A story in Lever News reports on Climate Defiance, a new youth-led group/movement that calls out politicians’ hypocrisy. (funded in part by the Climate Emergency Fund)
In the three months since it was founded, Climate Defiance has organized high-profile actions including blockading the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, shutting down a speech by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and bird-dogging Vice President Kamala Harris. The day after they disrupted Schumer’s Manhattan fundraiser, the group showed up at President Joe Biden’s reelection fundraiser in Chicago to protest his administration’s continued approval of fossil fuel projects.
—Lever News, in YOU LOVE TO SEE IT: Youth Climate Activists Turn Up The Heat
(funded in part by the Climate Emergency Fund.)
Recent reports in Inside Climate News and The Guardian focused on youth suing the state of Montana, alleging state officials violated their constitutional right to a healthy environment by enacting pro-fossil fuel policies. Montana’s constitution provides that the “state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations”. (Testimony in the trial ended last week, and it now awaits the judge’s verdict.)
- ‘My life and my home’: young people start to testify at historic US climate trial
- Love of the Land and Community Inspired the Montana Youths Whose Climate Lawsuit Against the State Goes to Court This Week
- In a Montana Courtroom, Debate Over Whether States Can Make a Difference on Climate Change, and if They Have a Responsibility to Try
Pennsylvania’s constitution has a similar provision: Article I §27 says: “The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”
Is it time for a parallel suit here‽
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