These kids can’t vote yet, but they’re fighting the Fed to save the environment. Photo: The Associated Press
The earth is slowly slipping into an environmental apocalypse. Climate temperature is increasing, ocean’s are rising, yada yada yada – you’ve heard the spiel. Whether you’re concerned or could care less, climate change is coming and it’s going to impact everyday life. It’s killing the ocean’s reefs. It will make you have less sex! AND THE BEER IS GOING BAD, FOR GOD’s SAKE!
If you’re young – you’re whole life ahead of you, the world there for the taking – it’s easy to feel cheated. Everyone else has had the opportunity to live when your future is uncertain due to previous generations’ negligence. It’s not your fault! All the adults YOLO’d too hard with their polluting cars and factories, leaving behind a world of smog and desolation. Kids are pissed! And what do you do in America when your mad? You take it to court.
That’s why kids across America are suing the Federal Government over (you guessed it) Global Warming. Our Children’s Trust is an organization dedicated to fighting for a brighter environmental future for the youth. And in their plight for environmental improvement, they’ve employed the faces of the (would-be) generations affected. They’ve petitioned and filed lawsuits in all states with the kids gung-ho about making a difference.
“We’re the ones who have to live with it if the oceans are acidic and the planet is 5 degrees warmer,” Gabriel Mandell, 13, an eighth-grader and plaintiff in a case in Washington told The Associated Press. “The snowpack is melting. Ocean is acidifying. The Earth is warming. Everything that can go wrong is going wrong, and we need to fix it.”
But will the kids be able to make the old white dudes in Washington come to their senses and do something about climate change? Will they save us from the environmental doom?!? Who knows…but as they trudge through bureaucratic bullshit, we commend them in their efforts.
“None of them have gotten to the finish line,” Michael Gerrard, a professor and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told The AP. “It’s an uphill climb. The U.S. courts have so far not wanted to set climate policy.”
