03/03/2020

How You Can Take Your Government To Court For Not Acting On The Climate Crisis

Greenpeace - Kristin Casper | Richard Harvey

Kristin Casper and Richard Harvey are climate justice lawyers with Greenpeace International.
Governments made promises to act on the climate crisis as part of the Paris Agreement, but most are failing. So thousands of us are taking to the courts to seek justice where decision-makers fail to protect our communities and our planet. The legal profession is responding to the demands of millions of us, mobilizing to address the climate emergency.
Attendees of the Peoples’ Summit on Climate, Rights and Human Survival at New York University © Tracie Williams / Greenpeace
The International Bar Association has just released a model statute that provides a pathway for people to access the courts to challenge the governments failing to live up to their climate commitments. This new model statute can go a long way to remove the obstacles for people to demand protection of the right to a clean and healthy environment – now, and for future generations.
Courts and the law have become essential for those of us trying to find solutions to the climate emergency. International legal experts are joining this struggle to help the millions who are doing their best, day in and day out, to address the climate crisis before it gets even worse.

How courts can hold governments to account 
More than 600 legal cases have been filed by individuals and NGOs to assert the fundamental rights of communities suffering from the climate crisis. That number is rapidly increasing. No single legal victory will solve the climate emergency, but each case contributes to getting us there faster.
For example, a Dutch environmental group called the Urgenda Foundation, together with 886 citizens sued the state of The Netherlands over its insufficient actions to prevent dangerous climate change. The Dutch Supreme Court issued a groundbreaking decision in December 2019, demonstrating how the judiciary can play a significant role in holding a national government to account for its lack of climate action. Climate change is a human rights crisis and it’s important that our legal systems respond effectively.
Celebrating after Urgenda’s decision ©Urgenda / Chantal Bekker
Over 1,200 senior women charged Switzerland with inadequate action on climate change in the Klimaseniorinnen case. A Federal Administrative Court refused to consider overwhelming evidence, effectively denying human rights protection for a group particularly vulnerable to climate change. The case is now on appeal before the Swiss Supreme Court.
In Norway, young people and civil society are asserting their constitutional rights to a stable climate. The Court of Appeals upheld that right, but decided the national government – by granting more oil drilling permits in the Arctic – was not violating that right. That case is now heading to Norway’s Supreme Court.
Worldwide, more than 400 human rights, development and environmental groups have pledged to, “demand effective and adequate access to justice for individuals and communities whose rights are impacted by the climate crisis or lack of climate action” according to the Declaration of the Peoples’ Summit on Climate, Rights and Human Survival.
This declaration represents a growing consensus among human rights, development, labor, and environmental groups, holding governments and corporations to account for the consequences of the actions that contribute to the climate crisis.
The Swiss association “senior women for climate protection” (KlimaSeniorinnen) © Greenpeace / Piero Good
Governments are only one factor. The law is also being used to hold companies liable for pollution, environmental damage and climate change, and not just in the courtroom. The Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines recently announced that corporations like Exxon, Chevron and BP et al. could be legally, as well as morally, liable for the climate impacts of their business models.

So what can you and I do?
We believe that judges around the world need help in deciding what evidence is reliable in climate cases, how to assess risk, understanding key international law rules and enforcing the legal rights of individuals or organisations to challenge their governments.
The IBA Model helps lawyers and judges deliver justice to those most impacted by climate change and support their demands to a dignified life. That means that you too can use the law to help your community to hold governments and corporations to account for the climate crisis.
Greenpeace Southeast Asia has published a guide for people like you and me to hold our governments accountable for the climate catastrophe. Let’s join the students striking for our future, the workers demanding a just transition out of toxic industries, the Indigenous Peoples defending their lands, and take climate change to court.

