Everyday Justice magazine - Sisters of Mercy %

January 2024

Articles from Mercy:

If you make a mess, clean it up! (Advocacy success in New York) (Catherine Darcy, RSM; Institute Justice Team)
Youth claim climate victory in Montana court (Marianne Comfort; Institute Justice Team)
Critical Considerations: Was January 1, 2025 a wake-up call? (Karen Donahue, RSM)

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Justice Resources & Links

If you make a mess, clean it up!

Catherine Darcy, RSM; Institute Justice Team

In May, 2024, New York Governor Kathy Hochul gathered with a diverse international group of researchers, faith leaders, policymakers, and government officials for the Vatican summit entitled From Climate Crisis to Climate Resilience. Pope Francis presided over this summit which led to this resilience protocol.

Perhaps that gathering affected Governor Hochul, because on December 26, 2024, she signed the Climate Change Superfund Act into law. This law establishes the climate change adaptation cost recovery program by assessing the most egregious of polluters. New York will benefit by receiving $3 billion per year for 25 years, a $75B total. One third of that fund is earmarked for vulnerable communities. This law is based on the concept employed by the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980 which required responsible parties to clean up or pay damages for contaminated toxic waste sites. Expressed a little more succinctly, the principle which applies is this: if you make a mess, you clean it up.

Funds gained from this law will take some of the pressure off taxpayers to support community resilience through flood protection, heat response and infrastructure upgrades. This funding will protect our subway stations from flooding, strengthen our power grid, and create cooling centers in vulnerable neighborhoods. Last year alone, New Yorkers paid $2.2 billion in climate disaster costs. Now, polluters will help foot the bill.

The significance of New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act becoming law is not lost on climate activists throughout the United States. These activists have been working on similar bills in other states as well as the federal Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act. On July 1, 2024, Vermont’s Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program went into effect. Similar bills based on the polluter pays principle have been introduced in the states of California, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey. In a virtual gathering a few days after the signing, NY Senate sponsor of the bill, Senator Liz Krueger, suggested that now that New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act has been signed, additional states will be introducing similar bills, as well.

In order to assist other states in moving forward similar legislation, the New York Public Interest Research Group, which led the coalition that worked on New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, will offer a webinar reviewing the strategy and process used to pass the bill and then obtain Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature on it. The time and date of that webinar have yet to be determined. However, if you would be interested in attending, please contact cdarcy@sistersofmercy.org.

Youth claim climate victory in Montana court

Marianne Comfort; Institute Justice Team

Young people in Montana have won a landmark victory in claiming that the state’s failure to address climate change violates the rights of current and future generations. The recent ruling now requires the state to consider greenhouse gas emissions when reviewing permits for fossil fuel projects.

A group of residents, aged 5 through 22, filed a lawsuit in March 2020 charging that Montana’s State Energy Policy Act is unconstitutional. The law prohibits the state from considering the impacts of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions in its environmental reviews of energy projects. A district court in August 2023 agreed with the plaintiffs that the law violates the public’s right to a clean and healthful environment under the state’s constitution. The state supreme court affirmed that ruling on Dec. 14, 2024.

The case is among several lawsuits filed over the past 10 years by young people claiming harms from the federal government’s and state governments’ failure to take bold action on climate change.

The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas Institute Leadership Team signed onto “friends of the court” briefs in support of a federal lawsuit first filed by young people in 2015. That case is still moving through legal processes, and on Jan. 13, 2025, 43 members of Congress signed a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to let the case proceed.

Sisters in Rhode Island have supported youth making similar claims against that state.

The Montana ruling is the first climate victory for young plaintiffs in the courts. In a separate case last year, Hawaii settled out of court with youth in a move that commits the state to fully de-carbonize its transportation systems by 2045.

In these cases, young people share how climate change is already affecting their health, income, and heritage. Examples include extreme summer heat, smoke-filled skies, major floods, and the disruption of Native cultural practices tied to seasonal cycles.

Critical Considerations

Was January 1, 2025 a wake-up call?

Karen Donahue, RSM

On New Year’s Day, the U.S. woke up to news of a horrific mass casualty event in New Orleans. A man driving a pick-up truck plowed into revelers in the city’s famed French Quarter, killing 14 people and injuring several dozen more. Later that morning, a Tesla Cybertruck packed with explosives was detonated in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, killing the driver. The perpetrators in both of these incidents were U.S. military veterans.

According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a research, education and training center at the University of Maryland, analysis of the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) database showed that having a U.S. military background is the strongest individual-level predictor of whether a person listed in the PIRUS data is classified as a mass casualty offender. This correlation outweighed other factors, including mental health issues, membership in an extremist group, criminal history and age.

Analysis of the ideology driving mass casualty events indicates that the majority (73.5%) of the offenders with military backgrounds in the PIRUS database had links to far-right domestic extremist groups (anti-government/militia/sovereign citizen, white supremacist/nativist). Only 15% had ties to foreign Islamic extremist groups such as ISIS or al Qaeda.

In a January 2, 2025 article posted on his website, Informed Comment, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole examines the January 1 attacks and reflects on our tendency to look outside when a mass casualty event occurs within our borders. The initial assumption is often that the individual or individuals involved are immigrants and that they have ties to foreign terrorist groups. He also notes how the media treats white perpetrators differently from those of other races and ethnicities.

In an interview with The Guardian (a British newspaper), Bishop Garrison, a decorated military veteran who led the Biden administration’s efforts to deal with extremism in the U.S. military, warned that there could be more attacks if the Pentagon does not take this threat seriously. Referring to January 1, he said, “Both incidents demonstrate the sleeping danger that we have failed to deal with as a country.”