The last time we heard from James Hansen he was calling for China to lead a global boycott of America over “global warming.”
(Live Science) — By failing to take action against global warming, the federal government has violated its legal obligation to protect the atmosphere as a resource that belongs to everyone, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court last week.
Five of the plaintiffs are teenagers, who have a “profound interest in ensuring our climate remains stable enough to ensure their right to a livable future,” according to the suit filed May 4, which names a number of federal officials — from Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, to Robert Gates of the Defense Department — as defendants.
The suit cites climate calculations, and is supported by NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who has a history of speaking out forcefully on the hazards of human-caused global warming. Hansen told LiveScience he had been interested in going to court over the topic in recent years.
The suit is based on the Public Trust Doctrine, a long-standing legal doctrine that states it is the government’s duty to protect the resources that are essential for our collective survival and prosperity, such as rivers, groundwater, or in this case, atmosphere, according to Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit advocacy organization behind the litigation.
“So far politics have governed what governments are doing about the climate crisis, and the Public Trust Doctrine is about putting the science back into climate protection,” said Julia Olson, director of Our Children’s Trust. “And that is what we are asking courts to do.”
The group is behind a number of other lawsuits filed against state governments, including Alaska and Arizona, based on the same legal reasoning and with other young plaintiffs, according to Olson.
“We have kids in Alaska who are seeing their glaciers melting and their homes becoming unstable because of the melting permafrost, and kids in Arizona where it is becoming hotter and drier. . . . They are already experiencing drought and less ability to grow their own food,” she said.
HT: Ed M.