On the first day of the trial, Rikki Held, the 22-year-old named plaintiff in the lawsuit, testified about the impacts the climate crisis has had on her family’s ranch outside Broadus in the southeast corner of the state. She grew up on the ranch, helping raise livestock and build fences. But she’s seen dramatic changes on the ranch since she was a young child.
Steven Running, professor emeritus of ecosystem and conservation sciences at the University of Montana, also took the stand. He was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and won the Nobel Peace prize for his work in 2007. He told the court how the climate crisis has contributed to the increasing severity and frequency of disruptive weather events such as extreme heat and drought in Montana and globally.
“It was a time when western Montana rivers like the Clark Fork were laden with heavy metal contamination from industrial mining, terraced clear cuts were en vogue on the Bitterroot National Forest, and air in the Missoula valley was sometimes so thick with pulp mill pollution that Mount Sentinel was rendered invisible from downtown.
We can be certain that no matter the outcome of that court case, the US Supreme Court will have the final say, something that makes climate advocates nervous, given that six of the current justices were suckled their whole lives through by the Federalist Society, a hard-right group created in part by Charles Koch.The hard part for any court that gets involved in such litigation will be fashioning an appropriate remedy if the plaintiffs are successful.