(Earth.Org) 5 World Leaders Who Are Damaging The Environment

Earth.Org - Charlotte Davey

The climate crisis needs a coordinated response from governments, community leaders and citizens. What is essential is a top-down approach from government leaders in the form of sensible policies that ideally tax carbon and place regulations on heavy-emitting industries to curb their environmental impact. Unfortunately, some world leaders haven’t gotten the memo on what environmental stewardship should look like. Here are 5 world leaders who are damaging the environment.

Jair Bolsonaro

It would be unjust to list Jair Bolsonaro anywhere other than top of the list of world leaders who are damaging the environment.

As president of Brazil, which is home to the largest tropical rainforest on the planet, Bolsonaro has wreaked havoc on the Amazon basin.

From incentivising farmers to slash and burn the Amazon, to reversing environmental legislation, and discarding land reserved for environmental tribes, Bolsonaro is sabotaging Brazil’s best asset.

A new report illustrates that since the Bolsonaro administration was sworn into office on 1 January 2019, the annual rate of tree felling in Brazil has almost doubled. In the first year of his presidency alone, deforestation increased four-fold, rising from 1 million hectares in 2018 to 3.9 million by the end of 2019.

Such deforestation is fuelled by a deliberate lack of care and commitment under Bolsonaro’s government. They view environmental policies as obstacles for Brazil’s development, and so they set about ‘environmental dismantling’, removing environmental policies that were in place to protect the rainforest and tackle climate change. As a result, there is no federal effort to control deforestation, land is easier for businesses to exploit and violators are rarely punished.

Over two years into Bolsonaro’s tyranny the statistics continue to get worse. In the first four months of 2021, approximately 433 000 acres of the pristine lush rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon were logged or burned, hitting a record 42.5% on-year rise in April.

Recently, Bolsonaro may have gained favour as he pledged to double the budget for environmental enforcement and committed to net zero deforestation by 2030 under pressure from the Biden administration. However, less than 24 hours later, Bolsonaro signed off on the 2021 federal budget that included a 24% cut to the environment budget compared to the previous year. It is shocking, but hardly unexpected for Bolsonaro.

Justin Trudeau

In the words of Greta Thunberg, the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is “obviously not doing enough” on climate change.

The data backs this up; Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase year on year, bucking the trend seen in many other developed nations. Canada does not have a reputation for damaging the environment, primarily because Trudeau repeatedly says the right things, and scores so highly on other issues surrounding immigration and women in government.

Yet when it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, Trudeau comes up short.

In June 2019 the Canadian government declared a climate emergency, yet the next day it approved a new oil pipeline project. Trudeau’s government has continued to push oil and gas pipelines, specifically from Alberta’s tar sands.

This is labelled as one of the greatest climate disasters on the planet as the oil lies under pristine boreal forest and peat bogs housing wildlife and indigenous people. In 2017 Trudeau got a standing ovation for saying “no country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.”

This figure is the estimate for recoverable oil in Alberta’s tar sands, meaning that if Canada extracts all this oil and sells it to the world to burn, it will produce 30% of the carbon necessary to take us past the 1.5°C target in the Paris Accord.

In April, at President Biden’s Leaders’ Summit on Climate, Canada’s new target of reducing emissions by between 40% and 45% of 2005 levels by 2030 falls short of both the USA’s and UK’s targets. Trudeau has also set this new target despite missing previous targets.

Scott Morrison

The current Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, has continued to fuel the devastation of Australia’s unique environment.

As a highly coal-dependent economy, it comes as no surprise that Australia has one of the highest per capita greenhouse emission rates on the planet.

Last year, the Climate Change Performance Index ranked Australia last of 57 countries for its climate policy.

Morrison’s government has failed to clarify how it will meet the country’s insufficient 2030 emission reduction target and issued no long-term mitigation strategy. Furthermore, the government continues to promote the expansion of fossil fuels, has dismissed recent IPCC reports, withdrew funding for the Green Climate Fund, and did not attend last year’s critical UN Climate Action Summit.

In 2017, Morrison famously addressed the House of Representatives while holding a lump of coal, stating. “This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. It won’t hurt you.”

Morrison failed to realise that air pollution, caused by the burning of coal and oil, was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018.

Fossil fuels, like coal, are the key driving force behind rising global temperatures which have exacerbated drought, thus increasing both the intensity and frequency of Australia’s bushfires.

The 2019-20 bushfire season was the worst on record, killing or displacing nearly three billion animals. Morrison refused to attribute climate change to the devastating fires, even though 2019 was Australia’s hottest and driest year in history.

Vladimir Putin

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is a renowned climate sceptic.

For decades, Putin has repeatedly denied the scientific consensus that climate change is primarily caused by human activity, blaming it on some “processes in the universe.”

He has called Greta Thunberg an “uninformed, impressionable teenager possibly being used in someone’s interests,” voiced scepticism about renewable energy, and expressed alarm at the danger of turbines to worms, causing them to “come out of the ground” by vibrating.

Therefore it does not seem surprising that Putin’s government has recently failed to improve Russia’s insufficient 2030 emissions target, with it currently in line with warming of 4°C. Russia is the world’s fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, so the country’s role in international climate politics is of particular consequence.

However, state support for environmental protection does not exist in Russia, environmental spending is low and there has been little policy reform to help Russia address its serious environmental problems.

It is disappointing that Putin holds such little regard for the environment, especially since Russia is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change. Two-thirds of Russian territory is located on permafrost, which is rapidly thawing due to increasing temperatures.

