BY CHRIS SOLOMON
Last week, the highest court in Massachusetts did something historic: it agreed with a lawsuit claiming the state was endangering young people’s future by dragging its feet on climate change. The court, in backing the adolescent plaintiffs, ordered the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to promptly issue regulations that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The victory might seem a fluke or an outlier. Except it wasn’t. Three weeks before, a judge in Washington ordered the state’s Department of Ecology to take similar action in response to a lawsuit filed there by another group of young plaintiffs. In doing so, the court became “the first court in America to order an agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions,” says Andrea Rodgers, attorney for the group...