18 Children Filed Suit Against the EPA in Regards to the Climate Crisis

On December 10, 2023, eighteen children in California filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding their actions regarding the climate crisis. Their efforts, symbolic of the growing climate concerns, are one of many environmental-related cases filed by children from Our Children’s Trust — a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to representing the youth-driven climate challenge. 

Plaintiffs, all between the ages of eight and 17, “in a plea for their safety” maintain that they were “actively being harmed and discriminated against by their government’s affirmative allowance of dangerous levels of climate pollution.” Noah, a 15-year-old plaintiff and resident of Sebastopol, California, voiced, “We are running from wildfires, being displaced by floods, panicking in hot classrooms during another heatwave. We feel a constant worry about the future, and all around us, no one is moving fast enough.” Additionally, in an emailed comment stated, “I hope we win for my generation as well as for all future generations because we all deserve a thriving planet to live on.” 

Bolstering the plaintiff's concerns is the description of environmental conditions they face on a day-to-day basis. As stated in the official complaint, those living in the Western United States, including the children filing this lawsuit, breathe “air polluted by toxic smoke from climate-fueled wildfires and fossil fuel operations” and are forced to reside in their homes “to avoid the heat and air quality dangers posed by the climate crisis.” It is further detailed that residents of this geographic area often have to “evacuate the safety of their homes due to encroaching climate-driven fires or floods” and as a result, have lost homes, personal possessions, and weeks of education. Additional claims about the environment included the pollution of water bodies by algae blooms and frequent unprecedented climate droughts. 

These conditions, according to plaintiffs, have continued to persist despite the EPA’s stated mission “to protect human health and the environment” including “clean air, land and water . . . based on the best available scientific information.” Specifically, as asserted by plaintiffs, despite having known by 1983 that they had a few decades to control climate pollution to avoid catastrophe, the EPA continued to allow more climate pollution to enter the nation’s air. Currently, the EPA allows approximately 6,680 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents of climate pollution annually to enter the air without any national ambient air quality standard. In conjunction with this, the agency refused to set a national pollution standard for CO2 despite a multitude of climate organizations protesting its creation and recommendations from their scientists to do so.  This systematic negligence, according to plaintiffs, has led the EPA to knowingly endanger the lives of children and future generations. In their April 2023 Climate Change and Children’s Health and Well-Being in the United States report they explain that “[c]limate impacts experienced during childhood can have lifelong consequences'' yet they continue to enable harmful pollution. 

These health consequences have been readily experienced by plaintiffs. Emma W., a 16-year-old resident of La Jolla, California described how the rising temperatures worsen her asthma and cause heat exhaustion, which has led her to “sit out field games and practices.” Plaintiff Avroh S., a 14-year-old lifelong resident of Palo Alto, California, as a result of the increase in wildfire occurrence, started wearing a “mask as a fourth grader in 2018 when the air was filled with ash and smoke from the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season in California history.” The wildfire consequences have manifested in his everyday life and as described by him have made it unsafe “to go outside for months at a time” and eliminated “   activities important for his health and wellbeing like soccer games, practices, simple daily walks, or hanging outdoors with friends.” In the complaint, there are descriptions of all the plaintiff's stories and negative experiences brought upon by the climate issues in their community. 

As such, plaintiffs filed this lawsuit in hopes of the EPA making various declarations about the environmental rights of children and their responsibility to protect them. So far, the EPA, as a result of the pending litigation, has not commented on the lawsuit. According to Politico, agency spokesperson Tim Carroll noted that President Biden promised “bold action” to tackle climate change and that EPA is “delivering on this commitment and moving forward with the urgency that the climate crisis demands.” The lawsuit remains pending and awaits a judge to be assigned to the case as of January 1, 2023.