28/05/2021

(AU The Guardian) Australian Court Finds Government Has Duty To Protect Young People From Climate Crisis

The Guardian - 

Eight teenagers, along with 86-year-old nun, launched case to prevent the approval of a massive coalmine

Sister Brigid Arthur, 86, and Anj Sharma, 16, are among a group who secured a judgment from the Australian federal court that found the government has a duty to protect young people from climate change.

The federal court of Australia has found the environment minister, Sussan Ley, has a duty of care to protect young people from the climate crisis in a judgment hailed by lawyers and teenagers who brought the case as a world first.

Eight teenagers and an octogenarian nun had sought an injunction to prevent Ley approving a proposal by Whitehaven Coal to expand the Vickery coalmine in northern New South Wales, arguing the minister had a common law duty of care to protect younger people against future harm from climate change.

Justice Mordecai Bromberg found the minister had a duty of care to not act in a way that would cause future harm to younger people. But he did not grant the injunction as he was not satisfied the minister would breach her duty of care.

David Barnden, a lawyer representing the children, said it was a historic and “amazing decision” with potentially significant consequences.

“The court has found that the minister owes a duty of care to younger children, to vulnerable people, and that duty says that the minister must not act in a way that causes harm – future harm – from climate change to younger people,” he said outside court. “It is the first time in the world that such a duty of care has been recognised, especially in a common law country.”

He said Bromberg had indicated he would now take submissions before making further declarations about what the minister’s duty of care may mean for whether the mine extension could go ahead.

Whitehaven Coal had a different interpretation of the judgment. In a statement to the stock exchange, it did not mention the duty of care finding, and said it welcomed the court dismissing the teenagers’ attempt to block Ley from approving the mine extension.

“Our consistent position has been that this legal claim was without merit,” it said. “Whitehaven looks forward to receiving the … approval for the Vickery extension project and will keep the market updated as appropriate.”

Speaking for the children, 17-year-old Ava Princi said it was “thrilling and deeply relieving” that the justice had recognised the minister had a duty of care.

“I am thrilled because this is a landmark decision,” she said. “My future and the future of all young people depends on Australia stepping away from fossil fuel projects and joining the world in taking decisive climate action.”

She said though an injunction was not granted the case was “not over yet”. “There will be further submissions on what the duty of care means for the minister’s decision and the mine,” she said.

A spokesman for Ley said the government was considering the judgment and would have “more to say in due course”, but noted it rejected the application for an injunction against the minister to prevent her making a final decision on the mine extension.

The teenagers, led by the 16-year-old Melbourne student Anj Sharma and supported by Sister Brigid Arthur, an 86-year-old nun and former teacher who volunteered to be their litigation guardian, argued Ley would be breaching a common law duty of care if she used her powers under national environment laws to allow Whitehaven Coal to extend the Vickery mine.

The court heard the expansion of the mine could lead to an extra 100m tonnes of CO2 – about 20% of Australia’s annual climate footprint – being released into the atmosphere as the extracted coal is shipped overseas and burned to make steel and generate electricity.

In his judgment, Bromberg said the evidence presented to the court showed the potential harm the children could face due to global heating “may fairly be described as catastrophic, particularly should global average surface temperatures rise to and exceed 3C beyond the pre-industrial level”.

“Perhaps the most startling of the potential harms demonstrated by the evidence before the court, is that one million of today’s Australian children are expected to suffer at least one heat-stress episode serious enough to require acute care in a hospital,” he said.

“Many thousands will suffer premature death from heat stress or bushfire smoke. Substantial economic loss and property damage will be experienced. The Great Barrier Reef and most of Australia’s eastern eucalypt forests will no longer exist due to repeated, severe bushfires.”

Bromberg found that the minister had a common law duty to take reasonable care not to cause the children personal injury when using her powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

He did not grant an injunction to prevent the mine extension because he had “not been satisfied that a reasonable apprehension of breach of the duty of care by the minister has been established”.

The case is one of a number of climate-related litigation cases expected before Australian courts and tribunals in the months ahead as lawyers and activists aim to use the law to force change they say is not coming quickly enough from Canberra or state governments.

