Atmospheric Trust Litigationin the United States: Pipe Dream or Pipeline to Justice for Future Generations?

• Author: Randall S. Abate
• Pages: 543-569

543

Atmospheric Trust Litigation

in the United States: Pipe

Dream or Pipeline to Justice

for Future Generations?

Randall S. Aba te*

Introduction .................................................................................................543

I. e Climate Justice Movement in the United States .............................546

II. e Evolution From the Public Trust Doctrine to Atmospheric Trust

Litigation (ATL) ...................................................................................548

III. Moving Forward With ATL in the Wake of Alec L. v. McCarthy ........... 553

A. e Federal Avenue for ATL ...........................................................553

B. ATL State Law Actions Remain Viable and Important ....................554

C. Building on ATL and ATL-related Cases in the United States

and Other Countries ......................................................................558

D. Prospects for the Future of ATL Litigation ......................................561

Conclusion ...................................................................................................568

Introduction

Climate justice litigation in the United States is in transition. It traces its

origins to the environmental justice movement that began in the late 1980s.1

e environmental justice movement was grounded in a growing awareness of

the linkage between environmental and human rights problems and the need

for law and policy responses to address the disproportionate impacts of envi-

1. Elizabeth Ann Kronk Warner & Randall S. Abate, International and Domestic Law Dimensions of

Climate Justice for Arctic Indigenous Peoples, 43 O L. J. 113, 121 (2013). For a helpful discus-

sion of the legal and historical foundations of the environmental justice movement in the United

States, see generally M B. G  S R. F ., T L  E

J: T  P  A D R (2d ed. 2009); R

D. B, D  D: R, C,  E Q (3d ed. 2000); L

W. C  S R. F, F  G U: E R   R 

 E J M (2000).

* e author gratefully acknowledges valuable research assistance from Mackenzie Landa,

Esq.

Chapter 20

544 Climate Justice

ronmental problems on minority and low-income communities throughout

the United States.2 e implementation of environmental justice measures

at the federal3 and state4 levels since the 1990s helped provide a foundation

for climate justice litigation in the United States. Climate justice litigation in

the United States also has drawn some of its inspiration from developments

at the international level, where the connection between climate cha nge and

human rights became galvanized in response to the Inuit pet ition before

the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2005.5 Climate jus-

tice litigation seeks to provide remedies to marginali zed communities that

are facing climate change impacts and that lack nancial and technological

resources to eectively adapt to these changes.6

e U.S. climate justice movement began w ith public nuisa nce lawsuits

that sought injunctive relief or damage s for climate cha nge impacts.7 Paral-

leling the evolution of the public nuisance line of climate justice lawsuits was

the landmark case of Massachusetts v. EPA.8 Massachusetts and several other

states sued to compel the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to

fulll its duty to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant under the

Clean Air Act. e U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the states had stand-

ing to bring the su it and that EPA had authority to regulate CO2 as a pol-

2. e environmental justice movement initially focused on “environmental racism” as manifested by the

disproportionate siting of environmentally undesirable land uses in African American communities. e

movement subsequently broadened its focus from environmental racism to “environmental justice,”

which expanded the movement’s reach to include other disadvantaged communities, including low-

income communities and Native American communities. See David H. Getches & David N. Pellow,

Beyond “Traditional” Environmental Justice, in J  R: C, S, 

A 5–6, 24–25 (Katherine M. Mutz, Gary C. Bryner & Douglas S. Kenney eds., 2002).

3. See, e.g., O  E J, U.S. E P A, P

EJ 2014 (2011), http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi/P100DFCQ.PDF?Dockey=P100DFCQ.PDF

(providing a roadmap for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to integrate environmental

justice considerations into all of its programs); Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in

Minority Populations and Low-income Populations, Exec. Order No. 12898, 59 Fed. Reg. 7629

(Feb. 16, 1994) (directing federal agencies to incorporate environmental justice considerations into

their decisionmaking processes).

4. See generally U  C H C   L P L R

I, E J  A: A F S S  L, P, 

C (4th ed. 2010), http://gov.uchastings.edu/public-law/docs/ejreport-fourthedition.pdf.

5. See generally Hari M. Osofsky, Complexities of Addressing the Impacts of Climate Change on Indigenous

Peoples through International Law Petitions: A Case Study of the Inuit Petition to the Inter-American

Commission on Human Rights, in C C  I P: T S 

L R (Randall S. Abate & Elizabeth Ann Kronk Warner eds., 2013).

6. For a valuable and comprehensive discussion of the foundations and evolution of climate justice

litigation, see generally I B A, A J  H R

  E  C D (2014), http://www.ibanet.org/PresidentialTaskForceClimate

ChangeJustice2014Report.aspx.

7. See infra Part I.

8. Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007).