Hawaiian officials have announced a so-called “groundbreaking” legal settlement with a group of young climate activists that they say will force the state’s transportation department to move more aggressively toward a zero-emissions transportation system.
“You have a constitutional right to fight for life-sustaining climate policies and you have mobilized our people in this cause,” Hawaii Governor Josh Green told the 13 young plantiffs in the case, saying he hoped the settlement would lead to similar action. through the whole country.
Under the “historic” settlement, announced Thursday, Hawaii officials will release a roadmap “to fully decarbonize the state’s transportation systems, taking all necessary steps to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045 for ground transportation, maritime transportation and air transport between the islands.” , Andrea Rogers, one of the attorneys representing the plantiffs in the case, said at a news conference with the governor.
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Rogers called the lawsuit “the first youth-led constitutional quest for climate change aimed at stopping climate pollution from transportation.”
The June 2022 lawsuit, Navahine F v. Hawaii Department of Transportation, was filed by 13 young people who alleged that the state’s pro-fossil transportation policies violated their constitutional rights. By prioritizing projects like highway expansion instead of efforts to electrify public transportation and promote walking and bicycling, the state has “created unsustainable levels of greenhouse gas emissions,” according to the complaint.
As a result, state officials harmed the plaintiffs’ ability to “live healthy lives in Hawaii now and in the future” and violated the right to a clean and healthy environment guaranteed by the state Constitution, the lawsuit argued. court case.
It named the Hawaii Department of Transportation and its director, as well as the state of Hawaii and its former governor David Ige, as defendants.
The plaintiffs, most of whom are indigenous, alleged that by contributing to the climate crisis, the state has accelerated the “deterioration and disappearance of Hawaii’s natural and cultural heritage.” When the case was filed, the plantiffs were between nine and eighteen years old.
Several plantiffs, many of whom are identified only by their first names, spoke at the news conference.
“It’s wonderful to talk about the kind of hope this brings us. For many of us, it has been almost our entire lives that we have watched our beaches fall into the water and our coal reefs disappear,” said Lucina, a 17-year-old prosecutor.
Navahine, whose name appears in the lawsuit, is a 16-year-old native Hawaiian whose family has farmed the land “for ten generations.”
Drought, floods and sea level rise all had immediate impacts on her family’s crops, she said. “When I saw the consequences, how we struggled to make money for our farm, I was pushed into this case,” she said.
Officials said the legal settlement brings together activists and all three branches of state government to focus on achieving climate change goals, including mobilizing the judiciary. The court will oversee the settlement agreement through 2045 or until the state reaches its zero-emissions goals, Rogers said.
“We have extremely tough goals to achieve by 2045 and this will ensure that we make much faster progress,” Ed Sniffen, the head of the state’s transportation department, said at a news conference.
State officials often claim that Hawaii is a climate leader. In 2015, it became the first U.S. state to require its electric utilities to cut energy sector emissions to zero by 2045 — a tall order in a state that has historically gotten most of its energy from oil and coal.
The state legislature also adopted a goal to decarbonize the transportation sector. And Hawaii’s 2050 Sustainability Plan calls for decarbonizing all state vehicles by 2035.
But the state has gone in the wrong direction. Between 2020 and 2021, CO2 emissions in Hawaii increased by more than 16%. Prosecutors say Hawaii’s Department of Transportation has missed every interim benchmark for reducing global warming emissions since 2008. And per capita, Hawaii emits more carbon than 85% of countries on Earth, attorneys wrote in the 2022 lawsuit.
The lawsuit was part of a series of youth-led constitutional climate cases brought by the nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust. Earlier this year, the company scored a major victory when the Montana Supreme Court upheld a landmark decision requiring state regulations to consider the climate crisis before approving permits for fossil fuel development.
Our Children’s Trust also has pending lawsuits in Alaska, Florida, Utah and Virginia. A federal lawsuit it filed in December against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is also pending.
Last month, a federal appeals court granted the Biden administration’s request to throw out another federal lawsuit filed by Our Children’s Trust, Juliana v. United States.
