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Alaska Youth Pursue Climate Case

Youth, Alaska Natives, Leading Climate Scientist and Scholars Ask Alaska’s State Supreme Court to Uphold the State Constitution and Protect Essential Resources for All Alaskans

Anchorage, Alaska – Today, six young appellants and their guardians filed the opening brief of their appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court. The appeal was filed after Superior Court Judge Sen K. Tan dismissed their constitutional climate change lawsuit against the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. The lawsuit was brought to force Alaska, which is on the front lines of the climate crisis, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in order to protect the state’s natural resources as required by the Alaska Constitution.

Already, a court in Texas has issued a ruling that the Texas Constitution requires the state to protect the atmosphere as a public trust resource. The Alaska youth seek a similar ruling in a case that is one of many similar legal actions across the country to compel government action on climate change. One law firm in Houston has called the unprecedented decision in Texas, “a ‘shot heard ‘round the world’ in climate change litigation.”

More than twenty of the nation’s most highly respected environmental law professors and scholars have filed a brief supporting the appellants’ arguments. They explain that state governments have a fundamental duty to “protect the public’s crucial assets from irrevocable damage” and that the atmosphere is a “quintessentially public resource subject to government stewardship.” Furthermore, these law professors emphasize that “[b]y sitting idle in the face of calamitous planetary ecological crisis,” many state governments are “abdicating their constitutional responsibilities as sovereign trustees to protect the climate for today’s citizens and for future generations.”

Climate change is undeniably wreaking havoc on Alaska’s lands, coastlines, water sources, infrastructure, and its people. The Alaska Inter-Tribal Council (AITC) submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the youth describing how Alaska Natives are particularly impacted from a warming climate, which threatens everything from their subsistence lifestyle, to their homes and food storage, to their water supplies and their physical wellbeing. If the State continues to allow greenhouse gas emissions to go unchecked, the results will be catastrophic and disproportionately affect Tribal communities. AITC describes the future of Alaska and the world if climate change continues on its current path:

“The changes taking place in Alaska as a result of global warming are among the most dramatic on Earth. The dramatic destruction of the Arctic provides an early warning for the rest of the world of the devastation that is likely to occur if governments and industries that drive them fail to significantly curb their emissions of greenhouse gases.”

 

The youths’ drive for entering the lawsuit comes from their own struggles with climate change and from the alarming research of our nation’s top scientists. According to leading climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen, “the science is crystal clear—we must rapidly reduce fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions if we are to have a chance of protecting Earth’s natural systems for these young people.” Hansen submitted an amicus curiae brief supporting the youths’ appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court in which he states:
 

“Unless action is undertaken without further delay, so as to return the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to 350 ppm by 2100, Earth’s climate system will be pressed toward and past points of no return. Effective action remains possible, but delay in undertaking sharp reductions in emissions will undermine any realistic chance of preserving a habitable climate system – needed by future generations no less than by prior generations.”

 

Current climate science calls for a return to 350 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the end of the century. To get there, Alaska must reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by six percent each year or risk our climate reaching tipping points beyond which there is no return. Each year Alaska delays making the necessary reductions, makes it harder to reach 350 in time to save our atmosphere and protect the Alaska way of life.

“If we do not do anything to stop climate change, the life that we know now and are used to will change at a faster pace than we could have ever anticipated,” said Nelson Kanuk, a youth appellant in the lawsuit. “The good news is that we can do something; by pursuing this case we are standing up for what we believe will enable future Americans to enjoy the resources we have all come to depend upon for our enjoyment, our health and our well-being.”

To learn more about the ways in which climate change is impacting Nelson and his community watch TRUST Alaska here: http://ourchildrenstrust.org/video/48/trust-alaska.

All materials concerning the Alaska lawsuit can be found here: http://ourchildrenstrust.org/state/alaska
 

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Our Children's Trust is a nonprofit focused on protecting earth’s natural systems for current and future generations. We are supporting youth in the coordinated Atmospheric Trust Litigation effort. We are here to empower youth as they stand up for their lawful inheritance: a healthy planet. We are mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers. We are adults, part of the ruling generation, and we care about the future of our children—and their children's children.

iMatter is a youth-led campaign of the nonprofit group, Kids vs Global Warming, that is focused on mobilizing and empowering youth to lead the way to a sustainable and just world. Using multiple platforms at the local, state, and national level, we are committed to raising the voices of the youngest generation to issue a wake-up call to live, lead and govern as if our future matters.

WITNESS is the global pioneer in the use of video to promote human rights. We empower people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change. In partnership with the iMatter TRUST Campaign we seek to bring visibility to the challenges our youth already face because of the changing climate and call for a massive assault on fossil fuel emissions. Without an all-out assault, effects will range from drought to disease; from food shortages to tainted water supplies; from the loss of homes due to floods, erosion and fire to massive relocations. The human rights challenge is most succinctly summarized by Mary Robinson, “Climate change will, in short, have immense human consequences.” WITNESS partnered on this campaign in hopes that predictions will not become realities.