Courts can hold fossil fuel industry and governments accountable
Courts may be our only hope of stopping the fossil fuel industry, demanding reparations, and holding governments accountable for their insufficient action on climate and their unwillingness to listen to scientists and protect the public.
Read a round-up of the headlines:
“Authors of paper accepted for publication in Harvard Environmental Law Review argue firms are ‘killing members of the public at an accelerating rate’
Oil companies have come under increasing legal scrutiny and face allegations of defrauding investors, racketeering, and a wave of other lawsuits. But a new paper argues there’s another way to hold big oil accountable for climate damage: trying companies for homicide.
The striking and seemingly radical legal theory is laid out in a paper accepted for publication in the Harvard Environmental Law Review. In it, the authors argue fossil fuel companies “have not simply been lying to the public, they have been killing members of the public at an accelerating rate, and prosecutors should bring that crime to the public’s attention”.
“What’s on their ledger in terms of harm, there’s nothing like it in human history,” said David Arkush, the director of the climate program at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and one of the paper’s authors.
The paper is rooted in part in the growing body of evidence fossil fuel companies knew of the harm their products caused and misled the public about them.”
The Guardian, New climate paper calls for charging big US oil firms with homicide
“Vanuatu has been on the sharp end of several significant storms over the past decade, including Cyclone Pam in 2015.
The concerns of young people in the Pacific about climate change are set to be heard at the world's top court.
Four years after students in Fiji first proposed the idea, the International Court of Justice is about to be asked to decide on a country's obligations to fight rising temperatures.
But first, the UN has to approve the request for this legal opinion, brought by Vanuatu on behalf of the scholars.
The effort is likely to succeed as it's being backed by about 120 countries.
The legal opinion of the ICJ, although non binding, could then be cited in climate court cases around the world.”
BBC, Climate change: Push for decision at world’s top court
“New Jersey has joined the ranks of Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont as the latest state to sue some of the world’s largest oil companies for their role in delaying climate policy and increasing the climate impacts, risks and costs borne by state governments. Like Minnesota and the District of Columbia before it, New Jersey has also included the industry’s top US trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, in its suit, which includes not only liability, but also fraud claims against five oil majors: ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, Chevron, BP and ConocoPhillips.”
The Guardian, New Jersey latest state to sue oil companies over climate misinformation
“Can the U.S. Constitution encompass a right to a stable climate? Courts around the world are finding that their constitutions afford a right to a clean and healthy environment, including to a safe climate. In the United States, this claim is being tested in the case of Juliana v. U.S., brought by 21 children argu- ing that governmental actions and inaction have caused or contributed to an “environmental apocalypse” in violation of a fundamental constitutional right to a stable climate.”
UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, Can the U.S. Constitution Encompass a Right to a Stable Climate? (Yes, it Can.)
“Fossil fuel companies have a long history of adopting public relations strategies straight from the tobacco industry’s playbook. But a new analysis shows the two industries’ relationship goes much deeper — right down to funding the same organisations to do their dirty work.
MIT Associate Professor David Hsu analyzed organisations in DeSmog’s disinformation database and the Guardian’s tobacco database and found 35 thinktanks based in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand that promote both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries’ interests…
While reviewing the Guardian’s database, Hsu recognized many of the names among those fighting tobacco regulations were the same as “those working to foment climate science denial”.”
DeSmog, Revealed: How the Tobacco and Fossil Fuel Industries Fund Disinformation Campaigns Around the World
“The oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business, new research has found.”
The Guardian, Revealed: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s
More reading
Grist, Fossil fuel industries kill and injure an awful lot of their workers
E&E News, ‘Climate homicide’: Could Big Oil be sued for disaster deaths?
NY Times, In Montana, It’s Youth vs. the State in a Landmark Climate Case
France 24, European court to hear first climate cases against France, Switzerland