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(AU) Climate Crisis Cutting Short Australia's Winters And Extending Summers

The Guardian - Luke Henriques-Gomes
Farmer Richard Gillham drives his truck across a dry paddock as he feeds sheep on his property at Boggabri. The Australia Institute says summer temperatures are lasting a month longer than they did in the mid-20th century. Photograph: David Gray/Getty Images
Australia’s summers are getting longer and winters have become shorter as a result of global heating, according to a new report from the Australia Institute.
The discussion paper, to be released on Monday, said that trend was “highly likely” to continue and would bring with it longer and hotter bushfire seasons, more heatwaves, while agricultural crops will be damaged, livestock will suffer and entire ecosystems will be placed at risk.
“If it feels like Australian summers are getting longer and hotter, that is probably because they are,” the report said. “The summers many Australians grew up with no longer exist.”
The researchers Tom Swann and Mark Ogge examined Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) temperature data from 70 weather stations across the country to compare daily average temperatures over the past two decades with an earlier mid-20th century benchmark.
They found that between 1999 and 2018 Australia experienced summer temperatures for a full 31 days longer, compared to a benchmark between 1950 and 1969, while winter temperatures lasted 23 fewer days over the same comparative periods.
Over the past two decades, summer was on average a month longer than it was in the mid-20th century. The report said temperatures that “marked the start of summer now come around two weeks earlier”, and “temperatures that marked the end of summer now come around two weeks later”.
Last month, the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed 2019 was Australia’s hottest year on record, although the Australia Institute report was unable to include 2019 data in its analysis.
The researchers also narrowed in on temperatures over the past five years, measured against that same 1950-1969 benchmark, and found that summers were now on average close to 50% longer. “These most recent summers were twice as long as the most recent winters,” the report added.
Examining the data, the discussion paper said that while in “every capital city, summers have grown longer and winters have grown shorter”, there was evidence of even larger changes in regional areas.
For example, the report said that summers were 48 days or seven weeks longer in Port Macquarie, and that the length of winter had halved in seven areas across the country.
Meanwhile, summers were now 38 days longer in Melbourne, 36 days longer in Adelaide, and 35 days longer in Hobart and Perth. In Sydney, summer was now 118 days, 28 days longer than it had been on average in the mid-20th century.
Although they say that “caution is needed extrapolating to the future from past observations, especially over short time frames”, the researchers said it is “highly likely over the medium and longer them that summers will continue to get longer and hotter”.
“These trends are likely to continue indefinitely unless greenhouse gas emissions are decisively reduced, ultimately to net-zero,” the report said.
Richie Merzian, the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program director, said longer summers and shorter winters would leave less time for authorities to enforce bushfire management strategies.
He said that Australia was currently experiencing 1C of global warming, but that the government’s current emissions reduction targets are “aligned with 3 to 4C of warming, which leaves young Australians facing ever lengthening summers with significant consequences”.
The researchers drew on data from weather stations in subtropical and temperate areas across southern Queensland and Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Tasmania.
The discussion paper adds to analysis showing the impact of the climate crisis on Australia’s summers.
A Victorian CFA and BoM study released last year found that global heating was in part responsible for the increased length of bushfire seasons, while a 2017 ANU study found that even if the Paris agreement targets were met, summer heatwaves in major Australian cities were likely to reach highs of 50C by 2040.

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(AU) This Melbourne Council Declared The World's First Climate Emergency - Now 28 Countries Are On Board

SBS - Evan Young

Local and national governments in 28 countries have declared climate emergencies since Melbourne’s Darebin Council in 2016. Many now hope after this summer's bushfires, Australia may declare a national emergency. 
Source: Facebook / Darebin Climate Action Now
On 5 December 2016, Melbourne’s Darebin Council made history.
Councillor Trent McCarthy put forward a motion that the council vote on declaring a state of climate emergency.
Though it would be merely symbolic, it was thought a declaration could still have practical use.
The vote was unanimous and made Darebin Council the first in the world to declare a climate emergency.
“Before the vote, residents were very much telling us climate change mattered more than anything else to them,” Darebin Mayor Susan Rennie told SBS News.
“We had a really mobilised community, desperate for effective action, who were speaking with councillors about how significant it would be if a level of government would acknowledge just how significant the problem is.
“We thought we were a council who could do that.”
Darebin Council Mayor, Susan Rennie SBS News/Patrick Naughtin
More than three years on, the gesture continues to "really unite" councillors, Ms Rennie said.
“In embracing the language of 'climate emergency', we are saying we know business as usual is not okay - business as usual will doom the planet.”
Darebin Council's boundaries largely replicate the federal electorate of Cooper, formerly known as Batman, which has been held by Labor since 1969.

