Children Can Now Sue The US Government Over Climate Change (vice.com)

"America's children have officially won the right to sue their government over global warming," reports Motherboard. An anonymous reader quotes their article: Thursday, a lawsuit filed by 21 youth plaintiffs was ruled valid by U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Eugene, Oregon. A group of citizens, whose ages range from nine to twenty, charged President Obama, the fossil fuel industry, and other federal agencies with violating their constitutional rights by declining to take action against climate change. "Federal courts too often have been cautious and overly deferential in the arena of environmental law, and the world has suffered for it," wrote Judge Aiken in her ruling. [PDF]
Several groups -- including the U.S. government and the American Petroleum Institute -- had asked the judge to throw out the case, but the judge ruled instead that climate change would "threaten plaintiffs' fundamental constitutional rights to life and liberty," calling man-made climate change an "undisputed" fact. In a related story, Slashdot reader devinp shares a new study which suggests "Global changes in temperature due to human-induced climate change have already impacted every aspect of life on Earth from genes to entire ecosystems, with increasingly unpredictable consequences for humans."

Comments

Too late for them.

[SeaFox]

With Trump's planned EPA appointment, by the time they get to trial it will be officially stated there to no such thing as Global Warming, giving them no standing to sue.

And it won't stand

[s.petry]

This will be overturned, and it should be. This ruling falls right in line with allowing people to sue gun makers when a person gets shot. People in general should be very worried about this type of ruling because as you state, it is simply a waste of tax payer money.