This is threatening the infrastructure built on it, including the two million people who live in Russia’s Arctic cities and the 200 000 kilometres of oil and gas pipelines. Recent floods and wildfires have been among the planet’s worst climate-related disasters.

Only last summer an area north of Russia’s Arctic circle reached a phenomenal 38°C, over 100°C warmer than the record low temperature of -68°C that was set in the 1990s.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

In the 18 years that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has led Turkey, little has been achieved to protect both the environment and climate.

More than six years after the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, Turkey is one of just six countries in the world, and the only G20 country, that has not ratified the agreement.

By not being legally bound to the agreement, it signifies the country does not intend to pursue efforts to limit global temperatures to 1.5°C.

This is deeply worrying as there has been a 190% increase in greenhouse gas emissions in Turkey since 1990, exacerbated by the country’s dependence on coal, oil and gas industries.

Erdoğan’s government has not implemented a coal phase-out policy, despite fossil fuels accounting for a third of the country’s greenhouse gases. In fact, the government is pushing forward with plans to double its coal power capacity and continues to heavily subsidise the industry.

This is despite the fact that air pollution is responsible for almost 5 000 premature deaths, 26 500 cases of bronchitis in children and more than 3 000 preterm births in Turkey per year, alongside a plethora of additional negative environmental impacts.

To give credit where credit is due, Erdoğan’s government has invested heavily in renewable energy, with almost 63% of their electricity coming from renewables in 2020. Yet this ambition does not extend to the natural environment.

Erdoğan is notorious for not letting nature get in the way of building megaprojects; during the construction of Istanbul’s airport, over 2.5 million trees, and thus wildlife, were removed. The president insists that over 4.5 billion trees have been planted during his presidency, yet Turkey still has record deforestation and high tree mortality rate of new plantations.

In 2021 it is incredibly frustrating and disappointing to witness five of the world’s key leaders failing the planet and all those who inhabit it. People are suffering, ecosystems are collapsing and a mass extinction event has begun, yet these leaders continue to favour economic growth over all else.

It is pivotal that policies addressing climate change and environmental issues are at the forefront of these nations’ political agendas. Only once leaders start treating the climate crisis like the existential emergency it is, can we even begin to address the biggest challenge of our time.

Links

• Bolsonaro’s War on the Environment and Climate Change
• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Climate Change 
• Scott Morrison’s climate change leadership fail
• Russia's Vladimir Putin doubts man-made climate change
• 24 Turkish cities oppose Erdogan, support Paris Climate Agreement

(AU RenewEconomy) Australia’s Government Feels No Duty Of Care Towards Young People On Climate

RenewEconomy - Ketan Joshi

  

It’s not easy to wrap your head around questions of timescale, for climate change.

There’s no precedent for a problem that involves the entire planet’s atmosphere and oceans, accumulates over time and has such a fuzzy disconnect between the cause of the harm and the manifestation of that harm. We get a plastics company leaking toxins into a river; we do not get 1,000 coal plants leaking greenhouse gases into the sky.

Trying to rectify that disconnect has been the primary goal of youth climate activists around the world. Young people will be alive long after we perish, and as such, they are the ones directly connected to the consequences of decisions made today. But disproportionately, those making decisions are far older than the general population.

One clear example of this fight: a group of young Australians who sued the government, specifically the Environment Minister Sussan Ley, over the approval of a coal mine extension.

The heart of the matter was whether Ley granting an approval to the coal mine extension would cause harm to the group of children who brought the case forward. It would, as I showed in my previous article, unlock several hundred megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions through the act of extraction, over its lifespan.

   

The ruling on the case is very clear.

“It is difficult to characterise in a single phrase the devastation that the plausible evidence presented in this proceeding forecasts for the Children. As Australian adults know their country, Australia will be lost and the World as we know it gone as well”, wrote Justice Mordecai, in the final judgement.

“Lives will be cut short. Trauma will be far more common and good health harder to hold and maintain. None of this will be the fault of nature itself. It will largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest inter-generational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next”.

The ultimate decision of the Federal Court was to deliver a landmark ruling that found Minister Ley holds a duty of care to protect the children from harm, including the harm caused by the use of the fossil products created by the coal mining operation. He stopped short of granting an injunction to stop the mine, mostly because Ley hadn’t actually approved it yet, and saw the potential of a way forward through consultation between the two sides.

Ley’s first public opinion on the ruling isn’t surprising.

When asked about it at her National Press Club speech yesterday, she said “I didn’t agree with the judgement, that is the first point I want to make. The second important point was that no final orders have been made and that both I and my department are considering the judgement. The judge has asked for submissions, I think they are due in about a week and we are are preparing submissions”.

It’s not a lot of detail, but we’ll surely find out more when the submissions are made. However, what this illustrates is that these court rulings are shifting the rhetorical burden. Ley now has to openly declare that the concept that she holds a duty of care on climate is wrong. We’ve known this all along, through the government’s decisions on emissions, but it’s important that we now hear it stated explicitly.

The most significant component of Justice Mordecai’s ruling is, in my opinion, about ‘knowledge’. That is, there is no pleading innocence or ignorance in the face of climate impacts.

“Here, the Minister has at least all of the knowledge about the risk of harm to the Children which the evidence has provided. The evidence about the risk to the Children is substantial…..the Minister has the understanding provided by my determination that the Children are exposed to a real risk of harm from the Extension Project should it be approved. That is the state of knowledge that the Minister is fixed with for the purpose of this analysis”.

