Climate litigation will dwarf all other litigation in terms of both the number of plaintiffs, and the timeframe over which it can happen, according to a new report released today by the Climate Justice Programme. The report, “CLIMATE JUSTICE: The international momentum towards climate litigation” documents the growing number of climate litigation cases being taken across the world, looks at how they can be - and are being - replicated, and compares them with tobacco and asbestos lawsuits.
This week in the US, state Attorneys-General will hold their annual meeting in Vermont (NAAG). There are 17 of those Attorneys-General who are pursuing investigations into ExxonMobil for its role in funding climate denial campaigns, despite its own climate scientists warning the company of the issue as early as the 1970’s.
These US investigations were likely to be just the tip of the iceberg – because of their replicability in other jurisdictions, noted one of the report’s authors, Dr Keely Boom, an Australian-based lawyer working for the Climate Justice Programme. “Similar investigations are taking place In the Philippines, where the Philippines Human Rights Commission is investigating fossil fuel corporations, including ExxonMobil, for their role in the human rights impacts of climate change,” she said. “As climate change impacts start to bite, we are going to see a lot more, especially when you look at the role the fossil fuel industry has been playing to stop action on climate change.”
Other examples where cases are being replicated include the Dutch Urgenda case, where a similar case is now rolling out in Belgium, and US youth lawsuits against states are inspiring a children's case in Pakistan. “Unlike tobacco, where cases were largely based in the US, we find that climate change litigation is trans-national, multi-generational, and cross-jurisdictional,” said Dr Boom “Climate litigation is likely to be global, and with much bigger damages than seen with tobacco and asbestos, especially as Governments are continuing to fail to take strong enough action to even keep warming to 2˚C, let alone pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5˚C as agreed in Paris.”
Tobacco litigation was successful because governments took the lead resulting in a longer-lasting solution. Asbestos is much more difficult – so many of the companies are now insolvent – with more than 600,000 cases being brought, there are huge costs for the plaintiffs and medical science to prove their individual cases.
Climate change legal challenges are being taken between individuals and companies (for example a Peruvian farmer vs energy giant RWE in Germany), between people and governments (such as the Urgenda case in the Netherlands and the youth lawsuits in the US) and the US State Attorneys General investigations.“Just as Governments are obliged to protect the health of their citizens, they also have legal obligations to protect the atmosphere and climate system. Yet they have continued to promote, subsidise and approve a fossil fuel-based energy system, with full knowledge of the catastrophic threats posed by fossil fuels.”
As a result of the report’s findings, Climate Justice Programme has made a number of recommendations, most of which focus on the Carbon Majors, the 90 big oil, coal and gas producers responsible for two thirds of manmade emissions in our atmosphere today.
Among those recommendations include removing subsidies, banning them from lobbying at the climate talks, changing international climate law to allow litigation, and introducing a levy to pay for loss and damage.
