\n<\/p>\n
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by young climate activists that aimed to halt Donald Trump\u2019s pro-fossil fuel executive orders.<\/p>\n
The dismissal by US district judge Dana Christensen on Wednesday came after 22 plaintiffs, ages seven to 25 and from five states, sought to block three of the president\u2019s executive orders, including those declaring a \u201cnational energy emergency\u201d and seeking to \u201cunleash American energy\u201d \u2013 as well as one aimed at \u201creinvigorating\u201d the US\u2019s production of coal.<\/p>\n
According to the plaintiffs, the executive orders amount to unlawful executive overreach and breach the state-created danger doctrine \u2013 a legal principle designed to prevent government officials from causing harm to their citizens.<\/p>\n
Among the plaintiffs were also several young individuals who had previously been part of the landmark 2023 Held v Montana case \u2013 the first constitutional climate trial in the United States. In that case, a judge ruled in favor of the youth plaintiffs who argued that the Montana state government had violated their constitutional right to a healthy environment.<\/p>\n
In Wednesday\u2019s ruling, Christensen said that the plaintiffs have presented \u201coverwhelming evidence that the climate is changing at a staggering pace, and that this change stems from the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, caused by the production and burning of fossil fuels\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, Christensen went on to say: \u201cYet while this court is certainly troubled by the very real harms presented by climate change and the challenged [executive orders\u2019] effect on carbon dioxide emissions, this concern does not automatically confer upon it the power to act.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cGranting plaintiffs\u2019 injunction would require the defendant agencies, and \u2013 ultimately \u2013 this court, to scrutinize every climate-related agency action taken since\u201d the start of Trump\u2019s second presidency on 20 January 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn other words, this court would be required to monitor an untold number of federal agency actions to determine whether they contravene its injunction. This is, quite simply, an unworkable request for which plaintiffs provide no precedent,\u201d Christensen continued.<\/p>\n
According to a new report from Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy and ethics non-profit, Trump has picked more than 40 people who were directly employed by coal, oil and gas companies to be part of his administration.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Since taking office, Trump has launched broad attacks on both sustainable energy alternatives and climate science. In August, his administration released a report that said \u201cclimate change is a challenge \u2013 not a catastrophe\u201d, a claim that drew sharp criticism from climate experts who called the report a \u201cfarce\u201d filled with misinformation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by young climate activists that aimed to halt Donald Trump\u2019s pro-fossil fuel executive orders. The dismissal by US district judge Dana Christensen on Wednesday came after 22 plaintiffs, ages seven to 25 and from five states, sought to block three of the president\u2019s executive orders, including those<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[2598,186,5546,660,675,175,2082,10394,7388,71,801],"class_list":{"0":"post-28315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-activists","9":"tag-climate","10":"tag-dismisses","11":"tag-fuel","12":"tag-judge","13":"tag-law","14":"tag-policies","15":"tag-profossil","16":"tag-suit","17":"tag-trumps","18":"tag-young"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}