Attorney Andrea Rodgers Discusses Children's Litigation Efforts to Achieve Climate Justice

To begin my 14th year podcasting . . . , per the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Unversity, as of last September there were 1,850 climate crisis-related cases filed in the US challenging climate policy under constitutional, federal statutory including securities and financial regulations, state law claims and under several other categories. Law suits have been and will continued to be filed for the simple reason Congressional lawmaking and state legislating have failed to legitimately address the climate crisis, i.e., reduce CO2e emissions. Ms. Rodgers, Deputy Director, US Strategy at Our Children’s Trust, a public interest law firm dedicated to securing children’s legal rights to a healthy climate, discusses the current state of Juliana v the US initially filed in 2015, the 2023 Held v Montana decision in favor of 16 young people and a favorable 2024 settlement agreement resulting form Navahine F in which Hawaii’s DOT agreed to move aggressively to achieve a net zero ground transporation system. Ms. Rodgers also discusses OCT’s ongoing Genesis v the EPA case and the current International Court of Justice effort to reach an advisory opinion regarding climate-related legal obligations. Listeners may recall I interviewed Ms. Rodgers regarding Juliana in February 2020 and most recently, or last June, I spoke again with Michael Burger, CEO of Columbia’s Sabin Center, regarding climate litigation generally.

The Sabin Center’s litigation database is at: https://climatecasechart.com/.

Our Children’s Trust is at: https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/.

Judge Josephine Staton’s January 2020 dissent in Juliana is at: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/01/17/18-36082.pdf.

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