The children's climate crusade

doi:10.1126/science.abj9799

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.abj9799
	The children's climate crusade
	Michael B. Gerrard
	2021-08-20
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2021
英文摘要	In 2010, the group Our Children's Trust formed to pursue a legal theory developed by University of Oregon law professor Mary Wood, which states that governments owe a duty to young people to protect the atmosphere from climate change. The group brought legal proceedings in all 50 US states, but the cases did not get very far, until one— Juliana v. United States —landed before Judge Ann Aiken of the US District Court in Oregon. Two days after Donald Trump was elected president, Judge Aiken issued a ruling allowing the case to go forward. When Trump took office, his administration tried mightily, but failed, to get the case thrown out. Meanwhile, trial preparations went forward. The plaintiffs needed to prove that the federal government not only knew about the dangers of climate change but also actually helped create them by encouraging the extraction and use of fossil fuels. To make that case, they brought in James Gustave Speth. For half a century, Speth has been one of the nation's foremost environmental leaders. He has been (in chronological order) a cofounder of the Natural Resources Defense Council; chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President Carter; founder and, for a decade, president of the World Resources Institute; administrator of the United Nations Development Programme; and dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is now in a frenetic retirement as a senior fellow at Vermont Law School. Working pro bono, Speth produced a lengthy report tracing nearly 60 years of federal action on climate change and fossil fuel development. That report is the foundation for this book. Parts of this story have been told before, most notably by Spencer R. Weart in his 2003 book The Discovery of Global Warming and Nathaniel Rich in his 2019 book Losing Earth , but Speth's volume covers a broader period of time, says more about federal encouragement of fossil fuels, and, as befits a legal filing, is richly documented. While Speth tells readers that key reports on climate change started coming out of Washington in 1965, his detailed recounting begins with the administration in which he was a leading player, that of President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981). We learn that during this period, the scientific findings about the causes of climate change became increasingly confident and the predictions of its impacts became steadily more alarming. Yet under every US president since Carter, fossil fuel extraction and use have continued to grow. Federal “actions on the national energy system over the past several decades are, in my view, the greatest dereliction of civic responsibility in the history of the Republic,” Speth writes. Such a history of accumulating scientific knowledge of the dangers, and failure to act on them, can and has led to massive penalties against private companies—just ask the asbestos and tobacco industries. But the federal government enjoys “sovereign immunity,” meaning that it cannot be sued for monetary damages unless it has consented, and in the case of climate change, it has not. The Juliana case was decided by the Ninth Circuit in January 2020. Speth and the plaintiffs' other experts apparently persuaded the judges of the points they were trying to make about the gravity and causes of climate change, but it was not enough to compel action. To the heartbreak of many, the majority opinion ends: “We reluctantly conclude, however, that the plaintiffs' case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large, the latter of which can change the composition of the political branches through the ballot box.” The plaintiffs are now back before Judge Aiken seeking more modest relief. The current administration has made an ambitious pledge to achieve a net-zero greenhouse gas economy by 2050. Whether this will be another example of what former director of the Office of Technology Assessment John Gibbons has referred to as “Disney's Law” (“wishing will make it so”) remains to be seen. Ultimately, however, key choices on climate action remain in the hands of voters.
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/336017
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Michael B. Gerrard. The children's climate crusade[J]. Science,2021.
APA	Michael B. Gerrard.(2021).The children's climate crusade.Science.
MLA	Michael B. Gerrard."The children's climate crusade".Science (2021).