Not so surprisingly, the junior tree huggers are being egged on by a group of liberal professors.
Via NWN:
A group of California youth is suing a slew of government agencies, including the EPA, for failing to develop a plan of action against climate change.
The plaintiffs demand that the federal government immediately devise a climate recovery strategy to avoid 2 degrees C of warming above preindustrial levels. Commonly touted as the amount of flex room humans have before a deadly degree of climate change is unleashed across the planet, the threshold is something of a best-case-scenario at this point, according to researchers, who warn the planet is on track to reach twice that by the end of the century. What’s more, a recent study by James Hansen, former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, cautions that even 2 C is too much if “young people, future generations and nature” are to be spared “irreparable harm.”
With studies like these in mind, the case, which has made its way to the Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, invokes the public trust doctrine. Originating in the Roman concept of common property, the principle places the responsibility of protecting natural resources like water squarely on the shoulders of government, and represents the backbone of a revolutionary legal strategy known as Atmospheric Trust Litigation (ATL).
The brainchild of University of Oregon’s Mary Wood, the faculty director of the school’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program, ATL takes a “macro” approach to what Wood considers to be a “civilizational threat.”
“Hurricane Katrina was a watershed moment for me,” Wood, an expert in environmental law, told Nature World News. “I dropped everything to focus on what had been written on climate change.” […]
The current D.C. court case, Alec L. v. McCarthy, includes five teenagers and the non-profit organizations Kids vs. Global Warming and WildEarth Guardians. Meanwhile, it is supported by more than 30 environmental and constitutional professors. “It’s thoroughly vetted,” Wood said.
Among the teens involved is Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez, a 13-year-old climate activist who officially got his start at the age of 6 when he spoke at a rally in his hometown of Boulder, Colo., calling on individuals everywhere to take personal responsibility for their actions and the effect they had on climate change.