31/12/2017

The Growing Movement To Take Polluters To Court Over Climate Change

New Republic - 

As climate liability lawsuits rise, industry forces are fighting back.
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty
There’s a vast conspiracy afoot to decimate American manufacturing.
Wealthy environmentalists and greedy attorneys are trying to stuff their already-fat pockets by suing defenseless companies over their contributions to global warming.
They allege that energy manufacturers create a “public nuisance” by emitting greenhouse gases and are liable for the damages this causes.
Worse, they disguise themselves as do-gooders: They represent plaintiffs like Alaska Native American tribes who are losing their frozen land to warming temperatures, and communities impacted by sea-level rise.
But these con artists aren’t really trying to save the planet. They’re trying to put American companies out of business.
That’s the core message of a new trade group quietly formed last month by the National Association of Manufacturers, the largest industry trade group of its kind and a powerful lobbying force in Washington.
IMAGES
The Manufacturers’ Accountability Project was formed to “highlight the concerted, coordinated efforts made by trial lawyers, public officials, deep-pocketed foundations and other activists” to undermine manufacturing—but with a specific focus on lawsuits that seek to hold corporations financially responsible for their role in the climate crisis. No other trade association has ever undertaken such an effort. “We are the first group out there,” a spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
MAP is a novel effort because climate liability cases are, too. In the last year, an increasing number of plaintiffs and attorneys general have attempted to use the courts to punish big polluters, seeking punitive damages or other penalties against companies that contribute to climate change. And we know who those companies are: Earlier this year, a peer-reviewed study asserted that just 90 companies were responsible for as much as 50 percent of the increase in global temperature and 32 percent of sea level rise since 1880. The study also said investor-owned companies like BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil have caused 16 percent of the global average temperature increases and 11 percent of global sea level rise.
But are climate liability lawsuits and investigations an effective strategy for fighting climate change? That’s up for debate, since few cases have been successful. But the fact that the National Association of Manufacturers is taking up arms against this strategy suggests that they see a legitimate threat. With multiple cases pending, 2018 may be the year that corporate polluters are finally held responsible for what they’ve done to the planet.
Climate-related court cases have skyrocketed in the last three years. A May study by the United Nations and Columbia University found that the number of lawsuits filed across the world has tripled since 2014; out of nearly 900 cases, 654 were filed in the United States. Most of these suits seek to punish governments, not corporations, for not taking sufficient action to fight climate change—usually by arguing that public officials have denied citizens’ rights to a clean and healthy environment.
Some of these lawsuits have succeeded in other countries. In 2015, the Dutch government was forced to lower the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in response to a class action lawsuit from its citizens. A judge in Ireland recently ruled that citizens have a constitutional right to a safe climate and environment. And last month, a climate liability lawsuit against Germany’s largest power company was allowed to move forward.
“Judicial decisions around the world show that many courts have the authority, and the willingness, to hold governments to account for climate change,” said Michael Burger, executive director of Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. He cited a 2007 lawsuit that forced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. “Similar litigation all over the world will continue to push governments and corporations to address the most pressing environmental challenge of our times.”
The success of Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency keeps corporate attorneys up at night. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases are an air pollutant that cause harm, a legal precedent that is “being used as the support for climate-change-related lawsuits against companies,” reads a recent report from the corporate law firm Anderson Kill.
That report warns of a “coming flood” of tort lawsuits that allege corporations are liable for climate change–related damages, as well as shareholder lawsuits that allege public companies aren’t doing enough to warn investors about the financial risks of climate change and climate lawsuits.
“Although we have yet to see any significant number of governmental actions or shareholder suits against corporations or their [executives] in relation to climate-change-related disclosure failures,” the report reads, “the seeds for the future growth of such actions are being sown.”
The Manufacturers’ Accountability Project recognizes this, and focuses on the cases that have the biggest chance of succeeding in 2018. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating whether Exxon Mobil intentionally misled shareholders about the impact of climate change on company profits, thereby committing securities fraud.
Court filings from Schneiderman’s office in June stated that “evidence suggests not only that Exxon’s public statements about its risk management practices were false and misleading, but also that Exxon may still be in the midst of perpetrating an ongoing fraudulent scheme on investors and the public.”
MAP’s website calls the investigation “politically motivated” and alleges, without evidence, a “web of collaboration” between Schneiderman and “anti-manufacturing advocates.” (Exxon has sued to block the Schneiderman’s investigation, though without success thus far, and still no charges have been filed.)
MAP’s site also sharply criticizes Matt Pawa, an attorney who, according to a 2010 profile by InsideClimate News, has been “working tirelessly to establish global warming as a ‘public nuisance’ under tort law, holding corporations accountable for their greenhouse gas pollution and forcing them to face their victims in court.” (MAP also targets InsideClimate over its Pulitzer Prize-nominated investigation into Exxon.)
Pawa’s most recent cases are in California, where he’s representing the cities of San Francisco and Oakland in suits against ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Shell. The lawsuits are trying to make the oil giants pay for seawalls and other structures “to protect about $49 billion in public and private property sitting within six feet of the current sea level,” according to Climate Liability News. Both cities are extremely at risk from sea level rise.
MAP attacks Pawa for partnering “with wealthy donors, activists and other profit-seeking plaintiffs lawyers to attack the energy industry,” adding, “He knows he will be handsomely compensated at many points on his legal marathon.” Reached by phone, Pawa laughed for approximately 30 seconds, then declined to comment on the accusations. He did, however, speculate why his cases were targeted by the group. “Maybe it’s a sign that these lawsuits are considered to have merit,” he said. “And so they’re concerned.”
Cases like Pawa’s have many hurdles. For instance, as a MAP spokesperson rightly pointed out to the Washington Examiner, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 2011 that corporations can’t be sued for greenhouse gas emissions under federal law because the EPA already has rules to regulate those emissions. But Pawa’s California cases, for example, are based on state law instead of federal law, and use a legal strategy that’s already been successful in one California case against a lead paint manufacturer: arguing that the companies create a “public nuisance,” a centuries-old legal doctrine that is broader in California than in most other states.
There are also limitations to how impactful these lawsuits can be. As Ketan Jha argues at Slate, litigation “is typically an inefficient method of achieving policy reform.” The lead paint case that Pawa is replicating is still in court 17 years after it was brought, because of appeals.
And while punishing companies for damage they’ve already done to the planet may feel satisfying, it does little to reverse the problem. But climate lawsuits and investigations don’t have to save the world to be worthwhile. In fact, they don’t even necessarily have to end in victory to make an impact. The world’s polluters see what’s happening to Exxon, and they just might clean up their act to avoid the same fate.

