Vanuatu is considering suing fossil fuel companies and industrialized countries that use them for their role in creating catastrophic climate change, Vanuatuan Minister of Foreign Affairs Ralph Regenvanu said yesterday.
Speaking at the Climate Vulnerable Forum’s Virtual Summit, Regenvanu said the effects of climate change are felt first and hardest by those who are least responsible for it.
“Vanuatu is on the front lines of climate change and yet we have benefited least from the exploitation of fossil fuels that has caused it,” Regenvanu said.
“My government is now exploring all avenues to utilize the judicial system in various jurisdictions — including under international law — to shift the costs of climate protection back on to fossil fuel companies, the financial institutions and the governments that actively and knowingly created this existential threat to my country,” he said in a video of the summit posted online.
Vanuatu, with an estimated population of 280,000 spread across about 80 islands, is among the more than a dozen Pacific island nations that already face rising sea levels and more regular storms that could wipe out much of their economies.
Samoa, on behalf of the 18 Pacific island forum members, including Vanuatu, on Saturday last week called on APEC leaders to pay more attention to climate change.
Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi later told reporters that he wanted to see more done by Australia and the US.
“Vanuatu’s brave announcement today is part of a global wave of legal action against oil, gas and coal companies, and laggard governments,” Greenpeace International executive director Jennifer Morgan said in a statement.
“Communities impacted by climate change are standing up and demanding that those responsible finally be held to account,” she added.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS