America Kids to sue President Trump on his Climate Policies

The kids at a presentation session

Unlike in Nigeria where the adults don't even know their rights not to talk of suing Buhari,children in America have taken to the street to revolt Trump's climate policies.

Experts in climate law say the suit may be a long shot but remains significant.

"The case is important, in my mind, from a symbolic and ethics perspective," said Deborah Sivas, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School. "It often takes the law a long time to catch up to changing moral sensibilities. It only does so when people are willing to press innovative, outside-the-box arguments. My hope is that we will be able to look back on this case as an early, first mover of a changing jurisprudence."

"After several years with little success, environmental plaintiffs have now won climate change cases in several countries ​based on constitutional, human rights and international law grounds, as opposed to the more traditional statutory grounds -- the Netherlands, Pakistan, Austria and South Africa," Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, said in an email. "The Oregon case now joins that list, and its symbolic importance has added weight now that Washington is run by climate deniers."

Olson, the attorney for the kids, said the case is not symbolic and can win. Those who say otherwise "are denying the capacity of humans to take care of democracy and take care of the planet," she said.

I spent a couple days this week with the climate kids. I heard about their visits to Washington museums and to see the Constitution. I watched as they sang and danced at DC Metro stops, playing Kendrick Lamar simultaneously on two phones to get twice the experience. I talked to them about their hopes and fears about this case, about why so many American adults -- 47% according to a Yale survey -- don't understand humans are causing global warming. They explained why they're marching and speaking here even at a moment when they worry adults might not listen.

An audience in Washington listens Friday to a presentation by kids suing the Trump administration over climate change.

"Most people know climate change is happening, but they push it aside so they can continue living their lives," said Isaac Vergun, 15.

"It's not their fault," chimed in Zealand Bell, 13. "They don't know better."

Their hope and generosity are infectious. Their parents and attorneys didn't put them up to this. (I've talked with kids who had to convince their parents to let them do this.) The kids are genuinely concerned their generation will inherit an irreparably messed-up world.

The truth is that we adults need these climate kids.

We need them more than thousands of adults marching on Saturday.

We need them as a moral compass.

And we need them to remind us that our actions will echo for generations to come.

"They'll be adults by the time they get to court," Cherri Foytlin, one of their parents, joked as we watched several of the kids speak alongside US senators Thursday at the Supreme Court.

I hope not. But if so, they'll be better adults than most.