New
York Times: Environmentalists sued the US government
yesterday, claiming "that key agencies had failed in their duty
to protect the earth's atmosphere as a public trust to be
guarded for future generations," writes Felicity Barringer for
the
New York Times. The plaintiffswho belong to
Our
Children’s Trust, a coalition of groups concerned
about climate changewill be filing similar lawsuits
against states around the country. Two novel aspects of the
suit are that most of the individual plaintiffs are teenagers
and that the suit relies on the public trust doctrine, which
dates to Roman times. Legal experts said they were unsure
whether the new lawsuit could gain legal traction, given that
it presents issues that overlap in some ways with a
public
nuisance case already brought by several states against the
five largest US utilities.
