#7 What are green amendments?

Welcome to the seventh edition of The Daily Concept, the newsletter that introduces you to a new idea, every day.

Click here to read our earlier write-ups on the Spanish Civil War, the private funds industry, period poverty, desertification, ghost guns, and food deserts.

Today’s newsletter is on the idea of ‘green amendments’ and a fascinating legal case against Montana that could have serious implications for the way that the state deals with climate change and the fossil fuel industry.

What are green amendments?

In 1972, the Montana state constitution was amended to include the following language:

Some have called this and other similar proposed or existing amendments to state constitutions ‘green amendments’. The term is generally used to refer to constitutional amendments that endow citizens with a constitutionally-protected right to a clean environment.

Pennsylvania became the first state to add a green amendment in 1971, one year before Montana.

In 2021, New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly to add an Environmental Rights Amendment to their state constitution that created a right to "clean water, clean air, and a healthful environment."

Earlier this year, Democratic legislators in Connecticut proposed adding their own green amendment known as the Environmental Rights Amendment. The amendment would create an "individual right to clean and healthy air, water, soil and environment; a stable climate; and self–sustaining ecosystems; for the benefit of public health, safety and the general welfare."

Fifteen other states, including New Mexico and Delaware, have considered the possibility of adding green amendments to their state bills of rights.

What is Held v. Montana?

A legal case in Montana is showing what the enforcement of this right to a clean environment might actually look like for state governments and the fossil fuel industry in the states where green amendments are law.

In 2020, a group of young Montanans filed a lawsuit against their state, alleging that the GOP-led state government was failing to preserve their right to a “clean and healthful environment” by supporting the fossil fuel industry in the state. The plaintiffs wanted Montana to do more to limit carbon emissions in the state and for the state government to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry in the state.

The Held v. Montana case went to trial this summer, with Montana’s lawyers arguing that the state itself could do little to halt climate change worldwide.

The judge ruled in favor of the young litigants, finding that Montana's failure to consider climate change when approving fossil fuel projects violated the litigants' constitutional rights.

Michael Burger of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Litigation at Columbia said:

"This was climate science on trial, and what the court has found as a matter of fact is that the science is right...

Emissions contribute to climate change, climate harms are real, people can experience climate harms individually, and every ton of greenhouse gas emissions matters. These are important factual findings, and other courts in the U.S. and around the world will look to this decision."

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Yours,
Dan