Considering the toll greenhouse gas emissions are taking on the planet, does Utah’s tireless promotion of fossil fuel production violate its youngest citizens’ constitutional rights? Six Utah youths think so, and they're filing a lawsuit.
The Monument Butte oil and gas field, south of Myton in the Uinta Basin, is home to at least 1,000 producing wells and hundreds more that are idled. The Bureau of Land Management has reversed its approval of a program to allow 5,750 more wells to be drilled here, citing climate impacts.On any given day, 100,000 barrels of oil and 35,000 tons of coal are extracted from the ground in Utah.
The rapidly warming climate, thanks to the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere from fossil fuels, threatens these young Utahns’ futures and must be addressed, according to Andrew Welle, an attorney with“Every day that the state continues to promote and systematically authorize fossil fuel development worsens Utah’s dangerous air pollution and climate crisis and further endangers these youth’s lives, health, and safety,” Deiss told 3rd District Judge Robert Faust in his Salt Lake City...
Without denying the youths’ futures are at risk from climate change, he argued the state is free to set environmental policy without interference from the courts. “A new policy proposal to cease or significantly curtail fossil fuel development is not implicit in this nation’s history and traditions and has nothing whatever to do with the concept of ordered liberty,” he wrote in the state’s motion.Fossil energy development supports economic development and schools in many rural communities, providing thousands of Utah youths employment opportunities that might not be available, state officials have said in support of pro-energy policy positions.
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