Lawsuit accuses US government of failing to protect Earth for future generations
MAY 05, 2011
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025281
New York Times : Environmentalists sued the US government yesterday, claiming “that key agencies had failed in their duty to protect the earth’s atmosphere as a public trust to be guarded for future generations,” writes Felicity Barringer for the New York Times. The plaintiffswho belong to Our Children’s Trust , a coalition of groups concerned about climate changewill be filing similar lawsuits against states around the country. Two novel aspects of the suit are that most of the individual plaintiffs are teenagers and that the suit relies on the public trust doctrine, which dates to Roman times. Legal experts said they were unsure whether the new lawsuit could gain legal traction, given that it presents issues that overlap in some ways with a public nuisance case already brought by several states against the five largest US utilities.
© 2011. American Institute of Physics