It is perfectly aligned with the Dutch court ruling against Shell, which also showed that by enabling the supply of fossil fuels, the company was knowingly contributing in a non-zero way to the worsening of climate change. There is no mystery, no secret, and no excuse. To actively enable climate change is to be personally responsible for the damage it eventually causes, at any point in the future. Ditto for the ruling against the German government, which was forced to implement stricter climate targets because the weak ones placed an undue burden on young Germans.

That is paired with the immense power that companies like Shell, or people like Minister Sussan Ley, have.

“Here, the Minister has substantial and direct control over the source of harm and also control which flows from the situation of responsibility which the Minister occupies. Her control is also enhanced by her knowledge of the potential consequences of the conduct within her control. The salient features of control, responsibility and knowledge tend strongly in support of the existence of relations between the Minister and the Children sufficient for the common law to impose a duty of care”

The ruling here is significant in that it strikes at the heart of how the Australian government has gone about shirking responsibility on climate. Through specific inaction and actions, they are allowing the new release of greenhouse gases, which heat the planet and harm people and other living things: a failure to dismantle fossil power ASAP, or to swap out fossil transport, heating and cooling with electric alternatives. Or the active, effortful policies to encourage expansion and growth of fossil mining, mostly coal and gas.

These government attitudes are coated with greenwashing, to obscure the damage. Domestic emissions are hand-waved away with empty policies like the ‘technology roadmap’. Fossil mining emissions are dismissed because they’re exported, as if the climate impacts that result will obey country borders and greenhouse accounting spreadsheets. The underlying philosophy behind these actions must be the belief that – truly – they as individuals do not feel any sense of responsibility, or a sense of duty, to care for the citizens of the country.

“It’s just a nuisance at the moment, and — but we’ve seen this before. We’ve just got to put our heads down and work our way through this with government”, said the CEO of the coal mining company, Paul Flynn, before the case was heard. After the ruling, Whitehaven happily welcomed the decision to not grant an injunction against Ley approving the mine, expecting it to be approved and asserting the coal it sells will reduce emissions. They, too, do not feel any need to protect the physical safety of young people who will be alive when the consequences of their decisions manifest in the atmosphere.

But there is hope. “I hope any young person who feels worried about their future, or frustrated about the state of inaction, feels assured that they can generate change, and becomes even more inspired to push for stronger, faster and deeper cuts to carbon emissions worldwide”, wrote Ava Princi in the Guardian, one of the eight students that brought the action against the government.

The burden of justification is shifting. It’s slow, and it may not even feel noticeable, but it really, really is. Increasingly, the onus is lying on those who once enjoyed the benefits of quiet incumbency; of the assumption that business as usual does not need to be interrogated or examined. Now, those fighting to hurt those who’ll be alive well into the mid-century have to justify themselves. It isn’t pretty to watch them saying the quiet parts out loud.

Links

• (AU Legal) Minister Found To Owe Duty Of Care To Consider Climate Change In Decision Making
• (AU The Guardian) Australian Court Finds Government Has Duty To Protect Young People From Climate Crisis
• (AU) 'A Duty Of Care': Australian Teenagers Take Their Climate Crisis Plea To Court 
• Students win landmark climate case. In global first, Minister has duty of care to protect young people from climate change
• Climate change, governments and human rights
• These Aussie Teens Have Launched A Landmark Climate Case Against The Government. Win Or Lose, It’ll Make A Difference
• (AU) A Major Report Excoriated Australia’s Environment Laws. Sussan Ley’s Response Is Confused And Risky
• Climate Change Litigation Update

(AU The Australian) Environment Minister Sussan Ley Frosty On Climate Change Ruling

The Australian - Olivia Caisley

Environment Minister Sussan Ley. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Environment Minister Sussan Ley disagrees with a Federal Court ruling that she has a duty of care to protect children against future personal injury from climate change after a Melbourne justice found she had a responsibility to shield future generations from emissions.

The court last month ruled she owed children a duty of care for the health risks linked to climate change – but refused to impose an injunction preventing the expansion of the Vickery coalmine near Gunnedah, NSW.

The court heard the 100 million tonnes of CO2 was likely to cause a tiny but measurable increase to global average surface temperatures.

“In my assessment, that risk is real, meaning that it may be remote but it is not far-fetched or fanciful,” Justice Mordecai Bromberg said.

“Those potential harms may fairly be described as catastrophic, particularly should global average surface temp­eratures rise to, and exceed, 3C beyond the pre-industrial level.”

Justice Bromberg said the court heard one million of today’s Australian children were expected to suffer at least one heat-stress episode serious en­ough to require acute care in a hospital.

But Ms Ley disputed the finding at the National Press Club on Wednesday, declaring: “I didn’t agree with the judgment.”

She said she didn’t know how the court’s finding would affect the government’s environmental approval processes or the ability of mining businesses to work in Australia when no final orders had been made.

“I will continue to make decisions in accordance with the EPBC Act, and beyond that the matter is still under legal contest,” she said.

Ms Ley also revealed she had been checking federal environmental laws to find a provision to direct the NSW government to tackle the booming feral horse population in Kosciuszko National Park.

This followed the Berejiklian government caving in to pressure from Deputy Premier John Barilaro, in 2018, and vetoing the culling of horses in the park.

