Our Children’s Trust is back in the news after the resolution of a climate suit in Hawai’i. The organization is comprised of attorneys who are bringing legal actions against states and the federal government in an attempt to force them to address the crisis of a warming planet in an effective and timely fashion. One of the original supporters of Our Children’s Trust is Dr.
James Hansen, the NASA scientist who boldly told the US Congress about the impending climate disaster being caused by burning fossil fuels in 1988. If we had listened to him then, we wouldn’t be in the state of emergency we are now, with record high temperatures causing the deaths of thousands of people. The first suit brought by Our Children’s Trust attorneys was Juliana vs US , which attempted to establish that the US government has a legal obligation to provide a safe and healthy environment for its citizens.
You might think such an idea is self evident, but the case dragged on for nearly a decade before being dismissed recently at the request of the Biden administration. That was a setback for the organization and Earthjustice , its staunch ally in the fight to make governments responsive to the needs of society. But the Juliana case was not the only legal action undertaken on behalf of young people.
Our Children’s Trust and Earthjustice also sued the state of Hawai’i on behalf of several young people in an effort to make decarbonizing the transportation system in that state a higher and m.
