The NYT is reporting on new climate lawsuits brought, in the main, by teenagers against various federal and state agencies claiming that they haven't done enough to protect earth's atmosphere for future generations. "Most of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, filed in United States District Court in San Francisco, are teenagers, a decision apparently made to underscore the intergenerational nature of the public trust that the earth’s atmosphere represents. More novel, however, is the suit’s reliance on the public trust doctrine, which dates to Roman times."