This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
Top Videos
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
Climate change poses a key risk to low-lying Florida. When Climate Central ranked the 25 U.S. coastal cities that would be most vulnerable to coastal flooding in 2050 due to sea level rise projections, 20 of them were in the Sunshine State.
But Florida Governor Rick Scott has a history of sticking his head in the disappearing sand. In 2015, reports surfaced that his government had banned the Florida Department of Environmental Protection from even using the words "climate change" in reports. Though he denies those charges, he also denies climate change. When asked to comment on it, he famously replied, "I'm not a scientist."
Now, the group with the most to lose from his inaction are forcing him to act.
On Monday, eight young Florida residents sued the state government to force it to implement a research-based "climate recovery plan," the Miami Herald reported.
The plaintiffs range in age from 10 to 20 and are part of a growing trend of groups heading to the courts to either force action on or receive damages for the impacts of climate change.
In fact, the young people are represented by Our Children's Trust, the non-profit behind a similar case brought by 21 young people against the federal government, claiming it violated their rights by basing the national energy plan on fossil fuels that cause the climate to change in ways that will imperil their futures. The federal case received an Oct. 29 trial date earlier this month. The youngest plaintiff in the Florida case, 10-year-old Levi Draheim, is also named in the federal suit.
One of the Florida plaintiffs, University of Miami marine science student Delaney Reynolds, reached out to Our Children's Trust, inspired by their federal case, and signed up to join the Florida case they were already planning.
"Gov. Scott says he's not a scientist. Well, neither are most of the people that are forced to take action because the state is failing us," Reynolds told the Miami Herald.
Our Children's Trust also has similar cases pending in Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington.
But the fact that Florida has to be sued into action is especially counter-intuitive. According to the Miami Herald, Miami Beach has already spent $125 million keeping flood water out of its streets, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates streets in Miami could flood every day as early as 2070.
Florida doctors have also observed that climate change is already impacting the health of their patients.
The suit reprimands Scott's government both for failing to reduce the state's carbon dioxide emissions and for failing to act to protect the coasts.
But Scott's spokesperson McKinley Lewis denied those charges. "The Governor signed one of the largest environmental protection budgets in Florida's history last month—investing $4 billion into Florida's environment. The Governor is focused on real solutions to protect our environment—not political theater or a lawsuit orchestrated by a group based in Eugene, Oregon," he told the Miami Herald in a statement.
Senior Our Children's Trust attorney Andrea Rodgers expects the case to go to trial by the end of 2018.
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson recalled 33,000 bottles of baby powder on Friday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found trace amounts of asbestos in one of its bottles.
An international group of scientists released a report today detailing how the fossil fuel industry actively campaigned to sow doubt about the climate crisis and what steps need to be taken to undo the damage, as the Los Angeles Times reported.
By Chloe Farand for Climate Home News
Canadians are voting on Monday in an election observers say will define the country's climate future.
By Jessica Taft
Fifteen kids from a dozen countries, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, recently brought a formal complaint to the United Nations. They're arguing that climate change violates children's rights as guaranteed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a global agreement.
Trending
Susan Vineyard / iStock / Getty Images Plus
By Justin Mikulka
Increasingly, U.S. shale firms appear unable to pay back investors for the money borrowed to fuel the last decade of the fracking boom. In a similar vein, those companies also seem poised to stiff the public on cleanup costs for abandoned oil and gas wells once the producers have moved on.
Top officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development confirmed to lawmakers last week that they knowingly — and illegally — stalled hurricane aid to Puerto Rico.
Trending
It appears Jane Fonda is good for her word. The actress and political activist said she would hold demonstrations on Capitol Hill every Friday through January to demand action on the climate crisis. Sure enough, Fonda was arrested for demonstrating a second Friday in a row Oct. 18, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Only this time, her Grace and Frankie co-star Sam Waterston joined her.
Switzerland's two Green parties made historic gains in the country's parliamentary elections Sunday, according to projections based on preliminary results reported by The New York Times.