More lawsuits seeking to curb carbon dioxide emissions are likely in Europe, spurred by a report that makes the role of human activity “unequivocal” in global climate change.
Advocates have seized on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 3,949-page report, released last month, telling energy companies they would “see you in court.”
“It may help to bring in a broader diversity of litigants,” said Catherine Higham, a policy analyst at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “It might be the call to action for some groups that haven’t necessarily been thinking about litigation in the past, but who are reading and starting to use litigation in ways they haven’t done.”
Environmentalists have tried for years to use the courts in their fight to slow the effects of climate change or to hold companies and governments accountable for the crisis, with limited success so far.
Most of the wins have taken place in Europe, including a ruling that requires Royal Dutch Shell to cut emissions more aggressively and a case that forced the German government to readjust its targets. In the US, the lawsuits have struggled to gain traction.
The international scientific consensus in the IPCC report could be used in a variety of geographically varied courts, especially when the claimants are not currently affected by climate impacts. This could mean seeing more young people taking legal action around the world, a trend which has already been on the rise in places like Germany.
“For young people who are arguing that they will be affected in the future, this report is useful for them,” said Louise Fournier, legal counsel at Greenpeace International.
Fournier said she expects more lawsuits to be launched by affected people, including potentially by Greenpeace organizations themselves.
IPCC publishes its reports every six to seven years. Earlier versions already were being featured in lawsuits, including a French case against the government for failing to have a credible route to climate objectives and a Peruvian farmer’s claim against German energy company RWE.
Environmentalists used the data in successful lawsuits against the Netherlands, Colombia and South Africa, and in the Shell case.
This year’s edition of the IPCC report is even more definitive in blaming human activity than in the past, making it easier to argue the link between gas emissions and extreme weather.
It also provides “additional value” for claims of damages and compensation, said Roger Cox, the lawyer who represented a Dutch environmental group in the case against Shell.
That might mean more litigation against big oil.
“We’re going to see copycat cases happening in jurisdictions against corporations using similar arguments to the Shell case,” said Rupert Stuart-Smith, a founding member of the University of Oxford Sustainable Law Programme’s management team.
The sobering conclusions of the report are not likely to trigger a flood of new suits or bolster those already filed in the US, where several courts have already expressed reluctance to interfere in an international issue.
According to estimates from the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, there are about 1,400 climate-related cases in the US and 400 elsewhere in in the world.
Legal tactics in the US have included trying to sue fossil fuel companies for the costs of climate change or for allegedly misleading investors about the risks of global warming. While the US Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that carbon dioxide can be regulated as a pollutant, few courts have been willing to impose liability for emissions.
“The IPCC report does nothing to change the primary problem for US climate litigants — the US legal system isn’t set up to handle this type of claim,” said Brandon Barnes, a senior litigation analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “A climate liability claim against a company or group of companies is always going to fail unless [the US] Congress changes the laws around liability. Until then, the courts are going to continue to punt the issue to the legislative branch.”
Some US courts have said the problems associated with global warming need to be addressed through Congressional legislation and international treaties, not lawsuits. Finding individual companies — even big oil companies — responsible for particular damage caused by climate change can be difficult.
“Somebody has to be found responsible for causing somebody else’s harm from climate change, and courts have had a very hard time pinning that down,” said Jenny Rushlow, a director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School.
In April, a New York court threw out a suit seeking to force five of the world’s biggest oil companies to reimburse the city for the costs of climate change. Exxon Mobil also beat back a suit by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who said the company lied to investors about the financial risks posed by rising global temperatures.
Despite the setbacks, activists have continued to target energy companies and, increasingly, the banks that financed them, according to a report by the London School of Economics.
A stronger consensus on the science of rising temperatures might provide a new tool for making claims and pushing for changes in policy.
Massachusetts has sued Exxon alleging it engaged in deceptive advertising about the role its products play in causing climate change, a claim the company rejects.
“This latest IPCC report reinforces the science-based allegations in our amended complaint against Exxon,” a spokeswoman for Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey wrote in an e-mail.
The industry is taking notice. The Independent Petroleum Association of America, American Exploration and Production Council, and the American Petroleum Institute issued statements after the IPCC report acknowledging the need for reduced global emissions.
Chevron CEO Mike Worth said the findings would require “mobilization of huge amounts of capital” and “significant policy actions.”
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past