High-Stakes Climate Lawsuit Led by Youth Turns Its Attention to Trump
It's somewhat fitting that President Trump, who has named climate deniers and a former fossil-fuel executive to top cabinet posts, including at the EPA, would end up a defendant in what's likely the highest-stakes climate lawsuit on the planet. The suit, brought by Our Children's Trust on behalf of nearly two dozen youth and climate scientist James Hansen, seeks a real and comprehensive climate plan from the U.S. government.
Earlier this month, not long after the plaintiffs' lawyers replaced President Obama with Trump in the suit, the administration filed a request for interlocutory appeal – a rare request since appeals are usually filed after a trial judgment, not before. Trump's lawyers also objected to a letter sent to federal agencies demanding that they preserve climate data and emails between the administration and the fossil-fuel industry that might prove the government has known since the 1960s about the dangers to public health posed by fossil fuels.
Lawyers for Trump are responding quickly and aggressively to a case that will embarrass and interfere with the administration's efforts to roll back environmental regulations and kneecap the EPA. Tuesday's executive order makes clear Trump's plan to dismantle Obama's climate legacy, including the Clean Power Plan, which cuts power-plant emissions.
The Obama administration had argued that the lawsuit was unnecessary because the government was already addressing climate change. "The Trump administration is going to fight much harder to try to keep us away from trial," says the plaintiffs' lead attorney, Julia Olson. "They want to put on the stop light. They're taking the position that the president and the executive office of the president shouldn't be in court, that the court doesn't have jurisdiction to order the president and the executive office to do anything. They apparently believe that the president is above constitutional review."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/youth-led-high-stakes-climate-lawsuit-shifts-focus-to-trump-w473224?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=032817_17