There have been a growing number of international cases that aim to hold governments to account for not doing more to address global heating.

In the latest on Wednesday, a court in the Hague ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its global carbon emissions by 45% by the end of 2030 compared with 2019 levels after finding the oil giant’s sustainability policy was insufficiently “concrete”.

The Anglo-Dutch company was told it had a duty of care and that the level of emission reductions of Shell and its suppliers and buyers should be brought into line with the Paris climate agreement. The case had been brought by Friends of the Earth and over 17,000 co-plaintiffs.

The International Energy Agency last week suggested there should be no new coal, oil or gas investments if the world was to keep open the possibility of meet the goals of the Paris agreement and reaching net zero global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

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(BBC Europe) Shell: Netherlands Court Orders Oil Giant To Cut Emissions

BBC News

Activists hugged in court after the judge delivered the verdict. Reuters
Analysis
Roger Harrabin, Environment analyst

 The Shell verdict is a massive win for environmental campaigners, and other industrial giants will be scrambling to figure out how it could affect them.

Because suddenly it's not good enough for firms to comply with the law on their emissions - in an extraordinary case like this, they have to comply with global climate policy too.

The company's defence is that if people feel progress towards cutting emissions is too slow, they should lobby governments - not Shell - to change policies and introduce financial incentives.

The judges have clearly decided that Shell should be taking responsibility itself for cutting emissions much faster.

The firm will surely appeal - and it might well win the case in a higher court.

But this verdict alone will be a warning to companies round the world that the battle against climate change may be spelling the end of anything resembling "business as usual".  
A court in the Netherlands has ruled in a landmark case that the oil giant Shell must reduce its emissions.
By 2030, Shell must cut its CO2 emissions by 45% compared to 2019 levels, the civil court ruled.

The Shell group is responsible for its own CO2 emissions and those of its suppliers, the verdict said.

It is the first time a company has been legally obliged to align its policies with the Paris climate accords, says Friends of the Earth (FoE).

The environmental group brought the case to court in 2019, alongside six other bodies and more than 17,000 Dutch citizens.

Though the decision only applies in the Netherlands, it could have wider effects elsewhere. BBC Netherlands correspondent Anna Holligan tweeted that it was a "precedent-setting judgement".

A Shell spokesperson said they "fully expect to appeal today's disappointing court decision" and added that they are stepping up efforts to cut emissions.

"Urgent action is needed on climate change, which is why we have accelerated our efforts to become a net-zero emissions energy company by 2050," the spokesperson said, adding that Shell was investing "billions of dollars in low-carbon energy, including electric vehicle charging, hydrogen, renewables and biofuels".

"This is really great news and a gigantic victory for the earth, our children and for all of us," FoE director Donald Pols said in a statement. "The judge leaves no doubt about it: Shell is causing dangerous climate change and must now stop it quickly." 

Under the terms of the Paris Agreement on climate change, nearly 200 nations agreed to keep global temperatures "well below" 2C above pre-industrial levels.

The legally binding treaty came into force on 4 November 2016. The US withdrew under former President Donald Trump but has since rejoined under President Joe Biden.

A number of groups around the world are now trying to force companies and governments to comply with the accords through the courts.

Shell has previously said it wants net zero emissions for itself and from products used by its customers by 2050.

In December its defence lawyers told the Dutch court the company was already taking "serious steps" to move away from fossil fuels, and said there was no legal basis for the case.

Other major oil companies are also making changes amid a greater global focus on cutting emissions.

On Wednesday Chevron investors voted in favour of a proposal to cut its customer emissions, while shareholders at Exxon elected two climate activists to its board after months of wrangling over its business direction.

Shell - full name Royal Dutch Shell - is a British-Dutch multinational. Because its headquarters are in The Hague, FoE was able to bring a case to a Dutch court.

Earlier this year another Dutch court ruled that Shell was responsible for damage caused by oil leaks in the Niger Delta, and ordered the company to pay compensation to farmers.

Shell, however, has said the leaks were the result of "sabotage".

