Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

This paper examines the role of youth-initiated litigation challenging current fossil fuel policies. In particular, the paper examines the Juliana case, which was brought in the United States by twenty-one plaintiffs aged between eleven and twenty-two years old. These youth sued the government in 2015 for adopting (or failing to adopt) policies that ultimately resulted in harms related to climate change. While the case is still ongoing, it sheds important light on private litigation and citizen-led forms of activism aiming to prompt governments to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The paper begins by exploring the phenomenon of “atmospheric trust litigation” as embodied by the Juliana case and then places this type of litigation into the broader context of social and political responses to climate change. The paper concludes by arguing that, even if specific lawsuits were not to succeed in the near future, these new forms of activism have irreversibly embedded the public discourse. Moreover, they have provided policymakers with a blueprint to move forward with newly designed environmental policies, regulatory frameworks, and mitigation strategies.