Georgi Fischer ’24
Fighting for Climate Justice

Georgi Fischer posing for a photo in a wooded setting
Georgi Fischer ’24 graduated in May with a degree in environmental science and a minor in geospatial analysis and hopes to work in research, but says her involvement in the Montana lawsuit has given her new insight into the policy side of environmental issues. “The fact that cross-country skiing is a sport that might not be around in the future for me illustrates the impacts that climate change can have on your physical and mental health.”

PHOTO BY MARY MUCKENHOUPT
When Georgianna (Georgi) Fischer ’24 was a senior in high school, she was pretty fed up — “really frustrated” as she describes it — with the fact that she couldn’t do one of her favorite activities: cross-country ski in her home state of Montana.

“I was basically skiing over patches of grass in the peak of winter, when there should have been lots of snow,” she recalls.

That was 2020, when she wrote a letter to the editor of her local newspaper to vent about it and to share her anger with the state’s refusal to adequately address climate change. Her letter — and her strong voice — caught the attention of Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit public interest firm based in Oregon.

That’s how Georgi, then 17, became one of the plaintiffs in Held v. Montana, the first constitutional climate lawsuit in U.S. history. The case was filed in March 2020 by Our Children’s Trust on behalf of 16 residents of Montana, then aged 2 through 18, and argues that the state’s support of the fossil fuel industry has worsened the effects of climate change on their lives, depriving them of their constitutional rights, and citing language in Montana’s state constitution guaranteeing citizens “the right to a clean and healthful environment” for “present and future generations.”

For Fischer, a lifelong Montana resident with deep ancestral ties to the state and a competitive cross-country skier, joining the suit was an eye-opening experience.

“Your voice is really powerful; people are listening to young people more and more,” she says. “A lot of people are afraid to speak up, but people do care to hear what you have to say.”

Arguments in the case were heard in June 2023 in the First Judicial District Court in Helena, Montana, and that August, Judge Kathy Seeley ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding that young people in the state have a constitutional right to a healthful environment and that laws that limit the ability of regulators to consider climate effects were unconstitutional. The plaintiffs had argued that Montana supported industries, specifically the fossil fuel industry, despite their damaging impacts on the environment and well-being of Montana citizens, said Fischer.

During Fischer’s testimony, she talked about the state’s disappearing snowpack and the effects of wildfire smoke in the summer, as well as her great-grandmother, Mary “Polly” Renne, who fought to protect wilderness areas in the state all her life and testified before a U.S. House of Representatives committee in 1979 in support of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness area in southwest Montana. Fischer also made it clear how the climate crisis has negatively affected her mental health and what she believes her future — and everyone’s future — will look like.

“Fighting to protect the places that I love and grew up in feels really good,” she says. “I’ve always been more of an introverted person, so it was really good to get to know how much power my voice carries.”