group of kids and teenagers are challenging the U.S.government and the fossil fuel industry in a courtroom in Oregon on Wednesday. They come from states as far away as Florida, Arizona, New York, Hawaii, and Alaska, reports Zoë Carpenter, and are suing President Obama and federal agencies for their inaction on climate change.
The complaint, which was filed in September by Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit that has brought a series of similar suits at the state level, read as such:
For over fifty years, the United States of America has known that carbon dioxide (“CO2”) pollution from burning fossil fuels was causing global warming and dangerous climate change, and that continuing to burn fossil fuels would destabilize the climate system on which present and future generations of our nation depend for their wellbeing and survival. Despite this knowledge, Defendants continued their policies and practices of allowing the exploitation of fossil fuels.
