AIRE’s interest in community-owned renewable energy is grounded in the idea of rights and justice in the most basic sense. That is, we ought to have the right to choose clean, green, renewable energy, and further we ought to have the right to choose how and by whom it’s generated. Similarly, and on a more universal scale, rights and justice certainly apply to a habitable climate. Shouldn’t we all have a right now and in the future? Shouldn’t it be a matter of justice if that right is taken from us? Many, including the youth of the world, think so. The rights and justice framing also helps connects the dots between a deadly energy system we’re trying to replace and the consequences of it that are increasingly ever present, not “out there in the future.”

Steve Owen, AIRE co-founder, and Audrey Koncsol, a 3rd year law student at Wake Forest University, wrote this article for the North Carolina Bar Journal (PDF) in December of 2017. The referenced lawsuit is moving forward in federal court and the latest developments in the suit can be found at OurChildrensTrust.org. This article is particularly relevant given the amount of climate-related news (wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves, etc. although rarely reported as such) and the storms swirling around the U.S. Supreme Court.