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If you live in Washington, or New York, or Atlanta, there may be times when it seems like former President Donald Trump's upcoming trials—for attempting to overthrow the election, for absconding with classified documents, for covering up his relationship with a porn actress—have sucked all the oxygen from the room.
Here in northwest Montana, where we're trying to survive yet another summer of destructive wildfires, the smoke that fills our valleys has a similar impact. When flames stalk our landscapes, and smoke and ash fill the air, it's literally hard to breathe.
Other parts of the nation have also faced their own climate tribulations during this unnaturally hot summer. Phoenix set a record with 31 straight days of 110 degrees. Vermont was inundated with historic and unprecedented floods. And the recent firestorm on Maui, which incinerated most of the historic town of Lahaina, was responsible for a massive, and tragic, loss of life.
If there's a silver lining to be found in this summer from hell, it's that, for the first time ever, a group of young Americans, including my 18-year-old son Kian, have successfully challenged the climate status quo in court.
Judge Kathy Seeley, a state district court judge here in Montana, recently ruled that our young people have a constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment. She also found that the state's failure to address climate was causing them harm.
Montana, which has a long history of promoting fossil fuels, did its best to torpedo the trial. Now a spokesperson for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen has described Judge Seeley's decision as "absurd" and a "taxpayer-funded publicity stunt."
Regardless, the decision, which is as unprecedented as the trial itself, holds the state's feet to the fire. In her ruling, Judge Seeley confirmed that the state violated the "Youth Plaintiffs' right to a clean and healthful environment and is unconstitutional on its face."
She went on to add, "plaintiffs have a fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate as part of the environmental life-support system."
While lawyers and legal scholars will no doubt continue to unpack Judge Seeley's ruling for the foreseeable future, Julia Olson, chief legal counsel and executive director for Our Children's Trust, the nonprofit organization which represented the young plaintiffs in court, welcomed the decision.
"Today, for the first time in U.S. history, a court ruled on the merits of a case that the government violated the constitutional rights of children through laws and actions that promote fossil fuels, ignore climate change, and disproportionately imperil young people," she said.
Our Children's Trust attorney Nate Bellinger noted that "Montana's judiciary fulfilled its constitutional duty" to protect its "youngest and most vulnerable" citizens. Plaintiffs' counsel Roger Sullivan described the ruling as "a landmark decision establishing enforceable principles of intergenerational justice."
Judge Seeley's ruling stated that Montana's greenhouse gas emissions are "nationally and globally significant," that Montana youth have been harmed by human-caused climate change, and that Montana's laws promoting fossil fuels are unconstitutional. Montana will now be forced to take climate change into account when it considers permits for new coal mines, power plants, pipelines, and other CO2-producing infrastructure. Barring a stay of her decision from Judge Seeley or Montana's Supreme Court, the state's decades-long promotion of fossil fuels will have to stop.
On a national level, this decision sets an extraordinary new precedent. Climate lawsuits are no longer out on the fringe. Those most at risk from our over-heating planet now have the standing to take legal action, and they can do so with some expectation that they'll prevail in a court of law.
In addition, Judge Seeley's ruling also offers something that's been in awfully short supply recently—hope.
When I asked Kian what the decision meant to him, he was succinct, "We now have a chance."
In other words, there's a possibility that this ruling, and others like it, will eventually reduce our CO2 emissions and limit the damage to our health, our natural ecosystems, and our economy.
Whatever happens going forward—and we should keep in mind that the powers-that-be will appeal this decision to Montana's Supreme Court—I expect that young people all over the country will stand with Kian and his 15 fellow plaintiffs. Hope, after all, is contagious.
When The New York Times summarized the Held v. Montana trial, which began on June 12 and wrapped up on June 20, it reported that "sixteen young people argue that the state is robbing their future by embracing policies that contribute to climate change."
Now, after the judge validated those charges, I can't help but wonder about other states, and other trials, and whether sanity and science may eventually trump the status quo.
At the end of the day, a line from Peter Gabriel's anti-apartheid anthem, "Biko," seems particularly appropriate for the 16 young Montanans who stood up and challenged their government over climate change: "And the eyes of the world are watching now ..."
Todd Tanner is a lifelong angler and hunter. He lives in Montana and runs the climate-focused nonprofit Conservation Hawks.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
