Climate Rights
MICA
KANTOR IS a long-distance runner. At 15 years
old, he enjoys unplugging from his phone while
he runs outdoors. But as wildfires have become
more frequent in recent years, smoky days have
increasingly limited his ability to train
outside. That makes him “feel trapped,” he said
recently in a Montana state courtroom, “like I
can’t get my mind off of
things.”
Sariel Sandoval, 20, a
member of the Bitterroot Salish, Upper Pend
d’Oreille, and Diné tribes, grew up picking
huckleberries with her family and listening to
coyote stories. Some tales, which have been
passed down through generations, are told only
when there is snow on the ground. “One day we’re
not going to have any snow on the ground,” she
testified in court. “What happens to those
stories?”
Olivia Vesovich, a
20-year-old artist, says her allergies have
become more and more painful in recent years,
even swelling her eyes shut at times. On top of
that, wildfire smoke has been triggering her
asthma. “I feel like I can’t breathe, and that’s
a terrifying feeling,” she
said.
Kantor, Sandoval, and
Vesovich are among a group of 16 young people,
ages 5 to 22, who sued Montana in 2020 for
contributing to the climate crisis. All three
took to the witness stand this summer in Held v. Montana,
laying bare, in sometimes emotional testimony,
the ways in which climate change has impacted
their physical, mental, and cultural health. In
August, the district court judge ruled in their favor in a
landmark win for the climate
movement.
The lawsuit was
highly anticipated in climate circles. It was
the first youth-led climate case to go to trial
in the United States. It was also the first
constitutional climate case to go to trial in
the country, meaning the legal argument for this
case rested on inalienable rights bestowed to
all Montanans in the state
constitution.
“There’s never been a
trial like this in our history,” said one of the
lead attorneys in the case, Nate Bellinger,
of Our Children’s Trust, the
nonprofit law firm representing the plaintiffs.
There are, however, sure to be more: Youth
plaintiffs across the country are gearing up to
fight for their climate rights in several other
cases.
Journal
Managing Editor Zoe Loftus-Farren writes about
this ground-breaking climate case and how it is
centered around a relatively unique
constitutional protection — a “green amendment”
that guarantees the right “to a clean and
healthful environment in Montana for present and
future generations” in our Autumn 2023 print
issue. “The growing movement to pass green
amendments like this in other states around the
country... could be a game changer in the fight
for climate action,” she writes.
|