How oil spills are devastating Nigeria's Bayelsa State

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(USA New Yorker) Big Oil’s Bad, Bad Day

The New Yorker - Bill McKibben

Crushing blows to three of the world’s largest oil companies have made it clear that the arguments many have been making for decades have sunk in at the highest levels.

It’s clear that the arguments that many have been making for a decade have finally sunk in at the highest levels: there is no way to evade the inexorable mathematics of climate change. Photograph by Erik McGregor / Sipa / Alamy

Author
Bill McKibben is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org and a contributing writer to The New Yorker. He writes The Climate Crisis, The New Yorker’s newsletter on the environment.
In what may be the most cataclysmic day so far for the traditional fossil-fuel industry, a remarkable set of shareholder votes and court rulings have scrambled the future of three of the world’s largest oil companies.

On Wednesday, a court in the Netherlands ordered Royal Dutch Shell to dramatically cut its emissions over the next decade—a mandate it can likely only meet by dramatically changing its business model.

A few hours later, sixty-one per cent of shareholders at Chevron voted, over management objections, to demand that the company cut so-called Scope 3 emissions, which include emissions caused by its customers burning its products.

Oil companies are willing to address the emissions that come from their operations, but, as Reuters pointed out, the support for the cuts “shows growing investor frustration with companies, which they believe are not doing enough to tackle climate change.”

The most powerful proof of such frustration came shortly afterward, as ExxonMobil officials announced that shareholders had (over the company’s strenuous opposition) elected two dissident candidates to the company’s board, both of whom pledge to push for climate action.

The action at ExxonMobil’s shareholder meeting was fascinating: the company, which regularly used to make the list of most-admired companies, had been pulling out all stops to defeat the slate of dissident candidates, which was put forward by Engine No. 1, a tiny activist fund based in San Francisco that owns just 0.02 per cent of the company’s stock, but has insisted that Exxon needs a better answer to the question of how to meet the climate challenge.

Exxon has simply insisted on doubling down: its current plan actually calls for increasing oil and gas production in Guyana and the Permian Basin this decade, even though the International Energy Agency last week called for an end to new development of fossil fuels.

Observers at the meeting described a long adjournment midmeeting, and meandering answers to questions from the floor, perhaps as an effort to buy time to persuade more shareholders to go the company’s way. But the effort failed. Notably, efforts by activists to push big investors appear to have paid off: according to sources, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, backed three of the dissident candidates for the Exxon board.

The decision by the Dutch court, which Shell has already said it expects to appeal, is at least as remarkable. Drawing, in part, on European human-rights laws, it finds that, though Shell has begun to make changes in its business plans, they are not moving fast enough to fall in line with the demands of science, and that it must more than double the pace of its planned emissions cuts.

“The court understands that the consequences could be big for Shell,” Jeannette Honée, a spokeswoman for the court, said in a video about the ruling. “But the court believes that the consequences of severe climate change are more important than Shell’s interests." Honée continued, “Severe climate change has consequences for human rights, including the right to life. And the court thinks that companies, among them Shell, have to respect those human rights.”

No one knows quite how the ruling, if it stands, will play out. Shell is based in the Netherlands, but it has operations around the world. The ruling, though, is the firmest official pronouncement yet about what a commitment to climate science requires. The forty-five-per-cent reduction in emissions by 2030 from 2019 levels that the court ordered is very close to what, in 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C.) said would be required to keep us on a pathway that might limit temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The court gently dismissed Shell’s attempts to evade the science: the company, the judges wrote, believes that “too little attention is paid to adaptation strategies, such as air conditioning, which may contribute to reducing risks associated with hot spells, and to water and coastal management to counter the sea level rise caused by global warming.

These adaptation strategies reveal that measures can be taken to combat the consequences of climate change, which may in result reduce the risks. However, these strategies do not alter the fact that climate change due to CO2 emissions has serious and irreversible consequences.”

Instead, it’s clear that the arguments that many have been making for a decade have sunk in at the highest levels: there is no actual way to evade the inexorable mathematics of climate change. If you want to keep the temperature low enough that civilization will survive, you have to keep coal and oil and gas in the ground. That sounded radical a decade ago. Now it sounds like the law.

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