A youth group in Alaska is holding the state accountable for agreeing to a huge gas export project that is expected to triple the region's planet-warming pollution output for years to come.
The $38.7 billion Alaska LNG Project would bring a gas treatment plant to Alaska's North Slope, with the resulting gas set to be sent to Asia.
But the company behind the project, the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, will have to answer their critics in court, with the group of 11- to 22-year-olds suing the government of Alaska under the view they are disproportionately at risk of the resulting issues the investment in gas will bring.
Notably, the group will argue that the gas investment violates the state's constitution. As the Guardian observed, this includes "the right to protected natural resources for 'current and future generations,' and the right to be free from government infringement on life, liberty, and property."
Despite Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor describing gas as a "clean fuel," gas is still a huge polluter. The Environmental Protection Agency says that "emissions from natural gas consumption represent 78% of the direct fossil fuel CO2 emissions from the residential and commercial sector in 2022."
Nonprofit law firm Our Children's Trust is helping the plaintiffs take the case to court, and the organization has already achieved notable success.
In 2023, Our Children's Trust helped a group of young people from Montana fight the state's government for pro-dirty-fuel policies that they argued were making the climate crisis worse.
After winning the case — succeeding in arguing that the failure to consider the planet-warming pollution of future energy projects was against the state constitution — it was expected that similar groups would take legal action to protect their rights to a healthy environment.
The case in Alaska is not just about the impact fossil fuel projects will have on the nation's fastest-warming state, but also how it will alter the lives of indigenous people.
Summer Sagoonick, a 22-year-old plaintiff and member of the Iñupiaq Tribe, argued the project would affect the land that is so vital to her culture.
"We're already seeing huge impacts to our ability to provide for our subsistence because of climate change," she told the Guardian. "As our water warms and the land erodes, it poses a threat to our nourishment and our cultural practices."
Indeed, rivers in the state are turning orange as minerals are released from melting permafrost. According to the Guardian, this is increasing the acidity of the water, reducing drinking water quality and putting aquatic animals at risk. After first being observed in 2018, the phenomenon has led to two fish species being lost.
It shouldn't be the responsibility of young people to take governments and extremely wealthy corporations to court because of the impact their decisions will have on their future. But the focus, discipline, and care this group of kids is showing is a message to us all that we can bring meaningful change to protect our planet and improve the prospects of generations to come.
Sagoonick said: "I am counting on the courts to protect my rights."
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