“I know that climate change is a global issue, but Montana needs to take responsibility for our part,” 22-year-old Rikki Held, the lead plaintiff, testified. “You can’t just blow it off and do nothing about it.”
Seeley agreed. “Every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions exacerbates Plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries,” she wrote in her 108-page ruling. “Plaintiffs’ injuries will grow increasingly severe and irreversible without science-based actions to address climate change.”
The street to the trial was rocky, with the state making an attempt to throw the case out a number of instances. During the trial the state tried what some termed a “nothing-to-see-here” method, bringing free-market economists and local weather deniers to the fore to persuade the decide that allowing and fossil gasoline regulation wasn’t actually the state’s accountability. The state additionally argued that even when it have been to cease emitting CO2 completely, it might have little influence.
Seeley didn’t purchase that.
“Montana’s [greenhouse gas] emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury to the youth plaintiffs,” she wrote in her ruling. The decide additionally famous that the state didn’t supply a compelling argument for why it didn’t contemplate the impacts of greenhouse gasoline emissions when making allowing choices. She additionally famous that renewable energy is “technically feasible and economically beneficial.”
Emily Flower, spokesperson for state lawyer common Austin Knudsen, decried the ruling as “absurd” and known as the trial a “taxpayer-funded publicity stunt.” She stated the workplace plans to enchantment.
“Montanans can’t be blamed for changing the climate,” Flower stated, in keeping with the Associated Press. “Their same legal theory has been thrown out of federal court and courts in more than a dozen states. It should have been here as well, but they found an ideological judge who bent over backward to allow the case to move forward and earn herself a spot in their next documentary.”
Attorneys who participated within the trial say that the decision is notable as a result of it places the blame for inaction squarely on the shoulders of state officers, indicating they’ve the ability to vary their method.
Seeley “recognized that the only obstacles to a transition to a clean energy economy in Montana are political,” stated Melissa Hornbein, an lawyer with the Western Environmental Law Center. “They’re not technological.”
Hornbein hopes the decision shapes comparable fits specializing in governmental accountability for addressing local weather change. Our Children’s Trust additionally represents 14 younger plaintiffs in Hawaii in a comparable case, Nawahine v. the Hawaii Department of Transportation, which is now slated to maneuver ahead subsequent yr.