Are You Smarter Than an Environmental Reporter?

normally do things. We're introducing a new environmental news quiz where we ask reporters about what's been going on in the world and see if they've been keeping up. The point of this quiz is to have some fun while talking about all the nerdy stuff we constantly cover here a Bloomberg Environment. But of course we will be keeping score and our extremely competitive reporters will be taking this

challenge extremely seriously. And speaking of those reporters, I'm joined by two of them right now, Bloomberg Environments, Abby Smith and Sylvia Carignan. Thanks for joining. So let's just get right into this our inaugural Bloomberg Environment news quiz. Here is our first question. Elijah Cummings is a Democrat who represents Baltimore in the US House of Representatives, and he is set to become the chairman of the House Oversight

Committee if Democrats take back the House. He recently said one of his top priorities would be investigating this person. Raise your hand if you know the answer. The listeners at home cannot see that Abby is raising her hand right now, Abby, do you think you know the answer? Is it Ryan Sink? That is wrong? Sylvia Woodings? Would you like to steal from her? Oh? My gosh, I have no idea who it is? All right, here's a hint mattresses. Naturally that the hitty hint is mattresses. Is

it Scott Prewitt. That's right, Yes, Elijah Cummings is that he wants to investigate Scott Prewitt and how he was able to stay in his position for so long. So that is the answer. I'm glad that Scott prewd has become synonymous with word mattresses. Now, speaking of Scott Prewit at the White House, this is our second question. By the way, speaking Scott Prewitt, the White House still hasn't

nominated anyone to succeed him at the head of the EPA. However, President Trump recently suggested he may choose this person, Abby, Silvia, what do you say? Oh, and Sylvia is we need to get like a buzzer here for the next quiz because raising hands is just not a very podcast friendly motion. Sylvia, you've raised your hand. Who do you think that Trump will nominate to head the EPA. He said he might go with the acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler. That is correct.

That's one point for Abby, one point for Sylvia. Silvia just did a little dance here for all those at home. Final question. These people are arguing in court that the government is constitutionally mandated to address climate change. Who are the people who are arguing this in court? I think they both raising your hands. Looks like you guys both know the answer. Abby was first. However, there's a group of twenty one kids suing the government of our climate change.

That's right. I would have accepted children or young people also, But that is correct, So that will do it. That was this week's quiz. It looks like Abby has won with a score of two to one. We also, Abby is doing a little dance. We will have both of these reporters back on in the future to compete again. But Abby is our Victor this week, and now we're going to take a quick break and be back with

more from Abby on that kid's lawsuit. All right, and we're back now, and as we just mentioned, we're going to chatting with Bloomberg Environments Abby Smith about a pretty novel lawsuit that could reshape how the US government deals with climate change. So, Abby, what's this suit all about? And who are these kids and what do they want the government to do. So it's a group of twenty one they're mostly teenagers now at this point, ranging in age from ten to twenty one, and they really they

want the government to address climate change. And if they're six usful, it could force the government to really have a comprehensive plan to address greenhouse gases across multiple sectors. And they have two main arguments. One is constitutional. They're saying by not keeping greenhouse gases under control, the government has violated their constitutional right to a livable climate. Now that would be a new constitutional right, so that's not

a right that's been recognized before. And then their second main argument is a public trust argument. So the public trust doctrine says the government holds essential resources like water, land, wildlife in trust for its citizens, and they're arguing that the atmosphere and the climate are part of that trust. And there I guess, because they're young people, they're going to have to deal with the lack of those resources in the future. I guess that's kind of their argument.

So I understand the Supreme Court recently put a hold on the suit and you know, is essentially pausing it. You know, what's going on, Why did they do that, and what's going to happen next? Right, So, the case was slated to go to trial October twenty ninth in Eugene, Oregon, and the government has really been trying everything it possibly can to get this suit put on hold, and in a last ditch effort, just ten days before the trial was going to start, they went to the Supreme Court

and said, can you please pause this? And Chief Justice John Roberts did that. He put the trial on pause on October twenty fourth, and now we're kind of waiting to see what happens next. He asked for responses from both parties, and the government wants the court to take up what's called a writ of mandamus, which essentially would mean they could kill the suit altogether. It's not really clear what the Court's going to do. It's a really unusual situation, really unusual case. So we're kind of all

waiting to see what's going to happen. But this could be eventually, this could be heard by the nine justices on the Court. I mean, I guess we're a long way away from that, but is that a possibility. It is, it's a possibility. I think it's unclear whether the justices will hear it at this point or whether the case will kind of go through on the merits. And either way it's going to make it up to the Supreme Court, just given the arguments that these kids are bringing forward.

But I think the timing is really the big question. Well, that kind of leads me into the last thing I wanted to ask you about, which is this is a pretty novel, as you mentioned, novel lawsuit, you know, relying on some pretty new and I don't want to say out there, but you know, pretty creative legal claims. And we see a lot of these lawsuits they often get dismissed, but it seems like this one is going further. It's not,

you know, immediately getting dismissed. What are the chances that this actually gets heard on the merits that there's a trial in court where essentially climate change is like put on trial. Is that possible or is this just you know, going to be the years of legal wrangling and nothing ultimately comes of it. I think it is possible that it could go to trial. I think it's really a

really open ended question at this point. I think what's interesting about this case is it's made it past a lot of hurdles that folks thought it wouldn't make it past. The Ninth Circuit did take up this case back in March.

The government tried again to get the court to go over the District Court in organ which is hearing this case, go over their head and kill the case, and the Ninth Circuit didn't do it, and so it made it past that hurdle and the judge and organ Judge Anne Aikens, she kind of breathed life into both of the kids' arguments when she allowed the case to go forward initially. And that order came just two days after Donald Trump

was elected. So I think that's been interesting. But on the flip side, it's important to note that the public trust argument in particular has been tried in a couple different cases across the country, mostly at the state level, and none have been successful. And I think the other thing too, is that even folks who support climate action are kind of wary of this suit because it could

tie the government's hands. The kids brought this case against the Obama administration, which tried just as hard to get this case dismissed. I think there's a lot of open questions, and even if the kids are successful on the merits, the remedy is a whole other question because the court is going to be really really hesitant to force the government to do a comprehensive plan that the court doesn't like to dictate policy. So a lot of open questions.

I think ultimately, at the end of the day, the kids do face quite a few hurdles to breach that success point at the end of this process, but that's not to say they won't have their day in court. Yeah, all right. That was Bloomberg Environment's Abbie Smith, who now the latest title she can add to her resume is winner of the inaugural Bloomberg Environment Parks Pavilion News Quiz. Adding it right now, yes, updating her resume as we speak. She was talking about the so called Kids Climate Suit.

For more of her reporting, visit our website at news dot in Bloomberg environment dot com. That's news dot Bloomberg Environment dot com. This episode of Parkspavilion was produced by myself and Jessica Coombs. Our editor is Marissa Horn, and our audio engineer is Nicholas an Zelada. Music tracks from Parkspavilion are a message and Wall by Jazaar. They were used under a Creative Comments Attribution share Like license. More information can be found at Better with Music dot com