Young Activists Score MAJOR Climate Victory In Montana Court

A group of young climate activists aged 5 through 22 won a major legal victory in a Montana court this week after alleging in a lawsuit that the state's continued burning of fossil fuels violates their rights to a "clean and healthful environment." The case has been cleared to proceed according to the judge's ruling, marking one of the first times that such a monumental case will head to trial. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains the significance of this.

Check out our merch by visiting our store

Subscribe to our podcast

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

So we actually have a bit of positive news to talk about this week that does not involve Donald Trump getting indicted. On Monday of this week, a judge in the state of Montana ruled that a lawsuit filed by a group of 16 young climate activists whose ages ranged from five years old to 22 years old. The judge ruled that their lawsuit against the state of Montana can in fact go forward. Now, in their lawsuit, these young activists allege that the burning of fossil fuels by the state of Montana, um, it violates their right to a quote, clean and healthful environment, and that the state's reliance on fossil fuels is directly damaging to their health and their future. And the judge in the case said, you know what? I'm going to let this case go forward. Now, it's important to understand this is not the judge saying, yes, I agree, these plaintiffs win.

Okay? We we're not there yet. All the judge said is, yes, we can have this trial. And if you've been watching Ring of Fire, you know, anytime for the last 19 years, this is one of the big things we've talked about. We have talked about all of these lawsuits that climate activists have filed over the years, and we've talked about the fact that unfortunately, most of them went nowhere. Most of the time in cases like this, the judge will just be like, you don't have standing to do that. You have no actual injury to show me here. And because of that, I'm dismissing this case outright. We're not even gonna go to a trial. I have done far too many segments, uh, both here and with Pap talking about those things and how disappointing it is. This is big, but at the same time, there is no guarantee that these kids will win.

And I don't wanna call 'em kids. These, these pioneers is what they are. Really, by getting this to go forward, they've got such a massive uphill battle ahead of them. As I said, they're gonna have to prove injury or prove future injury. Now, obviously the science can do that. You know, we can look at pollution from fossil fuels and calculate how much time off your life that is going to take. Okay? Those are real tables out there that exist that people can compute and do the math on. So proving the future damages not that hard. The problem is finding an actual target in the case, because you can say that the government is doing this, but technically the government, as they do not own the utilities, they are not burning the fossil fuels. And that's where things start to get a little bit murky. When you try to break this down into individual fossil fuel companies, well, which fossil fuel companies operate there? How can you say that this fossil fuel

Company that's half the size of this one is equally liable, even though they're putting out half the amount of pollution? Is this one putting out twice as much? And I'm not arguing in favor of the fossil fuel companies, folks, I am telling you what will come up in trial because we've seen these arguments before from the defense. So again, this is a great victory and I don't want to take it down whatsoever. Let's celebrate because this is worth celebrating, but don't think that this fight is over. This fight only just began. That's what the judge decided. The judge said, we can have the fight. And I wish these young activists and their lawyers the best of luck with this because I don't think it's an overstatement to say that these kids' futures and a lot of our futures might fully depend on the results of this lawsuit. So best of luck.