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The Article That Changed My View … Of How Civil Disobedience Helps The Planet

The Guardian - Suganshi Ropia, as told to

Suganshi Ropia says a piece she read after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement helped her realise we shouldn’t wait to make our voices heard
Protesters close Ffos-y-Fran opencast coalmine in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, in 2016. Photograph: Natasha Quarmby/Rex Shutterstock
Suganshi Ropia, 21, is a law student from Pune, India
I try to keep in touch with news related to climate change, and am particularly interested in environmental law.
My compulsion to do something positive about climate change was one of the reasons I decided to study law.
When I read the opinion piece Civil disobedience is the only way left to fight climate change, by Kara Moses, in spring 2016, it crystallised my feelings about the responsibility we have as a community of humans to do more.
The article made me realise that having a legal framework in place is not the only solution to a problem this complex.
More than ever, we need to be proactive in our resistance, whether that takes the form of a quiet or a very vocal protest.
This piece was written days after 1,000 people successfully closed the world’s largest coal-exporting port in Newcastle, Australia and just two weeks after the Paris Climate Accord was signed.
It was written mainly from a British perspective, but really resonated with me.
Anti-coal activists in kayaks and boats block the entrance to Newcastle harbour on Sunday, May 8, 2016. Photograph: 350.org Australia
In India, where I live, smog pollution is a major problem.
Moses discusses how this problem also affects those living in Beijing, and explains the double-edged benefit to employing people in jobs that improve the state of our environment as well as the quality of life for the majority of people on the planet.
“The choice between clean, safe, democratic and sustainable energy/jobs or dirty, dangerous and undemocratic energy/jobs is a no-brainer,” she writes.
Moses implores us not to wait for treaties to be drawn up and politicians to agree on changes they would like to implement, but to work from the ground up, in small ways.
She asks us to “take it upon ourselves to do more if we really want climate justice” and “support rather than denounce those willing to put themselves on the line, since we all benefit from their actions”.
I found her words urgent, clarifying and emboldening.
I shared the article with friends, many of whom were similarly moved by it, and when we were asked to complete an internship as part of our course, I chose to work at a law firm that has an environmental focus.
When I graduate I hope to work in this field and become someone bringing about positive change both professionally and personally.

