A Montana state court today sided with young people who sued the state for promoting the fossil fuel industry through its energy policy, which they alleged prohibits Montana from weighing greenhouse gas emissions in approving the development of new factories and power plants. This prohibition, 16 plaintiffs ages 5 to 22 successfully argued, violates their constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.”

Experts previously predicted that a win for youths in Montana would set an important legal precedent for how courts can hold states accountable for climate inaction. The same legal organization representing Montana’s young plaintiffs, Our Children’s Trust, is currently pursuing similar cases in four other states, The Washington Post reported.

The Post described this landmark case as “the nation’s first constitutional and first youth-led climate lawsuit to go to trial.”

To climate activists, it illustrates the power of a court hearing directly from young people describing experiences with immense loss caused by climate change. Today’s order followed five days of emotional testimony from young plaintiffs describing harms caused by the state’s climate inaction.

Montana tried to argue that adjusting its energy policy and other statutes would have “no meaningful impact or appreciable effect,” the Post reported, because climate change is a global issue. Montana Assistant Attorney General Michael Russell described the testimony as a “week-long airing of political grievances that properly belong in the Legislature, not a court of law,” according to the Post. Notably, the state did not meaningfully attempt to dispute climate science.

However, “undisputed testimony established” that the state “could evaluate ‘greenhouse gas emissions and corresponding impacts to the climate in the state’ when evaluating fossil fuel activities,” judge Kathy Seeley wrote in the Montana 1st Judicial District Court order. The state had no compelling interest not to conduct climate analyses and consider remedies, Seeley wrote.

Experts told Scientific American that Montana’s emissions are significant given its population size, emitting in 2019 “about 32 million tons of carbon dioxide.” That’s “about as much as Ireland, which has a population six times larger,” Scientific American reported. Young people suing alleged that Montana had “never denied a permit for a fossil fuel project,” the Post reported.

Because of this powerful youth testimony, the court ruled that the state’s energy policy’s limitation on environmental impact reviews was unconstitutional.

“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,” Seeley wrote.

As a result of the order, any Montana statutes prohibiting climate impact analysis and remedies are now invalid and permanently enjoined.

“This is a monumental decision,” Phil Gregory, the plaintiffs’ attorney, told the Post. Another attorney for plaintiffs and executive director of Our Children’s Trust, Julia Olson, told AP that the ruling was a “huge win for Montana, for youth, for democracy, and for our climate.”

Montana is expected to appeal the ruling, according to Emily Flower, a spokesperson for the state’s Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who called the ruling “absurd.”

“Montanans can’t be blamed for changing the climate—even the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses agreed that our state has no impact on the global climate,” Flower said. “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.”

Youth plaintiffs did not ask for any damages beyond their attorneys’ fees and costs, which were awarded by the court. To young people suing, winning is seemingly just about pushing the state to embrace climate science and mitigate known harms moving forward.

“As fires rage in the West, fueled by fossil fuel pollution, today’s ruling in Montana is a game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos,” Olson told AP.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1960765