Washington State Superior Court Judge Michael Scott ruled August 14 to dismiss a suit brought by 12 young people against the state of Washington for failing to protect them from the adverse effects of climate change. The students, all under 18 years old, brought the suit as one of nine being filed in as many states as part of a campaign supported by youth advocacy group Our Children’s Trust in an effort to expand the apparent gains made by the recent Juliana V. United States ruling which Our Children’s Trust also supported.
The plaintiffs’ demands included statements that the state of Washington should “Strive to achieve 96% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050” instead of the “grossly inadequate”current target of 50 percent reduction by 2050. Washington state must “transition almost entirely off of natural gas and gasoline and diesel fuels within the next 15 years, and then generate 90% of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2030.”
The 72-page Complaint submitted by the plaintiffs detailed the specific danger of failing to act quickly to prevent further irreparable damage to the environment. It described the specific contributions of accumulated anthropogenic green house gases to the patterns of climate change that scientists have been able to identify to date, and draws the commonsense conclusion: We must take drastic, immediate action to prevent further damage to our environment. It spells out specific, if daunting, measures that must be enacted to meaningfully combat the degradation of our shared climate.
The judge also complained that the relief that the plaintiffs sought was “sweeping in scope.” While the preamble to this decision begins with an acknowledgement of the consensus among all parties involved of the seriousness of climate change and the role that humans have played in bringing it about, as well as the need for immediate action, the final decision chides the young plaintiffs for demanding that the measures taken to address climate change be strong enough to be effective!
In a telling aside labeled “There is no Fundamental Constitutional Right to a Clean Environment” the judge referred to the plaintiffs’ claim that the State had failed to live up to its obligations to provide them with, among other things, “…a healthful and pleasant environment, including a stable climate system that sustains human life and liberty…” which was supported by an appeal to the July 2018 Supreme Court decision Juliana v. United States that was won on virtually identical grounds. This appeal was rejected out of hand with a banal notice in the final decision that whereas “Plaintiffs ask the court to follow Juliana V. United States… in finding a previously unrecognized right to a “stable climate system… This Court declines to do so.” The decision flatly informs us that, with respect to any right to a pleasant and healthful environment “There is no such right to be found within our State Constitution.”
The people’s interests are clearly not the ones being prioritized by the judiciary system. Only those with a vested financial interest in the colossal fossil fuel industry could stand to benefit from a disavowal of any responsibility on the part of the government for the health and well-being of its residents, since it would necessarily mean implementing the kind of “sweeping” measures demanded by the young plaintiffs in their complaint.
Ultimately, the complaint against the State rested on the premise that the courts would, or could, compel the executive and legislative branches to take action. The judge found that the plaintiffs’ complaint was “nonjusticiable- they present political questions that must be resolved by the political branches of government.” The courts, according to this decision, are not capable of holding the legislative and executive branches of the state government responsible to the people for breaches of trust or a failure to act, or indeed for anything at all.
The Judge’s decision included a patronizing exhortation to the plaintiffs to engage with the legislative and executive branches, the same institutions they were suing, by writing letters to their representatives and elected officials to urge, or rather beg them to act. It suggests that “They can be advocates, urging the legislature and the executive to enact and implement policies that will promote decarbonization and decrease greenhouse gas emissions, such as a carbon tax, the development of alternative energy sources (including nuclear energy), and international cooperation in climate regulations.” Such vague and toothless suggestions totally ignore the urgency of the situation that drove the young plaintiffs to turn to the courts for relief in the first place. We need drastic change right now, not gradual change sometime in the future. These 12 young people, each of whom is under the age of 18, will spend their lives dealing with the repercussions of decisions reached by lawmakers and judges today. They deserve better than to be snubbed in favor of short term financial gains for those with stock in fossil fuels.
While the Washington State Constitution (or the Constitution of the United States, for that matter) doesn’t recognize a right to a healthy living environment or the responsibility of the state for working to provide it, the constitutions of socialist states like Cuba and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea certainly do. Let’s compare the humanitarian priorities of the socialist states with the cold indifference of the capitalist U.S. in the context of something as important as the livability of our shared environment.
The political system of Washington state and the U.S. in general is structurally incapable of making the changes that need to be made in order to ensure our continued existence as a human family on this planet. If we are to avoid making our planet impossible for future generations to live on, we need to act now and we need to act on a massive scale. This conflicts directly with the profit-generating priorities of the capitalist class, and therefore the government that they installed to act on their behalf cannot and will not take the necessary steps. If we are to survive as a species, we need to abandon the profit motive and prioritize clean energy and a healthy climate. We need socialism if we are to make this possibility a reality.
