Yes! magazine on February 22 published this interview by contributing editor Fran Korten about “the saddest story ever told”—the federal government’s decades-long failure to meet the challenge of climate change—and the more optimistic story about what some young people are doing to change the narrative.
The interview is centered on a lawsuit against the federal government filed by Our Children’s Trust. As Korten writes, “21 young people sued the U.S. government for promoting the fossil fuel industry even when it was aware of the dangers of climate change,” and by doing so “endangering their future well-being, thereby violating the government’s public trust responsibility and their constitutional rights.”
She goes on to write:
The youths … retained experts to contribute supporting reports for the suit, including from environmental lawyer and climate policy expert James Gustave Speth. He reviewed what each administration from Carter to Trump knew about climate change and alternative energy and what actions were taken. Speth concluded in his report, which was filed in 2018, that every administration “continued full-throttle support for the development and use of fossil fuels.” This pattern is “the greatest dereliction of civic responsibility in the history of the Republic,” he wrote.
The good news, however, is that progressive momentum for change is building. There is a long way to go, but the important thing is for people to redouble their efforts. Now that we’ve got a fighting chance, we really have to fight.