‘Mixed emotions’
Use of the term ‘climate emergency’ has skyrocketed in recent years.
Oxford Dictionaries declared the polarising phrase its 2019 Word of the Year following a 10,796 per cent usage increase and the first-ever National Climate Emergency Summit was held in February in Melbourne.
Ms Rennie said she was proud to help kickstart awareness of the term.
“In 2016, 'climate emergency' was new language that people weren’t using a whole lot,” she said.
“I think it’s fantastic a concept that was new to many people, to see within three years how that has shifted and how people recognise more broadly 'this is a state of emergency and we’re seeing the consequences in our day to day lives' - that’s extraordinary.”
But, Ms Rennie said, declaring the first climate emergency also came with a big sense of responsibility.
“It’s one thing being the first to do something, but if you don’t follow it up with meaningful action then what sort of example are you setting?” she said.
“There’s a sense of sometimes pride, but equally, one of frustration of not being able to do things as quickly as is required."
“So I have many mixed emotions about that.”

What is a climate emergency?
There is no universal definition of what a ‘climate emergency’ is.
"Declarations differ and there are variations in each," said David Holmes, director of Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub.
Some declarations are about officially accepting that climate change imposes an existential threat, while others are legal acknowledgements of a crisis in order to access money to fight its effects.
But for most local government bodies, such as Darebin Council, it is often about committing to centring climate change when developing policy.
Since 2016, Ms Rennie said Darebin Council has begun work on a number of green initiatives, including programs to subsidise solar panels for residents and businesses, working to make all council operations carbon-neutral, introducing a food waste recycling program and resurfacing roads with recycled material.
Making the declaration in 2016 “set the council on a path” to develop a climate plan, she said.
“Staff in all different parts of the organisation understand that looking at their work through the lens of a climate emergency is critical and it’s a core part of their jobs."
“Our community expects action … so we also invite them to be much more vocal in what responses they want to see.”
Large crowds march during the The Global Strike 4 Climate rally in Melbourne, September 2019. AAP
Dr Holmes said using climate emergency declarations to help enable policy is one thing, but using it as a communication strategy can be “problematic”.
“It’s problematic at national levels in settings where you have a strong division over climate change,” he said.
“If you keep on pushing the language of a ‘climate emergency’ you will start to lose some people and entrench division.
“You find this in Australia and in places where there is a strong denial lobby casting doubt over whether climate change exists.
“Emergency declarations can work at a local government level where constituents are already climate-aware, but at a national level, you've got this problem of semantic fatigue.”

Where have climate emergencies been declared?
Ninety-four Australian jurisdictions have declared a climate emergency, according to Climate Emergency Declaration and Mobilisation in Action (CEDMA).
The ACT parliament declared a climate emergency in May 2019, becoming the first Australian state or territory to do so, while South Australia's Upper House followed suit four months later.
More than 800 million citizens across 28 countries are estimated to live in jurisdictions that have declared climate emergencies, according to CEDMA.
Britain, France, Portugal and Argentina are among the national governments to make climate emergency declarations.
Pope Francis also made a declaration in June 2019, while in November, more than 11,000 scientists around the world signed a scientific paper stating that the planet was facing a climate emergency, “clearly and unequivocally”.

Could Australia declare a national climate emergency?
In October 2019, an e-petition calling on the federal government to declare a national climate emergency reached a record-breaking 404,538 signatures.
It received more than three times the number of signatures on a petition which held the previous record, calling for the removal of GST on menstrual products.
The same month, Greens MP Adam Bandt brought a vote to the House of Representatives on whether to declare a national climate emergency. His motion was defeated 72-65, with Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor labelling it a "grand symbolic gesture".
Emissions Reductions Minster Angus Taylor.
Dr Holmes said a new vote looks unlikely to succeed in the near future.
It could also depend on the public’s response to the bushfire crisis and how much of the devastation is attributed to climate change, he said.
“We're still a way off within the next couple of years of declaring a national climate emergency.”
“I think there's already been a big change in discourse in government ministers, but it’s now a matter of whether they step up and move on from this very destructive debate we've been having.
“Even the fact of framing it as a debate has been destructive. It’s really about moving on from that and having policy that appeals to people.”
Ms Rennie said “it is really important” more local and state governments look at policy creation through a climate lens.
“Ultimately, we know the action we need will take place at a federal government level, but that doesn’t mean local and state government shouldn’t do more,” she said.
“A good place to start is for councils to look at their entire emissions profile and how they reduce that.
“We need to become a zero-emissions society, and we need that to occur quickly.”

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