[Rantman] Lawsuit for the future...youth pushing courts to face global warming

[Richard Pauli]

Wield every tool to meet the future.
This is wonderful news.


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May 4, 2011


  Suit Accuses U.S. Government of Failing to Protect Earth for
  Generations Unborn

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/earth/05climate.html


            By FELICITY BARRINGER
            <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/felicity_barringer/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

SAN FRANCISCO --- Advocates of stringent curbs on greenhouse gas 
emissions sued the federal government on Wednesday, arguing that key 
agencies had failed in their duty to protect the earth's atmosphere as a 
public trust to be guarded for future generations.

Similar lawsuits are to be filed against states around the country, 
according to the plaintiffs, a coalition of groups concerned about 
climate change 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> 
called Our Children's Trust <http://imattermarch.org/lawsuit/>.

Most of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, filed in United States 
District Court in San Francisco, are teenagers, a decision apparently 
made to underscore the intergenerational nature of the public trust that 
the earth's atmosphere represents. More novel, however, is the suit's 
reliance on the public trust doctrine, which dates to Roman times.

That doctrine has been invoked in cases involving the protection of 
Chicago's lakefront and of Mono Lake in the Sierra Nevada.

But in some ways the suit parallels a current case, brought by several 
states against the five largest utilities in the country, that frames 
greenhouse gas emissions as a public nuisance, legal experts noted.

Last month, the Supreme Court 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/supreme_court/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
heard oral arguments 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/us/politics/20scotus.html> on issues 
in that case, including the standing of the states to bring such 
lawsuits. Several justices expressed skepticism: Justice Ruth Bader 
Ginsberg, for example, questioned whether the courts were being asked to 
intervene in an arena in which the executive branch --- specifically the 
Environmental Protection Agency 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/environmental_protection_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
--- has the requisite expertise to act.

  The E.P.A. has determined that greenhouse gases pose a danger to the 
public health and welfare and are therefore subject to regulation under 
the Clean Air Act 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/clean_air_act/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>. 
It has argued that this regulatory process, which is already under way, 
should not be pre-empted by the courts.

Legal experts interviewed on Wednesday said they were unsure whether the 
new lawsuit could gain legal traction, given that it presents issues 
that overlap in some ways with the public nuisance case. The Supreme 
Court is expected to issue an opinion on that case this spring.

Courts that hear these cases will be heavily influenced by the Supreme 
Court's opinion, said Michael B. Gerrard, director of Columbia 
University's Center for Climate Change Law 
<http://www.law.columbia.edu/centers/climatechange>.

Mr. Gerrard said that by filing such lawsuits, environmentalists were 
"trying to use all available options in view of the failure of Congress" 
to act on greenhouse gas emissions. The House approved a sweeping bill 
to limit such emissions in 2009, but a more cautious effort died in the 
Senate last year. And the recently elected Republican majority in the 
House is threatening to strip the E.P.A. of regulatory powers related to 
global warming.

Lisa Heinzerling <http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/Heinzerling/>, 
an environmental law expert at Georgetown University 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/georgetown_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org>, 
said of the new suit, "Part of this is keeping the issue alive in lots 
of different settings and having all the branches, including the courts, 
continually react to it."

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