A lawsuit filed against Montana two years go is set to go to trial June of next year, and was filed by an environmentalist group named Our Children’s Trust. The group represents 16 children and their suit argues the state’s continuous use of fossil fuels has contributed to the climate crisis and has, in turn, impacted them.

This will be the first children’s climate trial in US history, which will see the young plaintiffs argue how the state is violating their constitutional rights.

The lawsuit, filed in March 2020, describes how children are more vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, noting it ‘harms their physical and psychological health and safety, interferes with family and cultural foundations and integrity, and causes economic deprivations.’

It also includes how each child has been personally impacted by the climate crisis such how wildfires pose a threat to the youngest who has respiratory issues and another whose family relies on a river for their business that has dried up in past years.

The children are not looking for a lump sum of money, but, if the court rules in their favor, the group wants defendants to ‘bring the state energy system into constitutional compliance,’ the March 2020 filing states.

No doubt Montana’s lawyers are gearing up for a fight, but they may not have to do much to stop this legal action. Courts in Washington, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Florida, and Alaska have turned away legal challenges like this and no doubt this legal effort will suffer the same fate.

Believe it or not, this kind of environmentalist child abuse isn’t just occurring in the United States. There are multiple similar green legal actions enlisting young people as plaintiffs hoping to shut down the fossil fuel industry occurring in many other countries across the globe too.

Two. three, many Greta Thunbergs!