“I’m looking through the EPBC Act. I’d love to find permission in there that could actually allow the commonwealth to have a say in a heritage-listed national park,” Ms Ley said.

Ms Ley said she had recently flown over the park to see the damage caused by the horses.

She also accused Labor of being split on environmental reform with “one foot planted either side of a barbed wire fence, whistling to mining electorates from the Hunter to the Pilbara in one voice and suburban electorates in another”.

Links

• (AU Legal) Minister Found To Owe Duty Of Care To Consider Climate Change In Decision Making
• (AU The Guardian) Australian Court Finds Government Has Duty To Protect Young People From Climate Crisis
• (AU) 'A Duty Of Care': Australian Teenagers Take Their Climate Crisis Plea To Court 
• Climate Change Litigation Update
• Students win landmark climate case. In global first, Minister has duty of care to protect young people from climate change
• Climate change, governments and human rights
• These Aussie Teens Have Launched A Landmark Climate Case Against The Government. Win Or Lose, It’ll Make A Difference
• (AU) A Major Report Excoriated Australia’s Environment Laws. Sussan Ley’s Response Is Confused And Risky

(AU Bloomberg) A $213 Billion Investor Targets Whole Nation Over Climate Change

Bloomberg Green - Matthew Burgess

Photographer: David Gray/Bloomberg

Robeco Institutional Asset Management BV will soon start pressuring Australia to phase out its reliance on coal and other natural resources, as money managers slowly begin targeting governments over climate change.

Australia has a “particularly high-risk profile” when it comes to climate performance, said Peter van der Werf, the Dutch firm’s senior manager of engagement and active ownership. As global investors implement plans to decarbonize portfolios by mid-century, Australia’s lawmakers must follow suit, he said in an interview.

Cutting back on natural resources “are very hard decisions because these are obviously very important sources of revenue for the Australian economy,” Rotterdam-based Van der Werf said. “That’s where in those conversations, institutional investors can also provide a perspective how they would foresee such a transition to take place.”

Unlike established asset manager groups like the Climate Action 100+ that pressure companies such as BHP Group Ltd. to bring their practices in line with the Paris Agreement, bond investors pushing governments to mitigate environmental, social and governance risks is a new concept.

“Aside from green and social bond investing, relatively few efforts have been directed towards helping sovereign debt investors actively contribute to advancing particular sustainable development objectives -- this is surprising,” since government bonds account for almost 70% of the $128 trillion global bond market, Robeco analysts wrote in a report this month.

“Sustainability was something you could sort of test and make a score card, but there was very little room to change that,” Van der Werf said. Robeco’s bond managers are “very eager to get these conversations going,” he said.

Robeco was among firms with $7 trillion in combined assets that engaged Brazil’s government last year in a bid to reduce deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. The investor group is also targeting Indonesia over forestry.

Australia will be next on Robeco’s list to accelerate a so-called just transition as the firm seeks to decarbonize its stock and bond portfolios. The 176 billion euro ($213 billion) manager owned by Orix Corp. of Japan has already shunned Australian debt in its Paris-aligned bond fund, but still owns the debt in other funds. Australia is among the world’s largest per-capita carbon emitters.

Debt investors globally are grappling with assessing the long-term effects of rising world temperatures and how much economic growth must be sacrificed for countries to adapt. They’re also balancing client demands for cleaner, greener portfolios with a fiduciary duty to make money.

Australia may pay a price if it fails to take stronger action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The nation may join others in default on its bonds by mid-century if strong policies aren’t introduced by decade’s end. That could lead to sudden or disruptive changes to its economy, according to research by FTSE Russell.

About one-third of the economy and almost a quarter of the workforce are exposed to disruption if key trading nations source cleaner materials elsewhere as momentum to cut global carbon emissions accelerates, according to Deloitte Access Economics.

Australia is unlikely to be receptive to Robeco. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who famously brandished a lump of coal in parliament, has steadfastly refused to commit to a deadline for net-zero emissions in support of politically sensitive industries like coal and gas.

The nation instead is hoping technology such as carbon capture and storage will help meet its Paris Agreement obligations.

A spokesperson for Angus Taylor, Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, said Australia’s track record is better than many advanced economies, noting between 2005 and 2019 emissions fell faster than in Canada, New Zealand, Japan or the U.S.

“Action and outcomes are what matter, and our track record is one that will see Australia meet and beat our emissions reduction commitments while continuing to grow our economy and jobs,” the spokesperson said.

Getting Serious

Major sovereigns face creditworthiness risk due to climate change

Note: "Disorderly Transition" scenario assumes climate policies are not introduced until 2030. Reduced sample of sovereigns shown in chart. Source: FTSE Russell

Robeco is looking for Australian institutional investors to help formulate the engagement plan to be put into action this year, Van der Werf said. They’re “closer to the fire” with a “sharper view” of the opportunities to facilitate a transition, he said.

“You need to have a coalition of investors” to pressure all stakeholders that influence government policy, Van der Werf said. “You can’t go at this alone.”

