Hello and welcome back to Drilled I'm Amy Westervalt.

Today an update on a big climate case that's been ongoing for about seven years now.

It's probably the best known of all of the climate cases, the Juliana case, or officially

Juliana versus the United States.

In this case, 21 young plaintiffs sued the US government over climate change.

It's often been misreported that they sued the government for inaction on climate, but

that's not actually what they said.

In fact, the plaintiffs sued the government for effectively enabling and accelerating climate

change via policies that support and encourage more and more fossil fuel extraction.

So fossil fuel subsidies or highway bills that make the country dependent on cars, anything

that basically encourages more emissions.

That's not just me being all well actually, although, okay fine, I do like to do that sometimes.

It is actually a really important distinction.

Here's Julia Olson, the lead attorney on the case to explain.

So the case is about the government's affirmative acts that have put these young people in

a position of danger and continue to act in ways that are enhancing the danger for young

people.

As a lawyer, I'm looking at the party most responsible for causing the harm.

I'm also looking at the remedy that's available to really stop the climate emergency from

worsening and to begin to redress it so that we can protect these fundamental life support

resources for these young people.

And when I look at the party most responsible, it is the United States government, historically

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