April 2019

April 21, 2019 If not us, then who? If not now, then when? I wonder if those are questions that the youth of this small blue planet asked themselves when they made the courageous decision to enter the very adult world of litigation in a last-ditch effort to save their future. Youth speak eloquently and passionately at local, national and international venues, they leave their schools to march collectively for climate action, they draw on their social media savvy to try to make the point, and yet they are not heard. So, the youth who will live to deal with the consequences of our indecision and lack of action are going to court. Why are they so frustrated? After nearly three decades of agreements, treaties and targets, the world is still nowhere near where it should be when it comes to reducing green-house gas emissions. Since 1992 and the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, there have been numerous efforts to coordinate global action on emissions reduction. The Kyoto Protocol in 2002 was the first treaty with the goal to stop climate change by obliging developed countries—the ones whose industrial activity was historically responsible for what…