Links

• Why This Climate-Laggard Nation Still Attracts Investments
• Australia Is in No Rush To Join Global Stampede To Green Bonds
• Japan Urged to End Coal Trade With Australia in Climate Push
• (AU Business Insider) APRA Has Doubled Down On Its Climate Warnings, Urging The Business Community To Take Stock Of The 'Unprecented' Risks
• (AU) Net Zero Emissions Target For Australia Could Launch $63bn Investment Boom
• (AU) Investors Are Trying To Shut Down Fossil Fuel Companies From The Inside — This Is What They're Doing
• Norway's $US1 Trillion Sovereign Wealth Fund To Dump Billions In Coal Investments
• Investors Managing $32 Trillion In Assets Call For Action On Climate Change
• Investors With $26 Trillion In Assets Urge G7 Leaders To Act On Climate Change

(AU The Guardian) Australian Resources Minister Attacks ‘Green Activists’ For Trying To ‘Cripple’ Fossil Fuel Companies

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy

Keith Pitt urges oil and gas producers to fight back against groups such as Greenpeace by quantifying the sector’s contribution to the economy

Minister Keith Pitt will use a speech to the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference to rail against environmental groups. Photograph: Aaron Bunch/AAP

Australia’s resources minister, Keith Pitt, is urging oil and gas producers to turn the “spotlight” on environmental groups campaigning against an expansion of the fossil fuel industry on climate change grounds.

Pitt will use a speech to the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference in Perth on Wednesday to rail against “activism” that “ignores the fact that resources development in Australia is carried out safely and responsibly and that Australia’s economy was built off the back of the resources sector”.

According to speech notes circulated by his office in advance, the resources minister will declare it is “clear that the courts and bureaucratic processes are being used by green activists to delay major projects and potentially cripple companies”.

He will single out Greenpeace for special mention. Citing figures from the charities commission, Pitt will say Greenpeace “raised more than $18.5m in donations and bequests and $1.1m in government grants in 2019-20 in Australia alone”.

“Nearly 25% of expenses related to fundraising and 39% were in staff costs – so rather than protecting the environment they are mostly focussed on protecting themselves,” Pitt will say.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific chief executive David Ritter hit back. “The very reason that millions of Australians support the work of Greenpeace is to take the action on climate change that minister Pitt’s government has not only resoundingly failed to do, but actively blocked for the past seven years.

“Greenpeace is a movement of people. If these climate-wrecking oil and gas giants at this conference want to rise to minister Pitt’s challenge and attack the people of Australia for caring about nature and the future of our kids, we are ready. Because for as long as big climate polluters threaten the future, we will stand in their way.”

The resources minister will argue demand for LNG is growing in the face of global pushback from environmental and shareholder groups and Australia intends to remain at the “forefront of the LNG sector” for decades.

Australia urged to drop coal and gas plans after global energy agency’s warning. Read more

He will tell the conference the government plans to develop the North Bowen and Galilee basins in central Queensland for gas extraction. “We know that the Bowen Basin is a major coal-producing area but it also has immense potential for gas”.

Pitt will urge oil and gas producers to fight back against “green activists” by putting “facts” before the Australian public, including quantifying the sector’s economic contribution to the country “and indeed facts about the activist’s campaigns – the spotlight should be on those organisations for a change”.

The resources minister will also flag concern about banks and insurers stepping back from financing fossil fuel projects. Pitt triggered a parliamentary inquiry, chaired by fellow Queensland National George Christensen, after a public commitment from ANZ to step back from business customers with material thermal coal exposures – market signalling that sparked consternation within the Nationals.

After the ANZ’s statement last October, the agriculture minister, David Littleproud, called for a boycott of the bank, and the deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, declared the bank’s plan “virtue signalling”. Christensen has previously denied the link between climate change and the severity of natural disasters.

In the wake of the ANZ fracas, Pitt originally instructed the joint standing committee on trade and investment growth to grill financial regulators, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, as well as the banks, about their plans to pull back on lending or insuring mining projects because of climate change.

But the inquiry stalled after the joint standing committee – in a rare rebuke – deferred making a decision about whether to proceed with Pitt’s original ministerial referral. The stalling reflected a view among some Liberals that the inquiry should not be a witch-hunt against banks managing carbon risk.

Pitt subsequently broadened the terms of reference, asking the committee to investigate finance for all export industries. He said the adjustment was a strengthening of the original terms of reference.

The banks and their lobbying arm, the Australian Banking Association, have used new submissions to Pitt’s parliamentary inquiry to implicitly rebut claims from senior Nationals that their actions amount to moral posturing or virtue signalling.

The major banks and the ABA have pointed out that current carbon risk practices – namely, disclosing information relating to climate exposures and calculating the potential risk of climate change on their balance sheets – are requirements driven by international governance setting bodies, of which Australian regulators and Australian companies are members.

Scott Morrison’s claim Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling does ‘not stack up’.  Read more

Pitt will tell the APPEA conference on Wednesday the inquiry led by Christensen will “inquire into and report on the approach and motivations of our financial institutions regarding their investment in Australia’s export industries”.

APPEA has used its submission to the inquiry to argue that environmental groups have “over recent years focused their activism on shareholders and finance sources, like superannuation funds, banks, and other lending facilities” – and have been able to exploit an “information asymmetry”.

The submission says since 2017, shareholder activist groups collectively have submitted 92 resolutions “pertaining to climate change, governance (to facilitate greater shareholder climate change activism) or political lobbying (as it pertains to climate change)” – with nearly 40 resolutions relating to APPEA member activities.

APPEA contends this activity “conveniently ignore[s] the body of evidence that demonstrates the role that natural gas is playing in delivering lower carbon energy security to growing population centres, particularly in our own region” and commitments by the gas industry to the United Nations sustainable development agenda.

