Thursday, July 16, 2015
Lighting a Legal Fuse
People from Seattle to Fiji are filing lawsuits over global
warming.
Attorney Andrea Rogers with some of her young clients. (Photo:
Our Children's Trust/Facebook)
Climate action is finally gaining ground in Washington. No, not
that Washington.
Following their victory in a Seattle court, eight children are
pressing Washington State’s Department of Ecology to crack down on carbon
pollution. The agency has until August 7
to reach an agreement with the youths, who sued after the department rejected
their petition. Otherwise, the kids will go back to court.
“I hope our voices are heard,” said Aji Piper, a 14-year-old and
one of the plaintiffs.
Judge Hollis
Hill, for one, is listening. She agreed with the teens and tweens in
a first-of-its-kind ruling, citing a “historical lack of political will to
respond adequately to the urgent and dire acceleration of global warming.”
Climate change mashes up environmental, moral, meteorological,
economic, political, scientific, and industrial challenges. Given that
complexity, it’s no wonder it took more than 25
years of international climate talks for global emissions
to even stabilize.
Slashing climate pollution may take something new — like suing
governments for failing to shield their constituents from a climate catastrophe
and prosecuting the oil, gas, and coal industries for this mess. Ultimately,
climate lawyers could replicate successes scored with tobacco
litigation and the legal actions that brought about marriage
equality.
The biggest breakthrough came right after the Washington ruling
when a Dutch court
ordered the government of the Netherlands to reduce that nation’s emissions by
25 percent within five years. As the low-lying nation currently aims for only a
17 percent cut, this case filed on behalf of 900 people marked a global
precedent.
More lawsuits are in the pipeline.
One pits South Pacific
islanders whose countries are threatened by rising sea levels
against big oil companies. These folks from Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Fiji,
the Solomon Islands, and the Philippines may already have Exhibit A.
It’s an email from Lenny Bernstein, a scientist who worked for
both Exxon and Mobil when they were separate companies. In this note, obtained
by the Union of
Concerned Scientists, Bernstein reveals that Exxon was already
taking climate-related risks into account with its investment decisions by
1981.
Experts say the scientist’s email shows that corporate leaders
knew for more than 30 years that their oil and gas operations were bound to harm
the climate. Instead of changing their ways, they emulated Big
Tobacco by bankrolling climate denial.
Proving government liability might also be easier than you’d
think. The record shows
that U.S. officials began to fret about climate change by 1965.
President Richard Nixon’s advisor — and future Senator — Daniel
Patrick Moynihan made this clear in a 1969 memo
he wrote to another Nixon aide. In it, he outlined “the carbon dioxide problem”
caused by fossil fuels.
“Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter,”
Moynihan wrote of the consequences of a potential 10-foot rise in sea levels.
“We have no data on Seattle.”
Julia Olson is the founder and lead lawyer of Our Children’s
Trust, one of the two groups that helped file the Washington lawsuit. She says
the evidence of federal wrongdoing is clear.
“Fifty years ago, they knew exactly what was happening and how
to stop it,” she told me. “The solutions at this point lie in the courts.”
She came up with her youth-focused strategy after becoming a
mom.
“Kids don’t get to vote and choose the policies for their
future,” Olson said. “They are going to suffer the impacts of climate
destruction more than the rest of us.”
The lawyer and her team have filed more than a dozen climate
cases on behalf of children. Suits in Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts,
Colorado, and North Carolina are pending. More are coming soon in Pennsylvania,
Florida, and Hawaii. Also on this deep docket: suing the federal government for
a second time by the end of July.
All those lawsuits just might bring about a legal tipping point.
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives Work
Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a
non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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