Ethically, there is an arguable case that the countries or companies responsible for this mess should be compensated for the homes that will be destroyed, the coastlines that will disappear beneath rising seas, and the lives that will be lost. According to one estimate, major economies owe climate debt Close to $200 trillion in the rest of the world compensation.
However, it is very difficult to make the case legally. Jurisdictional problems aside, early climate science could not trace the origin of airborne molecules of carbon dioxide over the oceans and years. Deep-pocketed corporations with top-tier legal teams easily took advantage of those difficulties.
Now they can turn the tide. More climate-related lawsuits are being filed, particularly in the Global South. governmentsNonprofits, and citizens in the most climate-impacted countries, continue to test new legal arguments in new courts, and some of those courts are showing a new willingness to hold nations and their industries to the dock when it comes to human rights. Furthermore, the science of finding out who exactly is to blame for specific weather disasters, and to what extent, is getting better and better.
It is true that no court has yet held any climate emitter liable for climate-related harm. For starters, nations are generally immune from lawsuits originating in other countries. That’s why most cases have focused on major carbon producers. But they have been relying on a very powerful defense.
While oil and gas companies extract, refine and sell the world’s fossil fuels, most emissions come from “vehicles, power plants and fuel-burning factories,” Michael Gerard and Jessica Wentz of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center wrote in a note. recent piece In Nature. In other words, companies just dig stuff up. It’s not their fault, someone else starts the fire.
Victims of extreme weather events therefore continue to try new legal avenues and approaches supported by more and more reliable science. Plaintiffs in the Philippines recently sued oil giant Shell over its role in driving Super Typhoon Odette, a 2021 storm that killed more than 400 people and displaced nearly 800,000. The matter partly depends on a attribution study Found that climate change has doubled the likelihood of extreme rainfall observed in Odate.
Ivan Joseph Guivanon/Greenpeace
Overall, evidence of corporate culpability – linking a specific company’s fossil fuel use to a specific disaster – is becoming easier to find. For example, a search published in Nature In September it was able to determine how much particular companies contributed to a series of 21st century heat waves.
Several recent legal decisions indicate improvements in the odds for these types of lawsuits. In particular, some judgments in climate cases before the European Court of Human Rights confirmed that states have legal obligations to protect people from the impacts of climate change. And although it was rejected Case A Peruvian farmer who sued a German power company out of fear that melting alpine glaciers could destroy his property has found major carbon polluters theoretically liable for climate harm linked to their emissions, a German court has determined.
