In the fight against climate change, one tool is proving\u00a0increasingly popular: litigation. From the U.S. to India, activists, governments and concerned citizens are suing at a breakneck pace. Supporters want the courts to force oil companies, energy users and governments to pay for past harms and avert future threats. Opponents say climate change policy is a matter for national governments and international treaties, not a handful of judges.<\/p>\n
Activists and environmentally minded lawyers are seeking new ways to use the law to slow global warming and assign responsibility for the resulting economic damages. They\u2019ve been given new urgency by President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to remove the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Some believe courts are uniquely suited to impose controls where legislatures and government agencies have failed. U.S. states and cities seeking redress in the courts say it is the only avenue open to them as the federal government has spent the past three years trying to undo climate regulations put in place by President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
In the U.S., it\u2019s mostly the big oil companies, but energy producers and state and federal agencies have also been sued. Governments are the targets in much of the rest of the world, including\u00a0Canada,\u00a0Pakistan,\u00a0India\u00a0and\u00a0Uganda. In Europe, local and national governments have been sued because their clean-air plans fail to meet minimum European Union requirements. These include emissions caps that target older, less efficient diesel cars that are more harmful to the environment.<\/p>\n
Some claim the oil and gas industry created a \u201cpublic nuisance\u201d \u2014 an illegal threat to community welfare. Others target their products as unreasonably dangerous to the planet\u2019s health. In the U.S., state officials have claimed that the oil corporations knew about the dangers of climate change for decades and\u00a0scheme<\/span>d to hide the information. Many cases are based on the claim that the health of the environment is a public trust, held by the government for the benefit of future generations.<\/p>\n Yes, human-rights arguments are a small but growing approach. Plaintiffs make the case that climate change has threatened or taken away the basic rights to shelter, health, food, water and even life. Arguments range from Colombian children\u2019s\u00a0claims\u00a0that the deforestation of the Amazon deprives them of a healthy environment, to the\u00a0assertion\u00a0of hundreds of elderly Swiss women that their country has not done enough to protect them from rising global temperatures.<\/p>\n They\u00a0argue\u00a0that judges should not be setting government policies. And they often say that the social and economic benefits from pollution sources outweigh the environmental concerns. That was the\u00a0case\u00a0South Africa made when it was challenged for building a coal-fired power station, since\u00a016\u00a0percent<\/span>\u00a0of the population still has no access to electricity.<\/p>\n They point to the vast economic benefits created by their products. And they say that individuals, industries and governments willingly contributed to climate change through their use of fossil fuels. They deny seeking to mislead consumers about global warming and accuse plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers of demonizing them in search of a big bonanza.<\/p>\n Environmentalists have won major cases against the\u00a0Netherlands,\u00a0Colombia\u00a0and\u00a0South Africa. And pending suits have changed behaviors. Germans, for example, are\u00a0avoiding\u00a0buying diesel cars since more of them are getting banned from cities that fail to meet standards for particulate matter and nitrogen oxides.<\/p>\n Initially badly. A federal judge\u00a0threw out\u00a0a suit by New York City against five of the world\u2019s biggest oil companies in 2018. (An appeals court is considering the city\u2019s arguments to reinstate the case.) But the Trump administration, like its predecessor, has so far been\u00a0unsuccessful\u00a0in derailing a suit brought by youths who claim the government\u2019s role in causing climate change is a violation of their Constitutional rights. A federal appeals court in San Francisco is considering whether the case can go forward to trial. There are more than a dozen \u201cpublic nuisance\u201d lawsuits seeking to hold energy companies responsible for billions of taxpayer dollars spent on acclimating to a warming world, or picking up the pieces following unprecedented hurricanes, floods and wildfires. Exxon Mobil Corp. is being sued in\u00a0New York City\u00a0(the trial is over and a judge is considering the case) and\u00a0Massachusetts\u00a0for allegedly hiding its early knowledge of climate change from the public and misleading investors about the future financial impact of global warming.<\/p>\n They\u2019re seeking their tobacco moment. Anti-smoking activists and the families of cancer-stricken smokers lost claims against Big Tobacco for decades in the U.S. before the 1990s. A group of state attorneys general turned the tide by teaming up with top private lawyers to take on the industry in state courts. The victory resulted in\u00a0settlements\u00a0totaling\u00a0$246 billion<\/span>\u00a0and permanent changes in the sale and marketing of cigarettes. It\u2019s a model that climate change activists would love to duplicate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the fight against climate change, one tool is proving\u00a0increasingly popular: litigation. From the U.S. to India, activists, governments and concerned citizens are suing at a breakneck pace. Supporters want the courts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[46,48,57,68,76,77,82,86,87,90,96,99,103,107,109,111,113,137,139,146,148,160,174,183,184,201,202,209,222,230,232,233,244,246,249,256,262,263,267,277,279,280,285,288],"class_list":["post-4562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-carbon","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-cyprus","tag-decarbonising","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-eastmed","tag-egypt","tag-embargo","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-energy-peace","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-greece","tag-greenenergy","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-pollution","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-solar","tag-solar-power","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-turkey","tag-unclos","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}4. So it\u2019s about human rights?<\/h3>\n
5. How have governments responded?<\/h3>\n
6. What about energy companies?<\/h3>\n
7. How have the cases fared?<\/h3>\n
8. How have lawsuits fared in the U.S.?<\/h3>\n
9. Why do environmentalists keep trying?<\/h3>\n