Helena, Mont. , Montana officials seeking to unseat the first trial of its kind over the state’s obligations to protect residents from climate change said Monday that a young plaintiff’s victory would not change approval for fossil fuel projects.
Lawyers for Montana’s Republican attorney general began their defense in state court after a week of emotional testimony from more than a dozen youths who sued the state in 2020.
The 16 plaintiffs, ages 5 to 22, say they are being harmed by wildfire smoke, extreme heat and other effects of climate change. They are asking a judge to declare unconstitutional a state law that prevents agencies from considering the effects of greenhouse gases when issuing permits for fossil fuel development.
Experts say that the Earth is warming due to the emission of greenhouse gases from coal, oil and natural gas.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys say Montana has never denied permits for a fossil fuel project, but the state’s top environmental regulator testified Monday that permitting practices won’t change if young environmentalists win their case. .
“We don’t have the authority to not allow something that’s fully complying with the law,” said Chris Dorrington, director of the Department of Environmental Quality. He said, ‘We are not the ones who make the law. We are the ones who enforce the law.
State officials also drew a distinction between the law being challenged — a provision of the Montana Environmental Protection Act that they described as “procedural” — and regulatory acts such as Montana’s Clean Air Act.
Sonja Nowakowski, administrator of the DEQ Air, Energy and Mining Division, said only regulatory acts can be used as grounds for permit denial, and they do not allow permits to be denied based on climate impacts in Montana.
The young plaintiffs testified over five days last week that climate change is making their lives worse, from the smoke they breathe from wildfires. Drought is drying up rivers that sustain agriculture, fish, wildlife and recreation.
Olivia Vesovich, 20, a University of Montana student who grew up in Missoula, said she suffers from breathing problems that make inhaling wildfire smoke almost unbearable.
As his respiratory responses worsened during frequent smoke events in Missoula, Vesovich said that in recent years his mother began taking him on trips during fires in search of cleaner air — Washington state, Idaho and Montana. Elsewhere in
“It feels like I’m suffocating, like I’m out for minutes,” Vesovich said. “Climate change is wreaking so much havoc on our world right now and I know it will only get worse.”
In prior rulings, state district judge Judge Cathy Seeley had substantially limited the scope of the case. Even if the plaintiffs prevail, Sealy has said she will not order officials to design a new approach to addressing climate change.
Instead, the judge can issue what’s called a “declaratory ruling,” ruling that the officials have violated the state constitution. It would set a new legal precedent of courts weighing in on matters normally left to the legislative and executive branches of government.
Carbon dioxide, which is released when fossil fuels are burned, traps heat in the atmosphere and is largely responsible for climate warming. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration said earlier this month that carbon dioxide levels in the air this spring reached their highest levels in more than 4 million years. Greenhouse gas emissions also reached record levels last year, according to the International Energy Agency.
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Brown reported from Billings, Mont.
