{"id":1216011,"date":"2023-09-17T11:55:56","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T11:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/09\/held-v-montana-court-constitutional-right-climate-change-youth-generations-environment\/"},"modified":"2023-09-17T23:39:49","modified_gmt":"2023-09-17T23:39:49","slug":"a-montana-judge-just-ruled-the-states-constitution-bans-new-fossil-fuel-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/09\/17\/a-montana-judge-just-ruled-the-states-constitution-bans-new-fossil-fuel-plants\/","title":{"rendered":"A Montana Judge Just Ruled the State\u2019s Constitution Bans New Fossil Fuel Plants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

In Montana, young residents just won a lawsuit charging that construction of a new gas power plant was barred by the state constitution. But \u201cpro-climate\u201d President Joe Biden is arguing fiercely against letting the US Supreme Court hear a similar case.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Youth plaintiffs are greeted by supporters as they arrive for the nation\u2019s first youth climate change trial at Montana\u2019s First Judicial District Court on June 12, 2023, in Helena, Montana. (William Campbell \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

The wording<\/a> in Article IX, Section 1, of Montana\u2019s constitution couldn\u2019t be clearer: \u201cThe state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.\u201d Accordingly, in April, a district court judge in Yellowstone County voided<\/a> a permit for a natural gas\u2013fired power plant under construction there. Over its lifetime, it would have released an estimated twenty-three million tons of planet-roasting carbon dioxide, and that, ruled the judge, was incompatible with a \u201cclean and healthful environment\u201d in Montana or, for that matter, anywhere else.<\/p>\n

Within a week, the state legislature had voted to reinforce a 2011 law<\/a> barring the consideration of climate change in policymaking and so allowing the construction of the power plant to resume. But that wasn\u2019t the end of the matter. Last month, the lawmakers were slapped down a second time when another district judge ruled in favor of a group of sixteen youthful Montanans in a suit filed in 2020 seeking to strike down that very 2011 anticlimate legislation.<\/p>\n

In her ruling, Judge Kathy Seeley wrote<\/a>, \u201cMontana\u2019s climate, environment, and natural resources are unconstitutionally degraded and depleted due to the current atmospheric concentration of [greenhouse gases] and climate change.\u201d She added that \u201cevery additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions exacerbates Plaintiffs\u2019 injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries.\u201d The state, she made it abundantly clear, is obligated to correct such a situation.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs, who were all in their teens or younger when their suit, Held v. Montana<\/em>, was filed three years ago, are represented by a nonprofit group, Our Children\u2019s Trust. Since 2011, it has been pursuing climate action on behalf of this country\u2019s youth in the courts of all fifty states<\/a>. The Montana case was simply the first to go to trial. The second, a climate case against the Hawaii Department of Transportation, is scheduled<\/a> to begin next summer.<\/p>\n

Matt Rosendale, a Montana Republican serving in the House of Representatives, responded to<\/a> the Held v. Montana<\/em> decision with the worst sort of condescending bluster. \u201cThis is not a school project,\u201d he insisted. \u201cIt\u2019s a courtroom. . . . Judge Seeley did a huge disservice to the courts and to these youths by allowing them to be used as pawns in the Left\u2019s poorly thought-out plan to ruin our power grid and compromise our national security in the name of their Green New Fantasy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only fantasy, however, was Rosendale\u2019s characterization of the proceedings. The plaintiffs\u2019 case was overwhelmingly persuasive, with extensive testimony from climate and pediatric health experts showing that people younger than twenty-five were going to be especially vulnerable to the many impacts climate change is going to have on physical and psychological health. In her ruling, Seeley summarized<\/a> some of the damages to which the plaintiffs had testified.<\/p>\n

All of the young people in the suit were afflicted with allergies and asthma (three especially severely) and had suffered significant health problems thanks to the unavoidable inhalation of smoke from North America\u2019s ever-increasing wildfires. Much of that damage had occurred during Montana\u2019s horrendous fire seasons of 2017 (when more than 2,400 fires burned across 1.4 million<\/a> acres of the state) and 2021 (when more than 2,500 fires burned almost one million<\/a> more), followed, of course, by the smoke from the devastating and ongoing Canadian wildfires of this spring<\/a> and summer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Three indigenous plaintiffs testified that climate disruption has already ensured that their traditional sources of food and medicinal plants would become ever scarcer. As a result, it is preventing them from taking part in their usual cultural practices, including ones involving increasingly scarce snow. As the lawsuit put it, the changing planet has \u201cdisrupted tribal spiritual practices and longstanding rhythms of tribal life by changing the timing of natural events like bird migration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Testimony also showed that the extreme heat of recent summers, only expected to grow more severe in the coming years, is threatening the health of the plaintiffs, all of whom engage in extensive outdoor work or recreation. Those who participate in competitive sports have seen their training severely curtailed by summer heat (and for one of them, a Nordic skier, by lack of winter snow). The plaintiffs\u2019 ability to hunt and fish, especially important in Montana, is being dramatically limited by drought and wildfire.<\/p>\n