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10 Incredible Things Climate Change Will Do

Deutsche Welle - Ineke Mules

Climate change will bring some surprising effects: Bumpy plane rides, greater mood swings and more volcanic eruptions are just a few of the things we can expect over the decades to come. And yes, even more lightning.
We're already familiar with some of the more evident effects of global warming such as melting glaciers and more extreme weather events. But few people are aware of some of the other, less obvious - and completely surprising - impacts of our changing climate, which could have a serious impact on the way we live.

1. Airplane turbulence will get worse 
Unfortunately, we can expect air travel to become even more stressful - thanks to the effects of climate change.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom looks into the relationship between clean-air turbulence and anthropogenic climate change. Using the popular flight corridor between Europe and the United States as an example, they examined various strengths of turbulence and how each will change in the future if carbon dioxide levels were to double.
The results showed that severe turbulence is likely to dramatically increase by up to 149 percent as a result of stronger wind shears within the Earth's jet streams. These are narrow, fast-flowing, meandering westerly currents found near the tropopause, which are frequently used by commercial airlines as a means of saving time and fuel.

2. Icebergs will clog up shipping lanes 
No ship has been struck by an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean since the Titanic sunk in 1912 and the International Ice Patrol was subsequently formed. But patrol workers are likely going to get a lot busier soon.
In early April, more than 400 icebergs clogged up shipping lanes in the North Atlantic, forcing ships to take detours of up to 400 nautical miles - wasting significant time and fuel in the process.
While icebergs are common in these waters, their number and timing is unusual. Experts say climate change could be to blame. The icebergs begin their journey after breaking off a glacier in Greenland, which is influenced largely by winter weather, especially storms accompanied by strong winds. Rising temperatures also lead to the melting of ice sheets, causing more chunks of ice to break off and float into the open ocean.

3. Lightning will strike more frequently 
Heat energy acts as a form of fuel for storm clouds. So as global temperatures continue to rise, we can also expect more active thunderstorms.
Although there are a number of downsides to this phenomenon - including a probable increase in wildfires - lightning actually produces a powerful chemical reaction that can be beneficial for Earth's atmosphere.
Lightning creates a special form of a greenhouse gas called nitrogen oxide, which indirectly regulates other potentially harmful greenhouse gases, like ozone and methane.

4. Volcanic activity could increase
You would be forgiven for thinking that climate change and volcanic activity are completely unrelated phenomena. But the workings of our planet are interconnected in suprising ways.
In places like Iceland, volcanoes and glaciers have coexisted for thousands of years. However, as glaciers melt due to rising temperatures, the pressure on the Earth's mantel decreases, which in turn increases magma amounts while reducing stress on a volcano's magma chambers. This leads to higher volcanic activity, along with the travel chaos that often follows.
There is a historic precedent to this prediction: 12,000 years ago, Iceland was covered by a glacier as thick as 2 kilometers. When that glacier abruptly melted due to a warming trend, a huge surge in volcanic activity followed.

5. We'll become angrier 
Even our mood isn't immune from climate change. Researchers in social psychology have long highlighted the link between warmer climates and higher levels of impulsive behavior and even violence.
This has been shown in regions closer to the equator - if global temperatures continue to rise as expected, we could also begin to see behavioral changes in areas further north.
In addition to having to contend with warmer weather, there is also evidence that climate change will further fuel global conflict by adding stress on natural resources like food and water.

6. The ocean will get darker 
We can expect our oceans to gradually become murkier as the effects of climate change become more apparent over time.
While climate change is often associated with higher temperatures and drought, it is also expected to increase annual rainfall in some areas of the world. This will create faster-flowing rivers, which in turn churns up more silt and debris before this water meets the ocean.
This phenomenon has already been observed along the coast of Norway, where the ocean water has become increasingly darker due to an increase in precipitation and melting snow.

7. Allergies will worsen 
As if getting angrier wasn't enough: If you're one of the many people who suffer from springtime allergies, you should probably start stockpiling your medication.
Warmer temperatures also mean longer and earlier blooming seasons for allergy-triggering plants like dandelions and ragweed. Pollen counts are likely to double over the next three decades in the United States - and "sneezing season" will also kick off in the future as soon as the first week of April.

8. Animals will shrink
This one may take a bit longer to become apparent - but the development of smaller mammals has been a common evolutionary response to past global warming events.
During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, around 50 million years ago, mammals were "dwarfed" after global temperatures rose 5 and 8 degrees Celsius.
Like all examples of evolution, the reason for this shrinking comes down to basic survival: As nutrients become more scarce due to rising temperatures and drought, larger animals struggle more than their smaller counterparts to fulfill their nutritional needs.

