The 'Children's Case'

Teens and climate change

In the late summer of 2006 the then eight month’s pregnant Oregon Lawyer and mother Julia Olson found herself seeking shelter from the August heat in an old-time movie theatre. In doing so she happened to choose one that was at the time playing the former American Vice President Al Gore’s movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Olson was at this stage an environmental lawyer so she was not unfamiliar with the basics of climate science but the movie made her think about her unborn child and what the state of the world that he and his slightly older brother would inherit from her own generation. This thought was to be the catalyst for Olson along with the organization that she helped form, Our Children’s Trust as well as five teenagers and two other non-profit organizations to file a 2011 Federal lawsuit against the American Government on behalf of the younger generation (Alec L. v. McCarthy1). In the process of doing so she had enlisted the support of one of the United States foremost climate …