ARTICLE III: DESECRATION OF GENERATIONAL DUTY
The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment” and that the President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” In his conduct of the Office of President of the United States, Donald J. Trump has repeatedly and without remorse committed the treasonous high crime of injuring the health and welfare of American children, now and in the future, by grievously ignoring and wantonly exacerbating the unprecedented and existential crisis of climate change. The right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and thriving society. The president's actions have undermined affirmative measures to address climate change and, therefore, have violated the youngest generation's rights to life, liberty and property that are enshrined in the Constitution and entrusted to a President as an inviolable and sacred duty.
The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment” and that the President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” In his conduct of the Office of President of the United States, Donald J. Trump has repeatedly and without remorse committed the treasonous high crime of injuring the health and welfare of American children, now and in the future, by grievously ignoring and wantonly exacerbating the unprecedented and existential crisis of climate change. The right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and thriving society. The president's actions have undermined affirmative measures to address climate change and, therefore, have violated the youngest generation's rights to life, liberty and property that are enshrined in the Constitution and entrusted to a President as an inviolable and sacred duty.
President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct through the following means:
1) In contravention of overwhelming scientific consensus, the President denied the existence of the material threat posed by climate change, casting doubt on scientific experts and portraying climate change as a "hoax" perpetrated by China and other malevolent actors. Concurrently, for his private benefit, the President accepted millions in political contributions from fossil-fuel burning industries responsible for emitting greenhouse gases that are the principal cause of the crisis. Together these actions have served to obfuscate truth, discredit the office of the presidency, and dangerously delay the required national response to climate change.
2) In defiance of the international community, the President issued notice to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreements, a treaty signed by 197 countries as the principal global mechanism for coordinating and strengthening efforts to address the climate crisis. This historic forfeiture of leadership failed to serve the interests of the United States or the world at large and constituted an extreme betrayal of the President's duty to protect our country in emergencies and to preserve conditions essential to the present and future thriving of the citizenry.
3) Through cabinet agencies and Executive Actions, the President aggressively moved, in hundreds of instances, to cancel and diminish regulations that mitigate climate change and its consequences. Examples included the suspension of mileage standards related to vehicles, the weakening of rules regarding methane leakage at oil and gas facilities, and the transfer of protected federal lands to private industrial interests. In addition, the President increased financial subsidies to corporations which, through the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, accelerate climate change and greatly multiply its current and future costs.
In sum: by failing to safeguard the constitutionally protected rights of young people to an atmospheric system that allows for the free, untrammeled enjoyment of liberty and the pursuit of prosperity, by betraying the intergenerational contract explicitly determined in the Constitution, and by continuing this train of abuses without respite or regret, thereby causing to burden the next generation of leaders with a global crisis potentially beyond effective remediation, the President has henceforth assumed to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the “sole Power of Impeachment” vested by the Constitution in the House of Representative.
1) In contravention of overwhelming scientific consensus, the President denied the existence of the material threat posed by climate change, casting doubt on scientific experts and portraying climate change as a "hoax" perpetrated by China and other malevolent actors. Concurrently, for his private benefit, the President accepted millions in political contributions from fossil-fuel burning industries responsible for emitting greenhouse gases that are the principal cause of the crisis. Together these actions have served to obfuscate truth, discredit the office of the presidency, and dangerously delay the required national response to climate change.
2) In defiance of the international community, the President issued notice to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreements, a treaty signed by 197 countries as the principal global mechanism for coordinating and strengthening efforts to address the climate crisis. This historic forfeiture of leadership failed to serve the interests of the United States or the world at large and constituted an extreme betrayal of the President's duty to protect our country in emergencies and to preserve conditions essential to the present and future thriving of the citizenry.
3) Through cabinet agencies and Executive Actions, the President aggressively moved, in hundreds of instances, to cancel and diminish regulations that mitigate climate change and its consequences. Examples included the suspension of mileage standards related to vehicles, the weakening of rules regarding methane leakage at oil and gas facilities, and the transfer of protected federal lands to private industrial interests. In addition, the President increased financial subsidies to corporations which, through the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, accelerate climate change and greatly multiply its current and future costs.
In sum: by failing to safeguard the constitutionally protected rights of young people to an atmospheric system that allows for the free, untrammeled enjoyment of liberty and the pursuit of prosperity, by betraying the intergenerational contract explicitly determined in the Constitution, and by continuing this train of abuses without respite or regret, thereby causing to burden the next generation of leaders with a global crisis potentially beyond effective remediation, the President has henceforth assumed to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the “sole Power of Impeachment” vested by the Constitution in the House of Representative.
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