U.S. Judge Sends Landmark Youth Climate Case to Trial

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BREAKING: U.S. Judge Sends Landmark Youth Climate Case to Trial

[ https://www.theenergymix.com/breaking-u ... -451866381 ]

January 1, 2024 Primary Author: Mitchell Beer

A landmark youth climate lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, is finally going to trial, after a December 29 ruling by District Court Judge Aiken that rejects the U.S. government’s latest bid to have the case dismissed.

“This catastrophe is the great emergency of our time and compels urgent action,” Aiken wrote [pdf] in her 49-page judgement. “As this lawsuit demonstrates, young people—too young to vote and effect change through the political process—are exercising the institutional procedure available to plead with their government to change course.”

Through eight years of pre-trial motions, the U.S. government under three presidential administrations has responded to the Juliana plaintiffs with an “unhurried, inchmeal, bureaucratic response to our most dire emergency,” the judge said.

But “the judiciary is capable and duty-bound to provide redress for the irreparable harm government fossil fuel promotion has caused,” she added, in a ruling that draws supportive citations from UN Secretary General António Guterres, U.S. President Joe Biden, Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, and climate author David Wallace-Wells. . . . . "

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