APPEA is the peak national body representing upstream oil and gas explorers and producers active in Australia. Member companies account for more than 90% of Australia’s petroleum production.

Links

• (AU SMH) The Sleeper Election Issue That Could Bite Morrison And Albanese
• (AU SMH) False Prophets And Snake Oil Will Fail Coal Communities
• (AU The Guardian) The Coalition Doesn’t Want To Focus On Climate Change – But Australia Will Be Forced To
• (AU The Guardian) Why Is Australia Building A $600m Gas Power Plant As World Experts Warn Against Fossil Fuels?
• (AU Canberra Times) John Hewson: Reckless Morrison Government Must Move On Climate Change
• Nationals call for ANZ boycott after bank's push for net zero emissions
• 'There is no link': the climate doubters within Scott Morrison's government
• Liberal MPs pour cold water on inquiry backed by Frydenberg into bank lending for coal projects
• Federal resources minister insists inquiry into banks' decision to abandon thermal coal will go ahead
• Australia’s big banks reject Nationals’ claims managing climate risk is ‘virtue signalling’

(Bloomberg) ‘Petrolhead’ Who Beat Shell Shows How Law Can Fight Climate Change

Bloomberg Green - Diederik Baazil | Hugo Miller

Attorney Roger Cox says oil industry executives should be held responsible for their companies’ carbon emissions

Roger Cox Photographer: Peter Boer/Bloomberg

Royal Dutch Shell Plc hired a team of pricey lawyers for its defense against environmental activists in a Dutch court, and lost.

A decade-old, $22 book might have upped their chances of winning. “Revolution Justified: Why Only the Law Can Save Us Now,” is no bestseller, ranking in the mid-600,000s in Amazon’s Kindle store. But the book, by environmental lawyer Roger Cox, laid out arguments that were integral to his landmark victory over the Anglo-Dutch oil giant on May 26.

The book suggests two building blocks for a case such as the lawsuit against Shell. One is that there’s incontrovertible evidence that warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius will have dire consequences for the planet, and any company that ignores that is doing so consciously. The second is that companies have a clear duty to ensure a healthy environment for the world’s citizens.

The urgency is compounded, Cox says, because even if we stop emitting CO2 today, the planet will suffer increasingly grave consequences for decades to come.

“The damage states and multinationals have done is far greater than we can see now,” says Cox, who says he sought to make the book straightforward enough to hold the interest of the general public but persuasive enough to stand up in a courtroom. “Understanding this is judicially of great importance and makes intervention by the courts necessary.”

After four days of arguments, a court in The Hague accepted Cox’s line of reasoning, ruling that Shell must slash its greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels—a sharp increase over the 20% the company had previously pledged.

“Even if states do nothing or only a little,” Judge Larisa Alwin said in announcing the verdict, “companies have the responsibility to respect human rights.”

Shell says it will appeal the verdict as it feels it was unjustly singled out. But Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden on June 9 said the company will take “bold but measured” steps to accelerate its energy transition.

Cox, left, and members of Dutch environment group 'Milieudefensie', celebrate after the ruling in the Shell case. Photographer: Remko De Waal/ANP/Getty Images

What Cox has engineered “seems to have been a complete victory for the plaintiffs, and the court’s specificity and ambition in ordering Shell to reduce its downstream emissions are remarkable,” says Michael Burger, executive director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, who advises on lawsuits against oil companies.

Burger says he expects attorneys filing similar lawsuits in the U.S. to cite the case as precedent. Cox, 53, based his strategy on a 2015 case he brought against the Dutch government for Urgenda, an environmental non-profit. In its verdict, the court ordered the state to cut CO2 emissions 25% from 1990 levels by 2020, but the Netherlands didn’t meet the goal—and Urgenda has threatened another lawsuit.

“Without the Urgenda case, we would never have been able to win against Shell,” says Cox. “If you cannot hold a state responsible for climate change, it wouldn’t have been possible for a company.”

Laura Burgers, an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam who studies climate change litigation, says the cases highlight the difficulty politicians have in tackling the issue. The judicial system in various countries will instead need to step in to ensure the problem gets the attention it needs. “These court cases are a sign of governmental failure,” Burgers says.

For Cox, who studied law at Leiden University and later worked at big law firm in nearby Rotterdam, the legal victories mark the culmination of his personal journey from apathy to activism about climate change. “I was a real petrol-head,” says Cox, who two decades ago moved from Rotterdam to a village in the southern Netherlands in search of a calmer place to raise his family. “I was one of those people saying that 1 cm sea level more or less wouldn’t matter.”

His epiphany was triggered by Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth.” Spurred into action by the documentary highlighting the perils of global warming, Cox arranged free viewings across the Netherlands and set up a non-profit focused on the issue. After studying legal precedents on the matter, he realized that as a lawyer he could best effect change via the courts. “If I can change, anybody can,” he says.

Following his win over the Dutch government, a local activist group called Milieudefensie asked Cox to pursue a similar strategy against Shell. He took the case, partly funded by the group, and soon found a 2014 letter by the company’s investor relations chief promising that Shell would not end up with so-called “stranded assets”—facilities and reserves that can’t be exploited as consumption drops or the legal barriers to tapping them become insurmountable.

Reading between the lines, says Cox, Shell was indicating it would decide the pace of its transition to renewables despite international agreements on targets for reducing emissions. That standpoint, he says, put the company in violation of its duty to defend the rights of fellow citizens, an important legal principle in many countries.

