The Teen-Agers Suing Over Climate Change

In the spring of 2010, Julia Olson, an environmental attorney based in Oregon, was introduced to Alec Loorz, a teen-ager from Ventura, California, and the founder of an advocacy group called Kids vs. Global Warming. At the time, Olson, who ran the nonprofit Our Children’s Trust, was preparing to sue the federal government over its insufficient action on climate change, and she hoped to coördinate youth demonstrations and other events with the filing of the lawsuit. Loorz, then fifteen years old, had been inspired by “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s documentary from 2006, and had graduated from a climate-leadership program founded by Gore. He told Olson that he was game to help, but he had another role in mind: he wanted to be a plaintiff in the case. After Olson made sure that Loorz and his family knew what they were getting into, she agreed to represent him and two other teen-age climate activists.