Sponsors (12)
The resolution elevates children's right to a stable climate and frames climate harms as public-health issues—strengthening the basis for protective policies and preserving climate data—while creating potential legal uncertainty, economic pressure, and targeted regulatory consequences for governments, businesses, and vulnerable communities.
Children and young people: would be recognized as having a right to a stable climate, creating a stronger policy basis for federal and state actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on their behalf.
Children (and low-income youth): climate-driven harms are framed as public-health emergencies for children, strengthening the rationale for future health, adaptation, and protection funding or programs targeted at young and vulnerable populations.
Students, researchers, and policymakers: the resolution affirms the scientific consensus on climate change and federal responsibility to maintain public access to government climate data, which helps preserve reliable climate information for education, research, and decisionmaking.
Federal agencies, state governments, and taxpayers: the strong constitutional-style framing of children's climate rights could invite novel legal claims against federal actions, creating legal uncertainty and potential fiscal liabilities for government.
Taxpayers, small businesses, and industry: the resolution's cited findings and projections (e.g., excess-death estimates) could be contested and used to justify costly regulations or litigation, producing economic impacts for households and businesses.
Vulnerable communities and households: emphasis on disproportionate harms to specific groups could lead to targeted permitting, land-use, or energy policies that change costs and access for racial and ethnic minorities, low-income families, and rural communities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Expresses congressional findings criticizing executive energy actions and affirms children's right to a stable climate; it is nonbinding and makes no legal changes.
Official title: Recognizing a health and safety emergency disproportionately affecting the fundamental rights of children due to the Trump administration's directives that unleash fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, while suppressing climate change science.
Introduced July 16, 2025 by Jeff Merkley · Last progress July 16, 2025
States congressional findings criticizing recent executive actions that favor fossil fuel development and suppress climate science, affirms that children have a right to a stable climate and access to climate science, and calls for a transition to clean energy. The resolution is a nonbinding statement of policy and does not change statutes, create new regulatory duties, or appropriate funds.