9. Desert soil may erode 
Believe it or not, deserts are actually teeming with life - also in the form of bacterial colonies. These colonies grow so large, in fact, that they form strong layers known as "biocrusts" that prevent soil erosion.
But different kinds of bacteria thrive in different temperature ranges. So as the climate continues to change quickly, these bacteria could find it difficult to adapt. If desert soil could becomes more prone to erosion, it would not be fertile enough to support plants and feed animals.

10. Ant behaviour will change 
Ants play a more important role in the planet's ecosystem than you may realize. In spite of their status as a pest, ants helps plants by controlling other insects, circulating vital nutrients and turning over the soil, among other things.
But ants appear to be ill-equipped to handle the rising tempertatures caused by climate change. A study carried out at Harvard Forest in Massachusetts revealed a susceptibility of ants to even slight temperature increases, with the most important seed-dispersing species essentially shutting down and retreating to their underground nests until conditions improved.

Flaming inferno. Some 10,500 firefighters were called to tackle forest fires in California in 2015. They were unable to prevent 1,400 homes from destruction. The blaze was fueled by hot and dry weather - as a result of climate change.


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The Criminal Dimension Of Climate Change

Media Monitors Network - Andrew Glikson

A review of a new book by P. Carter, E. Woodworth and J. Hansen




“We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.”
Professor Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impacts.
The extreme rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since the onset of the industrial age, reaching ~403 parts per million in 2017, and the corresponding rise in mean global temperature to +1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperature (Figure 1), pose an existential risk for the future of civilization and nature.
Figure 1. A plot of mean global temperature since vs CO2 levels since 200 AD (after Steffen, 2012)
A new book titled “Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival“, by Dr Peter Carter and Dr Elizabeth Woodworth, with a forward by the leading climate scientist Professor James Hansen outlines the criminality of those who actively promote the continuing emission of carbon gases into the atmosphere with full knowledge of the consequences, including the breakdown of the large ice sheets, sea level rise and intensification of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods and fires around the world.
The book highlights the collusion of a large part of the media with climate change denial and cover-up, stating: “There is no benign explanation for a full media blackout of a significant global development that was heralded by the United Nations Secretary-General. This blackout goes far beyond ignorance or negligence. It is a wilful obstruction of public knowledge of the extraordinary extent of global efforts to combat the greatest existential threat of all time by changing business-as-usual. We define this wilful, methodical blocking of vital survival information as an unprecedented crime against life on the planet.”
The book cites the US writer Tom Engelhardt (Terracide and the Terrarists: Destroying the Planet for Record Profits): “The fossil-fuel companies are guilty of the ultimate crime, because they are earning their “profits directly off melting the planet, knowing that their extremely profitable acts are destroying the very habitat, the very temperature range that for so long made life comfortable for humanity.”… “However, Big Carbon could never have been able to continue its polluting ways – long after the scientific community had reached consensus about the connection between fossil-fuel emissions, global warming, and climate change – without the assistance of the media“.
According to James Hansen, NASA’s former chief climate scientist (2012), “Burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows. The palaeoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes“.
Following the presentation of definitive evidence of anthropogenic climate change, a plethora of websites has emerged reporting the views of non-scientists or of scientists known to receive funding from the fossil fuel industry. These views, in breach of the basic laws of physics and of direct observations, ignore the peer-reviewed published climate and paleoclimate science, misrepresent observed atmosphere and ocean processes and trends, fabricate evidence and conduct personal attacks against the climate scientists.
Examples abound:
  • Climate change deniers claim CO2 is not a factor driving global warming, contrary to the rise of CO2 by more than 40 percent since the onset of the industrial age and the laws of black body radiation of Stefan-Boltzmann, Planck and Kirchhof.
  • Where the average global temperature has been rising sharply since about 1975, a relative lull pertained during 2000–2014 mainly due to (1) albedo increase from heavy sulphur aerosol emission, and (2) lower sunspot numbers, with high warming rates resuming from 2015. Climate change deniers claim this transient period represents a cessation of global warming.
  • Where large Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets have been melting at a rate of more than 500 billion ton per year, the cold ice meltwater flowing off these glaciers cooled adjacent ocean regions, resulting in transient extension  of circum-Antarctic sea ice, claimed by climate change deniers to represent global cooling
