Young climate activist sues the United States

By Will Parry

          Alec Loorz is working with Al Gore to confront global warming. 

          “So what?” you say.  “So are a few million other people.”

          Right.  But Alec Loorz is 16 years old.  Since he was 12, he has been a climate change activist.  He’s a founder of Kids Against Global Warming.  He’s spoken before thousands at rallies and conferences.  He is the youngest “presenter” to be trained by Gore’s Climate Project.

          And on behalf of his generation, Alec Loorz has just filed a lawsuit against the United States of America “for handing over our future to unjust fossil fuel industries, and ignoring the right of our children to inherit the planet that has sustained all of civilization.”

          The government should “recognize the atmosphere as a commons that needs to be preserved,” Loorz says, emphasizing that “climate change is about our future.  It’s about the survival of this and every generation to come.”

          The lawsuit is far from the only activity of Kids Against Global Warming.  In the Sea Level Awareness Project (SLAP), youth groups installed more than one hundred poles across Ventura to demonstrate the future rise of sea levels.  Kids Against Global Warming is collecting the signatures of children on a Declaration of Independence from Fossil Fuels. It has organized global warming marches of youth in many cities.

          Loorz serves on six advisory boards, including that of the United Steelworkers Union.