They Knew: The US Federal Government's Fifty-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis by James Gustave Speth

Author:James Gustave Speth [Speth, James Gustave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, Public Policy, Environmental Policy, science, Environmental Science, Global Warming & Climate Change
ISBN: 9780262542982
Google: MCY6EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2021-08-24T00:25:23.627524+00:00

Impacts on Children

In 2017, the EPA proposed a two-year delay on implementation of a 2016 Obama-era rule designed to reduce climate-warming methane emissions, eliminating a requirement that oil and gas companies monitor and limit methane leaks from wells, compressor stations, and other operations. Obama’s methane rule would have required oil and gas companies to detect and repair leaks of methane and other air pollution at drilling wells.

When issued, the agency’s proposed rule stated, in relevant part, “the EPA believes that the environmental health or safety risk addressed by this action may have a disproportionate effect on children. . . . However, because this action merely proposes to delay the 2016 Rule, this action will not change any impacts of the 2016 Rule after the stay. Any impacts on children’s health caused by the delay in the rule will be limited, because the length of the proposed stay is limited.”37 Despite the outrage this statement caused, in August 2020, the EPA finalized its roll back of Obama’s methane rule.38

As the expert testimony in Juliana establishes, children, including the youth plaintiffs, are bearing serious health burdens caused by fossil fuels. Dr. Jerry Paulson, a renowned expert on the health effects of climate change, explained: “By continuing to promote fossil fuels, the federal government is knowingly putting these children in an increasingly risky situation when it comes to their health.”39 Dr. Paulson finds the defendants’ actions “truly shocking” in light of the “undisputed health risks to children.”40 Some plaintiffs are “at risk of irreparable harm from having decreased lung function as a result of growing up in environments with more air pollution.”41 Children who have asthma are already harmed by pollution from fossil fuels, increased prevalence of wildfire smoke, and exacerbated ozone conditions due to climate change. The more fossil fuels are burned, the worse their health will be.42

Medical evidence shows children are uniquely vulnerable to psychological harms from climate change.43 As Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a distinguished psychiatrist with a special interest in the psychological effects of climate change, declared: “Climate change is causing devastating physical impacts—injuries, illnesses, and deaths. But for the magnitude of its impacts, the potential insinuation into every aspect of our lives, the relentlessness of its nature and debilitating effects, it is the emotional toll of climate change that is even more catastrophic, especially for our children. It has the capacity to destroy children psychologically.”44

In Juliana, many of the youth plaintiffs attested to profound impacts to their mental and emotional well-being. Sleeplessness, anxiety, anger, fear, and deep feelings of betrayal by their government are part of the psychological makeup of these young people.45 As examples of what our youngest generation is experiencing, several youth plaintiffs have described their nightmares, emotional pain, depression, and other psychological harms due to the Trump administration’s “institutional betrayal,” harms validated by medical experts and worsening each passing day.46 “Harms that are inflicted intentionally are much more psychologically damaging than what happens to us accidentally. The plaintiffs know that the harm coming to them

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