Virulent attacks on climate scientists followed, for example, as cited in the book: “a climate change denier who has argued that the “demonization of CO2 really differs little from the Nazi persecution of the Jews, the Soviet extermination of class enemies or ISIL slaughter of infidels.”
Large parts of the conservative press have taken strong exception to the evidence of anthropogenic global warming, as reported in Robert Manne’s essays “Diabolical” and “Bad News“
The manifest paralysis of the political and media classes in the face of the climate impasse, evidenced by the failure of a succession of UN Framework Conventions on Climate Change to undertake meaningful steps to reduce CO2 emissions (since 2009: Copenhagen, Cancun, Doha, Durban, Warsaw, Paris) requires a search for alternative avenues to limit the deleterious consequences of continuing carbon emissions on the biosphere,  as reported by the IPCC Working Group II (Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability) and  the report by Working Group III (WGIII – Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of climate change).
Traditionally political and economic negotiations aim at a compromise. Unfortunately, no negotiation is possible with the basic laws of physics and chemistry and with processes in the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system.
Is there anything in international and national laws which can avert the ongoing carbon emissions? Do global and national legal systems offer any possibilities in this regard? In exploring potential restrictions on carbon emission, the following international and national laws and conventions are relevant:
  • Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum. Such crimes are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority…”
  • United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Part III Article 6: states, among other: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life. When deprivation of life constitutes the crime of genocide, it is understood that nothing in this article shall authorize any State Party to the present Covenant to derogate in any way from any obligation assumed under the provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.“
In the following, I list some of the consequences of the above:
  1. Since the onset of the industrial age and in particular following WWII an abrupt rise  in the temperature levels of the atmosphere was driven by an increase in concentration of greenhouse gases arising from release of 600 billion ton of carbon (GtC) to the atmosphere is leading to an extreme shift in state of the atmosphere-ocean system, such has no precedence in the recorded geological history, with the exception of events which resulted in the mass extinction of species, including massive volcanism, extra-terrestrial impacts and large-scale release of methane.
  2. As a direct consequence of the above mean global temperatures have risen since by about 1.3 degrees Celsius and, had it not been for emitted sulphur the aerosols, by near-2 degrees Celsius, reaching levels similar to those of the Pliocene period (~2.6 – 5.3 million years ago).
  3. The shift is occurring at the fastest rate recorded by paleoclimate studies. Whereas many species can adapt to gradual environmental changes, the current temperature rise rate resulting from ~2-3 parts per million (ppm) CO2/year may not be sustained.
  4. The current change is manifested by an increase in the rate of melting of the major ice sheets, accelerating sea level rise and a rise in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, reflecting elevated energy level of the atmosphere-ocean system.
  5. The consequences of continuing carbon emissions and consequent rise of mean global temperatures would render large parts of the Earth’s land surfaces uninhabitable, due to extreme temperatures, droughts, storms and flooding of coastal, deltas and lower river regions by sea level rise – estimated as about 25+/- 12 meters under Pliocene-like conditions, constituting an existential calamity for civilization and nature.
  6. Excepting injection of transient short residence-time sulphur aerosols, the arrest of current climate trend would require (A) a meaningful reduction in current rate of carbon emission (~9 GtC/year) and (B) application of CO2 draw-down technologies such as large-scale seagrass farming, biochar, CO2 capture by air streaming through basalt and serpentine et, aimed at reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas by at least 50 ppm.
  7. Enough reserves of conventional and unconventional (oil shale, tar sands, coal seam gas) fossil fuel exist whose combustion would raise the temperature of the atmosphere and oceans to levels which existed during the early Eocene and the Cretaceous, excluding most current forms of advanced life on Earth (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Fossil fuel reserves and equivalent CO2 emissions. 1 Gigaton carbon = 0.5ppm CO2
As stated by Robert Manne: “Unless by some miracle almost every climate scientist is wrong, future generations will look upon ours with puzzlement and anger – as the people who might have prevented the Earth from becoming a habitat unfriendly to humans and other species but nonetheless failed to act” and “Our conscious destruction of a planet-friendly to humans and other species is the most significant development in history”. The carbon-oxygen cycle of the atmosphere-ocean-land constitutes the lungs of the biosphere. The consequences of burning the vast carbon reserves buried in sediments can only result in a demise rivaling the five great mass extinctions of species in the history of the Earth. Survivors of the Sixth mass extinction of species may hold responsible those who promoted carbon emissions, turning a blind eye to the unfolding tragedy: the fossil fuel barons, the political classes and their media mouthpieces.

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