Greenpeace hold an environmental protest during the Shell shareholders meeting in The Hague, on May 19, 2020. Photographer: Romy Arroyo Fernandez/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Two years later, shortly after the Paris Climate agreement, van Beurden questioned whether it would be possible to limit to 1.5 or even 2 degrees of global warming.

Speaking on the Dutch news show Nieuwsuur, he stressed that his company would “pump as much as possible to meet demand.” Cox says the next battle front in climate change litigation will likely get personal. At Shell’s annual meeting in May, a proposal from a shareholder group that the company pursue a more aggressive transition away from fossil fuels won the backing of 30% of shareholders, though a plan from management drew 89% support.

The Shell proposal envisions a big expansion in clean energy but also decades more oil and gas production. For Cox, the time to act is now, and if Shell’s bosses and other oil executives don’t do so, he says they should be held personally liable for their failure to address climate change.

“CEOs must take the responsibility to explain to their shareholders why the transition must be accelerated,” Cox says. “The net is closing in.

Links

• Court orders Royal Dutch Shell to cut carbon emissions by 45% by 2030APRA Climate Change 
• Royal Dutch Shell Judgment - Hague District Court
• Shell loses climate case that may set precedent for Big Oil
• (AU Editorial) The Guardian View On Climate Change Lawsuits: Big Oil Is In The Dock
• (AU Environmental Defenders Office) Analysis: The Walls Are Closing In On Fossil Fuels
• (AU The Conversation) Four seismic climate wins show Big Oil, Gas and Coal are running out of places to hide
• (USA NYT) Big Setbacks Propel Oil Giants Toward A ‘Tipping Point’
• (The Guardian) ‘Black Wednesday’ For Big Oil As Courtrooms And Boardrooms Turn On Industry

(AU Legal) Minister Found To Owe Duty Of Care To Consider Climate Change In Decision Making

Clyde & Co Global Law Firm - Dean Carrigan | Jacques Jacobs | Jacinta Studdert

Background

On or around 11 February 2016, Whitehaven Coal Pty Ltd applied to the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment (Minister) to expand their Vickery Coal Project which would increase the total coal extraction from 135 to 138 million tonnes. When combusted, the additional coal extracted was estimated to produce about 100Mt of C0₂.

The Minister is required to assess Whitehaven’s application in accordance with s130(1) and s133 of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). The Applicants sought an injunction to restrain the Minister from exercising her powers under the EPBC Act. They alleged that the Minister’s powers create a statutory duty of care and that the injunction is necessary to restrain an apprehended breach of that duty. 

The Applicants alleged that towards the end of this century, they will likely suffer mental or physical injury, including ill-health or death as well as economic and property loss as a result of their exposure to climatic hazards induced by increasing global surface temperatures driven by the further emission of C0₂.  The Applicants alleged that additional emissions from the Vickery Coal Project will be significant and material to the increase. For the most part, the parties agreed that additional emissions will have an impact on the surface temperature, but, disputed the significance of the temperature increase.

Interestingly, the Applicants in the proceedings were eight Australian children who brought the proceedings as a class action on behalf of all children who ordinarily reside in Australia (Children). As a consequence of their youth, the proceedings were brought by their litigation representative Sister Marie Brigid Arthur. Importantly the Applicants did not seek damages.

Duty of Care

In considering whether this novel duty of care exists, the Court took a multi-factorial assessment, in which ‘salient features’ relevant to the appropriateness of imputing a legal duty upon the Minister were assessed and weighed. This approach is a uniquely Australian concept for the assessing of a novel duty of care.

The Court noted that where the Respondent is a repository of statutory power, imposing a duty of care can raise problems that require a close examination of the terms, scope and purpose of the relevant statutory regime. Moreover, whilst the ultimate question is whether a requisite relationship exists between the statutory authority and a class of persons, the criteria for assessing whether that relationship exists is to be found in the salient features of that relationship.

Among the seventeen salient features already established under common law, the Court noted that the following were relevant for this particular case:

• the purpose to be served by the exercise of the power;
• the control over the relevant risk by the repository of the power;
• the vulnerability of the persons put at risk; and
• coherence.

The Applicants emphasised the degree and nature of control able to be exercised by the Minister to avoid harm (control), the vulnerability of the Children (vulnerability), the reasonable foreseeability and nature of the harm (reasonable foreseeability) as well as a recognised category of relationship between the Minister and the Children (recognised relationship). The Minister contended that the posited duty was extraordinary, submitting that there was no precedent for a duty analogous to the duty contended for by the Applicants. Further, the Minister contended that ‘reasonable foreseeability’, ‘control’, the salient features of ‘proximity’, ‘reliance and responsibility’ as well as ‘indeterminacy’ all supported the rejection of the duty for which the Applicants contend.

The Court determined that the potential harm faced in the event of a 3°C rise in global temperatures would be catastrophic, with one million of today’s Australian children expected to suffer at least one heat-stress episode serious enough to require acute care in a hospital, thousands likely to suffer premature death from heat-stress or bushfire smoke and substantial economic loss and property damage will be experienced.

 The various types of harm contended for by the Applicants depended upon there being a nexus between an increase in global average surface temperature and the increased frequency or gravity of extreme climatic events such as heatwaves or bushfires. The Court noted that while the prospective contribution to the risk of exposure to harm made by the approval of the extraction of coal may be characterised as “tiny,”  the Minister’s prospective contribution is not so insignificant as to deny a real risk of harm to the Children.

