“I know that climate change is a global issue, but Montana needs to take responsibility for our part,” 22-year-old Rikki Held, the lead plaintiff, testified. “You can’t just blow it off and do nothing about it.”

Seeley agreed. “Every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions exacerbates Plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries,” she wrote in her 108-page ruling. “Plaintiffs’ injuries will grow increasingly severe and irreversible without science-based actions to address climate change.”

The street to the trial was rocky, with the state trying to throw the case out a number of instances. During the trial the state tried what some termed a “nothing-to-see-here” approach, bringing free-market economists and local weather deniers to the fore to persuade the decide that allowing and fossil gas regulation wasn’t actually the state’s duty. The state additionally argued that even when it have been to cease emitting CO₂ completely, it will have little impression. 

Seeley didn’t purchase that. 

“Montana’s [greenhouse gas] emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury to the youth plaintiffs,” she wrote in her ruling. The decide additionally famous that the state didn’t provide a compelling argument for why it didn’t take into account the impacts of greenhouse gasoline emissions when making allowing selections. She additionally famous that renewable energy is “technically feasible and economically beneficial.”

Emily Flower, spokesperson for state legal professional common Austin Knudsen, decried the ruling as “absurd” and known as the trial a “taxpayer-funded publicity stunt.” She mentioned the workplace plans to enchantment.

“Montanans can’t be blamed for changing the climate,” Flower mentioned, according to the Associated Press. “Their same legal theory has been thrown out of federal court and courts in more than a dozen states. It should have been here as well, but they found an ideological judge who bent over backward to allow the case to move forward and earn herself a spot in their next documentary.”

Attorneys who participated within the trial say that the decision is notable as a result of it places the blame for inaction squarely on the shoulders of state officers, indicating they’ve the ability to alter their strategy.

Seeley “recognized that the only obstacles to a transition to a clean energy economy in Montana are political,” mentioned Melissa Hornbein, an legal professional with the Western Environmental Law Center. “They’re not technological.”

Hornbein hopes the decision shapes related fits specializing in governmental duty for addressing local weather change. Our Children’s Trust additionally represents 14 younger plaintiffs in Hawaii in an identical case, Nawahine v. the Hawaii Department of Transportation, which is now slated to move forward subsequent 12 months.