The plaintiffs, who were then between ages two and 18, are one of many groups across the country to have taken legal action over climate change. With Held v. Montana, however, which lasted from March 2020 until August 2023, the litigants became the first to prove their case in court, receiving media attention from across the world and potentially setting an example for future climate advocates. 

The group argued that environmental harms ranging from extreme heat and smoke to severe flooding infringed upon the state’s constitutional guarantee of a “clean and healthful environment,” as written in Montana’s 1972 Environmental Protection Act (EPA). Montana is the only state to have such a provision written in its constitution, which gave the plaintiffs a unique basis to make their case. Judge Kathy Seeley at the First Judicial District Court in Helena became the first judge to rule in favor of climate litigants. 

Despite the historic ruling, Montana remains as polarized as the rest of the world with regard to climate change. Governor Greg Gianforte, the case’s lead defendant, is expected to appeal the District Court’s decision to the Montana Supreme Court as we go to press,, and the EPA is expected to face potential repeal in the 2025 legislative session. 

“I think even the national polls show the majority of people in the country know that climate change is happening,” said Regents Professor Cathy Whitlock, a lead author of the Montana Climate Assessment and an expert witness on behalf of the litigants, in an interview with Bitterroot. “It’s just really making people aware that it’s going to impact them, it’s not somebody else’s problem.” 

As of April 2022, an estimated 72% of Americans believe that global warming is occurring, according to the executive summary of polling statistics published by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. By comparison, an estimated 67% of Montanans believe that global warming is occurring and 52% believe that it is largely human-driven. Though 74% agree that there should be greater investment in renewable energy. 

“I think we all kind of look at our own personal lives and say, well, I’ll be okay,” Professor Whitlock continued. “You know, ‘I have money in the bank,’ or ‘I have a house in a non-burnable place or whatever,’ but I think we’re all going to be impacted, and we need to do something […] I think it’s really important is to realize this is a problem that’s going to play out for a long time, you know, centuries. […] It’s not just a problem we’re handing over to young people; it’s a problem that you and I have, in all generations. You need to do something now because what we do now in the next 10 or 15 years is going to determine how the rest of the century plays out in terms of climate.” 

If global greenhouse gases continue to be emitted at the current rate, scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project that the average global temperature will rise  1.5-degrees Celsius in the next 10–15 years, a point at which IPCC scientists also project there will be no turning back. If emissions are not significantly reduced before then, environmental disasters and other negative effects will increase for the next 50 to 100 years and then progressively so for centuries or millennia. No existing or theoretical technology could reverse that trend. 

As of 2021, 99% of scientists in relevant fields agree that human-caused climate change is real, according to seven recent studies of the position statements of over 200 scientific organizations. However, when non-experts or experts in nonrelevant fields are cited as being authoritative on climate change, the scientific rate of agreement can be made to appear lower than it truly is. That appeal to false authority is partly how private corporations and affiliates have fabricated scientific disagreement over climate change, as science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway explain in their book Merchants of Doubt. 

“For a long time, climate change was sort of presented as one of many problems,” said Professor Whitlock. “You know, ‘We have all these problems on the planet, and then there’s climate change.’ I don’t think that’s the way to look at it. Climate change kind of impacts all the other problems. It sort of is the overvalued problem that’s influencing all of our other woes—our social laws, our food security, our health—and so we really make a mistake when we try to have people decide which problem is the worst, and climate change subsumes all of them.”  

In a separate lecture held at Montana State University, Professor Whitlock explained that the court’s conclusions included that human-driven greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to increased environmental disasters in Montana and that the state’s emissions are significant: roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of Pakistan, Argentina, or Sweden. Through strict scrutiny and with the help of the Montana Climate Assessment and the Climate Solutions Plan, the court determined that those disasters infringed upon the plaintiffs’ right to a clean and healthful environment. 

“The Montana Climate Assessment looks at the impact of climate change specifically on water, forest, and agriculture, and then we did a follow-up on it to help report the impacts of human health,” said Professor Whitlock in the interview. “So those were the things that I could really talk to, and I mean I could show that the climate has not improved significantly in the plaintiffs’ lifetimes and that it will continue to warm. I could bring forth scientific information that showed the snowpack was declining, and this was impacting water availability. One of [the plaintiffs] was a rancher, others liked to ski, some of them like to fish, and that was being impacted by the loss of snowpack; and then the extreme heat and the impacts that this was having on their health and also on their livelihoods and their families.” 

Despite public acceptance that climate change is real, the problem of how to address it remains divisive in Montana as the expected attempt to repeal the 50-year-old constitutional right illustrates. Stories like the ones shared by the plaintiffs, however, will become more common if the planet continues to warm and the effects become more noticeable in Montana. 

“Climate change is not really a scientific issue anymore,” said Professor Whitlock. “It’s a socioeconomic issue. The reason is for sea level rise, and often some of the poorest countries are going to be the most impacted by sea level rise. It’s things like melting permafrost displacing populations. It’s changing the flood zones, the extent of the flooding, it’s a whole host of things, and increased drought in dry places […] But it’s often the most vulnerable, the poorest sectors of society that are going to be the most impacted.” 

As many as one billion people could become displaced by climate change before 2050, according to the UN International Organization for Migration. Montana’s population, by comparison, could see an increase of 200,000 before 2040, which is about 21% of its current population, as of the 2020 U.S. Census. Much of that influx would likely flow from southern states and California as they become hotter and drier, and the socioeconomic problem of accommodating more people and managing state resources would coincide with an increase in environmental disasters. 

With legal action and collaboration with qualified professionals, however, the 16 young climate advocates who argued for their right to a clean and healthful Montana managed to successfully bring about change against the odds. 2023 was a historic year for climate change, and Montana continues to move forward within the ongoing environmental crisis.