Climate activist Nathan Baring remembers the summer when he joined a group of 20 other young people to sue the federal government over climate change.
"It was my summer beginning sophomore year of high school, so in between my freshman and sophomore year," Baring told Newsweek in a phone conversation from his home in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Baring is now 24 years old. For a third of his life, he has been a plaintiff in the case Juliana v. United States, which argues that government actions that contribute to climate change violate basic constitutional rights of young people. Government attorneys under three presidential administrations, from both major political parties, fought to dismiss their claim and avoid a trial.
"We've just jumped through an incredible amount of structural barriers in the legal system," Baring said, adding that the group had to "grow up really fast."
Baring and the other Juliana plaintiffs from around the country might finally be getting their day in court. In a ruling on December 29, 2023, a U.S. district judge in Oregon rejected the latest government motion to dismiss the case and ruled that it could go to trial.
In a strongly worded opinion, Judge Ann Aiken called climate change "the great emergency of our time" and bemoaned the years of delays. "Lawsuits like this highlight young people's despair with the drawn-out pace of the unhurried, inchmeal, bureaucratic response to our most dire emergency."
"It's really an important moment," attorney Julia Olson told Newsweek. Olson is founder and CEO of the nonprofit public interest law firm Our Children's Trust. The group brought the Juliana case and companion suits in state courts on behalf of children who, she argued, have the most at stake in the climate crisis but the least power in the political system.
"The judiciary is the only branch of government where young people can truly be heard and have their voices count," she said.
The 21 young people in the Juliana case have come of age with a lawsuit against their own government. After more than eight years of delays, they could play a part in deciding whether future generations have a constitutional right to a stable climate.
Like Family
Baring said growing up in Alaska meant that, even in his early teens, he was aware of the local effects of climate change. He recalled making his first public presentation on climate change when he was just about 11 years old and described himself as a climate science "geek" in high school.
"I was sort of responding to the kind of frightening changes that I was seeing around me," he said. The Arctic is warming much faster than other parts of the world and that is melting permafrost, accelerating coastal erosion and changing weather patterns. As a third-generation Alaskan, he knew from his family that something wasn't right.
"They sort of know what life was like when the weather was more 'normal,'" he said.
The other young people in the case all had examples of how climate change affected their lives, homes or communities.
"Many of us are like family at this point," Baring said. But the years of delays and government motions to dismiss the case took a toll on the group's morale.
"We've been through an incredibly emotionally tumultuous period," he said.
Early 2020 was a low point, he said. In late January of that year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against their case, finding that some of the actions the case sought for remedy were beyond the scope of what courts could consider. Then in March came COVID and the pandemic lockdowns.
"I think we all went to pretty low places emotionally," he said. "I know I did."
But he said he learned to nurture a positive outlook and adopted as his mantra a phrase attributed to civil rights and justice system activist Mariame Kaba: "Hope is a discipline."
"I really emerged out of it with that way of thinking," he said.
'Institutional Betrayal'
Olson and her colleagues amended and resubmitted the Juliana suit after the negative ruling from the 9th Circuit, and it is that amended version of the suit that Judge Aiken ruled can proceed to trial.
Olson said the legal fight since 2015 has been about simply getting through the courthouse doors.
"We pry them open, and the government keeps asking that they be closed," she said.
During the Trump administration, for example, she said the Department of Justice made repeated appeals for a writ of mandamus to block the suit's progress. Legal experts say that sort of extraordinary measure ordering a court or agency to act is usually used as a last resort and is reserved for extreme circumstances.
She said there are mental health risks for young people already anxious about climate change who see their government refusing to act.
"What our experts say is that there is this really big element of institutional betrayal," Olson said.
Under the Biden administration, the DOJ has continued to urge judges to dismiss the case. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment for this story.
In recent court filings, government lawyers have argued that the young people lack standing to bring the case and that there is no constitutional right to a stable climate.
Olson said that is the very issue she wants the court to decide in trial.
"We're asking the courts to look at the fossil-fuel energy system that the federal government perpetuates and is responsible for creating, and look to see if that is infringing on the rights of these young people," she said.
This could be a big year for Olson's group. In addition to the breakthrough in the Juliana case, Our Children's Trust has filed a separate federal lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency challenging the way the EPA makes decisions about regulation of greenhouse gases.
Five of the group's legal actions are proceeding as well in different states, and a case in Hawaii is scheduled for trial in June.
And in a historic win last August, a Montana court ruled in favor of the group's clients, finding that state actions had violated young people's rights under the state's constitution.
No Better Time
Much has changed in both the political and physical climates over the years since the Juliana suit was first filed.
In 2015, a legislative effort to address climate change had recently collapsed, and industry was successfully challenging regulations that would limit greenhouse gases from power plants.
Today, climate policy experts call President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act the most significant government action on climate change in U.S. history, and the law's generous incentives for renewable energy and electric vehicles have unleashed billions of dollars in clean tech investment. A recent analysis by the independent researchers at Rhodium Group found that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions came down slightly in 2023 even as the economy grew.
Olson said that's not enough.
"We are not going in the right direction nearly fast enough and we are still promoting the fossil-fuel energy system," she said, noting that the U.S. is the world's biggest oil producer.
The other big change over the past eight years is that the world is much hotter.
Federal climate data shows that each year since the Juliana suit was initially filed has been among the 10 warmest years in recorded history. Last year was the hottest yet, and 2023 brought horrific fires, floods and supercharged storms all made worse by climate change. Several climate scientists warn that last year's extreme heat is likely to continue in 2024.
Baring said that makes the trial he and his fellow youth activists have been waiting for all the more urgent.
"Maybe there is no better time than right now to really put climate science and the future of young people on the witness stand," he said.
Update 1/12/2024, 12:15 p.m. ET: This article was updated to more accurately reflect the nature of the activists' lawsuit and to correct the timing of the court's decision in 2020.
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