Climate change lawsuit filed by children as young as eight
Fifteen kids — one only eight years old — just filed a lawsuit in, of course, Dane County, claiming that, as children, they are particularly vulnerable to air pollution and fossil fuel-caused climate change.
Their list of vulnerabilities takes up much of a 74-page complaint against the Wisconsin Legislature and the Public Service Commission that approves new power plants.
The children between the ages of eight and 17 are from all over the state and cite a variety of maladies and issues. A couple have seasonal allergies or “allergy symptoms,” and others have either “asthma symptoms” or asthma itself. At least two contracted Lyme disease. There is mention of “mental health injuries” that the lawyers suggest are related to “climate anxiety.” At least one gets migraines.
The little 8-year-old plaintiff who “suffers from seasonal allergies” is, for example, unable to play outside because of heat and humidity and smoke from wildfires that started somewhere — the suit doesn’t say where. She has been prevented from recreating on lakes because of harmful “algal blooms.”
Thankfully, she does appear to get out of the house occasionally. In fact, she “has been attending climate events with her friends and family since she was two years old and organized her own educational climate event at age four,” according to the lawsuit.
Wow. My kids were mostly worried about who took their sippy cup at that age. Slouches.
By the way, the 8-year-old has also “submitted comments in several (Public Service) Commission proceedings opposing the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure.”
(This will be the one and only time, I can assure you, that I will ever question use of the pronoun “she” rather than “they.”)
Another plaintiff, a 17-year-old Viroqua boy with asthma, had to limit his time outdoors and wear a facemask in the summer of 2023 because of “unhealthy air quality from climate-induced wildfire smoke,” according to the lawsuit.
He, by the way, “has been engaged in climate activities since he was a child, including participating in a cross-country climate march when he was four years old.”
That, too, is pretty amazing, especially when you consider that a four-year-old with a short stride would take way more steps than an adult on, say, the Bataan Death March.
I don’t blame these kids for being plaintiffs and don’t know how that came about. I do know it’s hard to dial up a lawyer when your fingers are immersed in Play-Doh. And by the way, it says right there on the first page that the 15 children filed the lawsuit “by and through” 13 parents or guardians. Just sayin’.
They (you decide who my pronoun should allude to here) want you to know climate change has or will cause a lot of hardship. Already, they, at least at times, can’t swim or kayak or canoe or sled or ski or bike or hike or paddleboard, states the lawsuit. One plaintiff had to move after two “100-year rain events” damaged her family’s home.
One child’s family “lost approximately $80,000 in the past two winters because of canceled reservations at her family’s lakeside resort” and she “is harmed by her family’s loss of revenue as she relies on her family for financial support.”
Another child, a 15-year-old, has a family with a cottage that has seen a dramatic decrease in rental income due to lack of winter snowpack, they say.
The child plaintiffs want to force the PSC to consider levels of potential air pollution when considering power plants and contends that transitioning to 100% renewable energy could, among other things, save Wisconsinites money on energy costs.
The adults over at the Center of the American Experiment a couple of years ago calculated the costs of the 100 percent carbon-free electricity mandate advocated by Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers and concluded that electricity costs for Wisconsin families, businesses, and manufacturers would actually increase by an average of $2,755 per year, every year, through 2050.
Our own adults here at the Badger Institute put out a paper not long ago calculating the potential costs of disconnecting homeowners from fossil fuels in favor of the likeliest all-electric alternative, the air source heat pump. The bottom line, summing up a future of annually higher operating costs as a single “net present value” estimate of the added costs borne by an average Wisconsin homeowner over the 15-year life of a heat pump: $19,976.
I called the lawyer at Midwest Environmental Advocates who is representing the children along with an attorney from Our Children’s Trust — left a message wondering why they are using children as plaintiffs but didn’t hear back by my deadline.
Forgive me if I don’t try to call the plaintiffs themselves for comment on this one. I don’t think it’s right to put kids in the middle of an issue like this, especially when some of the claims about the origin of all their laments are so hard to really verify. I don’t think it’s good for them.
Of course it’s not really about them, is it?
Mike Nichols is the President of the Badger Institute.
Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute Marketing Director Matt Erdman at matt@badgerinstitute.org.
