Climate change is creating vast and catastrophic conditions in every region of the United States. Since 1901, the average surface temperature across the contiguous forty-eight states has risen at an average rate of 0.17°F per decade.[1] Although that number may seem insignificant, the implications of a warming climate illustrate just how urgent the issue really is. These long-term shifts in the environmental conditions of Earth “[affect] the social and environmental determinants of health” including access to clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter.[2]
Although these shifts can be caused by natural events, human activity has been the driving force of climate change since the 1800s.[3] While human activities are undoubtedly responsible for causing climate change, a point of contention in environmental literature has been determining who is responsible for mitigating it. Large corporations, for example, are responsible for 71% of all industrial greenhouse emissions since human-driven climate change was officially recognized.[4] These same corporations, however, are rarely held accountable for the damage they cause. In light of this disregard, individuals have harnessed their own power to take on the burden of combating climate change. Unfortunately, however, those efforts are often undermined by the narrative that individual actions alone will not make a great difference. The case Held v. Montana, calls that narrative into question. [5]
In 2020, sixteen Montana residents, ages ranging from two to eighteen years old, filed suit against the state of Montana challenging a provision under the Montana Environmental Policy Act (“MEPA”) which prohibits state agencies from considering the impacts of climate change in their environmental reviews.[6] Relying on a section of the Montana Constitution that protects “the right to a clean and healthful environment,” the Plaintiffs, a uniquely vulnerable population to climate change, argued that they “have been and will continue to be harmed by the dangerous impacts of fossil fuels and the climate crisis.”[7]
An earlier Montana Supreme Court decision, Montana Environmental Information Center v. Department of Environmental Quality, recognized that Montanans’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment is a fundamental right and one that is intended to be preventative in nature. [8] Thus, the Court in Held applied strict scrutiny.[9] The Court ultimately concluded that “because of their unique vulnerabilities, their stages of development as youth, and their average longevity on the planet in the future, Plaintiffs face lifelong hardships resulting from climate change.”[10] As a result, the Court struck down the particular provision in the MEPA finding that it “prevents the availability of vital information” thereby “caus[ing] the State to ignore renewable energy alternatives.”[11]
This sort of impact litigation—the kind that creates positive externalities by “chang[ing] the law for many rather than for an individual plaintiff”—“empowers citizen[s] and allow[s] them to play a primary role in the development of environmental jurisprudence.”[12] While Montana is unique in having a constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment,[13] and this case involves a narrow holding, the decision is still monumental for two reasons. First, it is the first time in U.S. history that the merits of a case led a court to rule that promoting fossil fuels violates young people’s constitutional rights.[14] Second, it marks “a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos.”[15] Over the last five years, the number of climate cases has more than doubled and, with Montana residents’ success, such litigation is expected to continue.[16]
It has become abundantly clear that climate change poses a significant threat to providing and maintaining a healthy environment for present and future generations. And while large companies emitting fossil fuels have a greater responsibility to act first, we, as individuals, can and must take action as well.
[1] United States Environmental Protection Agency, Climate Change Indicators: U.S. and Global Temperature (2023), https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-and-global-temperature.
[2] World Health Organization, Climate change and health (Oct. 30, 2021), https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health.
[3] United Nations, What is Climate Change?, https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change (explaining that human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas, “are causing greenhouse gases that are warming the world faster than at any time in at least the last two thousand years”).
[4] Josh Axelrod, Corporate Honesty and Climate Change: Time to Own Up and Act, Nat’l Res. Def. Council (Feb. 26, 2019), https://www.nrdc.org/bio/josh-axelrod/corporate-honesty-and-climate-change-time-own-and-act.
[5] See Held v. Montana, No. CDV-2020-307 (D. Mont., Aug. 14, 2023).
[6] Id. at 72.
[7] Id. at 46.
[8] See Mont. Env’t Info. Ctr. v. Dep’t of Env’t Quality, 988 P.2d 1236 (Mont. 1999).
[9] Katy Spence, Montana’s Right to a Clean & Healthful Environment, Mont. Env’t Info. Ctr. (Apr. 29, 2012), https://meic.org/montanas-right-to-a-clean-healthful-environment/.
[10] Held, supra note 5 at 33.
[11] Id. at 75.
[12] Sarah J. Morath, Individual Action, Collective Change: Six Ways Individuals Can Create Environmental Change, Harv. Law & Pol. Rev.1, 1–4 (2019).
[13] Romany Webb, Environmental Rights in State Constitutions, Colum. Climate Sch. (Aug. 31, 2021), https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2021/08/31/environmental-rights-in-state-constitutions/ (explaining that only six states declare a right to a quality environment: Hawai’i, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, and Pennsylvania).