The Court held that the Minister has direct control over the foreseeable risk because it is her exercise of power upon which the creation of that risk depends. Therefore, there is a direct relation between the exercise of the Minister’s power and the risk of harm to the Children resulting from the exercise of that power.

The Court ultimately held that the risk of harm to the Children was not remote, was reasonably foreseeable, and was therefore a real risk. In doing so, the Court rejected the Minister’s approach to ‘reasonable foreseeability’, which was described as amounting “to a contention that the mere possibility of a break in the causal chain will suffice to deny the reasonable foreseeability of harm,” [194] and established a duty to take reasonable care not to cause personal injury.

Injunction

In considering whether to grant an injunction, the Court accepted that it has the power to issue one against an officer of the Commonwealth. However, the Court did not grant the injunction because it was not satisfied that the restraint would not create incoherence, as it ‘may deny rather than induce the reasonable response which the duty of care requires.’ [502] Moreover, the Court noted that, with reference to the fact that harm was not imminent, it was ‘undesirable to pre-empt the Minister’s decision,’ [508] – namely that it would be far more appropriate to assess whether a breach of the duty should be restricted once the Minister has made a decision on whether she will approve the coal mine extension.

Conclusion

At this stage it’s difficult to determine the “winner” in this case. Given the creation of a novel duty of care, it is very likely that the Minister will appeal the decision. In its press release to the ASX, Whitehaven Coal stated that it welcomed the decision and looks forward to receiving EBPC Approval. On the other hand Ava Princi, one of the Applicants, stated that the judgement was “both thrilling and deeply relieving”. 

Although he refused to grant an injunction, the judge requested that the parties consider the effect of the decision before he would confirm his declaration. One of the issues for the parties to consider is the future affect of the declaration. As the matter was run as a class action on behalf of children who reside in Australia or elsewhere, the declaration may have consequences for the whole class and any future litigation by any Australian child.  

This decision is another example of the Court considering climate change in the context of applications for approval for development.  However, the decision has broader implications than this.

The decision confirms that Australia is becoming an important venue for novel climate change litigation. Other recent examples include:

• In 2019, a beneficiary of the industry super fund, REST, filed a lawsuit against the fund, arguing that its failure to provide adequate information relating to its exposure to climate-related risks prevented him from making an informed judgment about the management and financial condition of the fund. On 2 November 2020 the proceedings settled, just before trial. The terms of settlement are confidential, but REST released a press statement agreeing to comply with Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations on disclosure and risk assessment, including conducting "stress tests" on its investment portfolio. (settlement statement from REST)
• Equity Generation Lawyers, the same lawyers acting in this case have launched another class action against the Australian Commonwealth Government concerning its issue of sovereign bonds^[1].  The case is still going through the early interlocutory stages and a decision is not likely until 2022. 
• The claim does not seek damages but instead seeks declarations that the Commonwealth has failed to disclose the material risk that climate change presents to the bonds' value over time. An injunction preventing the promoting or issuing of bonds without providing material information related to climate change has been sought. If successful, the case may also expose financial institutions and corporates to securities class actions risk from failures to make adequate climate change disclosures in issuing documents and prospectus.
• In Gloucester Resources Limited v Minister for Planning [2019] NSWLEC 7 the Land and Environment Court refused a development consent under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (NSW) for a new mine, in part because of its negative effect on climate change resulting from the project’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Chief Justice Preston, at [525], recognised that “[t]here is a causal link between the Project’s cumulative GHG emissions and climate change and its consequences. The Project’s cumulative GHG emissions will contribute to the global total of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. The global total of GHG concentrations will affect the climate system and cause climate change impacts. The Project’s cumulative GHG emissions are therefore likely to contribute to the future changes to the climate system and the impacts of climate change. In this way, the Project is likely to have indirect impacts on the environment, including the climate system, the oceanic and terrestrial environment, and people.” The decision marks the first time that a coal mine has been rejected in Australia because of its future contribution to climate change.

At this stage, climate change litigation is mainly focused on the actions of the government, however it is expected that it will affect a wider proportion of Australian corporates, their directors and their insurers in the not too distant future.  This is also in the context of ever-increasing requirements of and supervision by APRA and ASIC in relation to climate risk disclosure requirements.

Links

• Warning to Climate Risk Laggards
• Warnings & Opportunities for Financial Institutions in managing Climate Change Risks
• Climate Change Risk Practice
• Mandatory climate-related financial disclosures
• Climate Change Litigation – Insights into the evolving global landscape
• Climate change, governments and human rights
• Event summary: Climate change liability risk forecast to 2050
• The Urgenda judgment and its potential implications
• (AU The Guardian) Australian Court Finds Government Has Duty To Protect Young People From Climate Crisis
• (AU) 'A Duty Of Care': Australian Teenagers Take Their Climate Crisis Plea To Court 
• Climate Change Litigation Update
• Students win landmark climate case. In global first, Minister has duty of care to protect young people from climate change
• (AU) Queensland Teenagers Lodge Legal Action Against Adani Coal Mine To Save Great Barrier Reef
• These Aussie Teens Have Launched A Landmark Climate Case Against The Government. Win Or Lose, It’ll Make A Difference
• (AU) Class Action To Stop Planned Coal Mine Extension Filed By Climate Action-Focused Australian Teenagers
• (AU) A Major Report Excoriated Australia’s Environment Laws. Sussan Ley’s Response Is Confused And Risky