the Republican Party, which has close ties to the coal and oil industries, have not only strongly resisted measures to cut fossil fuels, but have also passed laws to encourage and promote them. The Republican-dominated state legislature passed a law prohibiting the state from considering the effect on the climate when reviewing power plant or factory projects.
NGO support
“Montana’s emissions are just too tiny to make any difference”said Michael Russell, assistant attorney general. “Climate change is a global issue that effectively relegates Montana’s role to that of a bystander. »
But Rikki Held, a 22-year-old complainant, responds: “I know climate change is a global issue, but Montana needs to take responsibility. We cannot just ignore it and do nothing. »
The young people, backed by an environmental NGO, the Children’s Trust Fund, and backed by environmental experts, say climate change caused by fossil fuels is negatively affecting the state: glaciers are shrinking, wildfires are raging and the Yellowstone Park was flooded. The experts presented numerous government climate reports, including that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), convened by the United Nations, to which state attorneys objected that “It’s not our government”.
“Our world will burn”
Most of the young people were teenagers or younger when the complaint was filed several years ago. Some have seen wildfires threaten their family homes and ranches. One of them, Kian Tanner, told a local newspaper: “Climate change is the current and future threat to the world. Our world is going to burn, and I don’t think anyone wants to live in a burning world. »
Several of those involved in the lawsuit are Native Americans. Taleah Hernández of the Flathead Reservation says: “We live in a place of such beauty and the best way to preserve it is to start protecting it now. »
The Children’s Trust Fund supports such legal actions in every state in the Union, whether Republican or Democratic, although only six states have enshrined environmental protections in their Constitutions (Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana , Pennsylvania and Rhode Island). There is no such protection in the Federal Constitution.
Young people, supported by progressive adults, are taking the lead in the fight once morest climate change. In urban areas, environmental justice movements and legal actions by Black and Latino communities are also attacking fossil fuels. All of these efforts must be part of a broad, grassroots and more militant movement to stop climate change.
HW Translation
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