Historic Trial in Montana Puts Climate Change in the Spotlight

Brave. This is one of the first qualifiers that comes to mind when you think of these sixteen Americans aged 5 to 22 who have found themselves in court in Helena, capital of Montana, every day since the beginning of the week. They are at the initiative of a trial qualified as“historical” par The New York Times. A trial that began this Monday, June 12 and will last two weeks, the first in the United States to bring climate change to the fore in this way.

The sixteen young people filed a complaint in 2020 against this North West state where they live. They believe that by happily subsidizing companies exploiting fossil fuels or by giving them the benefit of advantageous regulations for decades, Montana has contributed to global warming and thus robbed them “clean and healthy environment” guaranteed to them by its Constitution.

As noted in Grist Melissa Hornbein, an attorney assigned to the case by the Western Environmental Law Center, one of the firms representing the plaintiffs, “you really have to have courage to dare to oppose the authorities, because that means devoting hours and hours to responding to procedures, and letting the State dig into the smallest corners of its past”.

Yes, it takes courage, when one is so young, to expose oneself in this way legally but also in the media, to share one’s fears, one’s motivations and one’s hopes with strangers, to face adults, those who consider that this trial “ridicule” is just a waste of timeto those who treat them as puppets of environmental lobbies… The same attacks experienced by Greta Thunberg before them.

It took courage for them to hold on for three years without knowing if the case – known as “Held vs State of Montana” (named after Rikki Held, one of the plaintiffs) – was not going to suffer the same fate as others who have not (yet) managed to make their way to court.

This courage leads them today to wear a “huge responsibility” in the words of Claire Vlases, 20, one of the complainants speaking in Grist.

The fact remains that, whatever its outcome, this trial helps to give hope to all those who, young or old, everywhere in the world, are aware that the political choices of States have effects on the health of our planet. .

And bref

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