JUSTICE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

Similar actions against obesity produced product changes. Some hope the lawsuits will succeed like those against tobacco and asbestos.

Battle over climate change is being fought in world’s courts
Thomas Wagner, September 23, 2007 (AP/The Canadian Press via Yahoo News Canada)

WHO
Climate Justice Program (Peter Roderick, co-director); University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner; Australian environmentalists; Arctic Inuits and Friends of the Earth;

An Inuit/Friends of the Earth march in the North Country.

WHAT
Groups all over the world are fighting climate change with legal action, not always winning but always increasing the pressure for action from politicians and business leaders.

WHEN
- A 2004 Australian ruling found that a Victoria state minister had unlawfully told an expert panel to ignore global warming implications of a proposed coal mine expansion. (The ruling was eventually overturned but the precedent was set.)
- A 2006 new South Wales ruling found coal mines must consider all climate change implications in planning.
- A 2007 Australian ruling is pending on the applicability of environmental protection laws to damage done on places like the Great Barrier Reef by climate change-inducing projects.
- US cases in 2006 and 2007 ask the courts to consider the impact on climate change by vehicle emissions.

WHERE
- Climate Justice Program is in London.
- 155,000 Inuits living in Arctic regions in Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland are organized for the action on their human rights.

WHY
- Australian environmentalists challenged a proposed mine. The state of California sued automakers for excessive emissions. Arctic Inuits (and Friends of the Earth) claim U.S. carbon emissions violate their human rights by melting polar ice and are petitioning the 34-nation Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for redress. Friends of the Earth has also filed suit against the Canadian government for environmental violations.

- Boeing and GMC have responded to complaints with PR campaigns about their products.
- The most effective tactic so far has been to show corporations or governments are violating existing law.
- Federal and District Court cases in California may force changes in vehicle mileage requirements unobtainable by direct political action if they can prove harm to the environment from tailpipe emissions. Already the Supreme Court has established that the US EPA must establish some level of protection.

In the courts and in the streets, there is a rising tide of action in defense of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the earth we will leave to subsequent generations.

QUOTES
- Peter Roderick, co-director, Climate Justice Program: "Judges are finally starting to accept what scientists have long said: that greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change and need to be reduced…"
- Posner in "Climate Change and International Human Rights Litigation: A Critical Appraisal": "The main purpose of litigation may not be to persuade courts to determine greenhouse gas emission policy, but to attract public attention and pressure governments to reach political solutions, including treaties and domestic law…If a plausible claim can be made that the emission of greenhouse gases violates human rights, and that these human rights are embodied in treaty or customary international law, then American courts may award damages to the victims."