Held vs. Montana is a succinct legal climate challenge, but such climate cases are new and uncertain.Sixteen young Montanans have sued their state, arguing that its support of fossil fuels violates their due as citizens. In their complaint, which will be heard by the court this spring, the young activists seized on language in the state of Montana Constitution that guarantees residents “the right to a clean and healthful environment.
Climate activists are fighting for the day when carbon neutrality is achieved by balancing anthropogenic CO2 emissions with negative emissions. Over the coming decades, experts estimate thatof all plant and animal species may go extinct. Climate change directly contributes to species extinction through ecosystem shift, and accelerates other drivers of extinction such as destruction of habitat and pollution.
Asserting such rights in appropriate state, national, and international courts, though, is a challenge. Rights to youths’ own future and to that of future generations differ when adding climate mitigation to the equation.
In fact, the original 1889 Constitution and subsequent laws were highly deferential to industrial interests. “Some historians called it a corporate colony: all the profits were going out of the state, and residents weren’t seeing the benefits,” Michelle Bryan, a law professor at the University of Montana, told the. “The 1972 Constitution was kind of Montana’s declaration of independence from corporate mining.