[Outcast_Searcher]

A Group of Washington Teens Took the State to Court Over Climate Change — and Won

OK, I read this.

So in the party of the trial lawyers, suing people to just fix it is considered success. Fabulous.

I saw nothing about anything the teens were actually doing, or planned to do in THEIR lives to limit climate change, i.e. their personal carbon footprint.

But it will all be fixed, just because they want it to be. I'm so relieved.

Given how many lawyers infest US politics, somehow I think that if the problem of AGW could be magically solved by suing people, that could be managed.

So what next? Does everyone sue themselves over each of their devices which in some part of their lifecycle produce carbon? Do the lawsuits (and all the resources they take) have to be carbon neutral?

....

Reminder, before all the expected hate comes back -- I believe in AGW, have no kids, and live a lower middle class lifestyle, choosing to produce a small carbon footprint. Somehow, I think getting hundreds of millions to billions of middle class people to actually DO something instead of hurling blame and consuming everything in sight would be immensely more productive than this empty symbolism.

[dohboi]

I haven't looked into this particular suit, but certainly a lot of the battles will have to be fought out in the courts.

There isn't just one battle front.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I haven't looked into this particular suit, but certainly a lot of the battles will have to be fought out in the courts.

There isn't just one battle front.

Certainly. And if it's a specific issue with a specific, measurable, provable harm being done, and winning the suit will actually mean a specific MEANINGFUL positive change, that sounds like something for the courts to address.

My problem is all the meaningless feel-good press-release blather that means little or nothing, is primarily about cheer-leading, and yet is promoted as "positive change" or some such nonsense.

The recent fights over dirty coal come to mind as an example. Certainly that issue is worthy of meaningful discussion, and in the courts if necessary. Closing a coal plant and the costs and benefits are at least something that can be assigned parameters and judgement. OTOH "get out there and dramatically lower the planet's atmospheric CO2 level - just do it, because I said so" (details and practicality be damned) is about as helpful as demanding a herd of purple unicorns.

[dohboi]

get out there and dramatically lower the planet's atmospheric CO2 level - just do it, because I said so" (details and practicality be damned)

Well, that's basically what the Dutch courts recently did:

http://www.rechargenews.com/wind/140410 ... ons-target

Court orders Dutch government to increase emissions target

A court has told the Dutch government to boost its 2020 greenhouse gas emissions target, to protect citizens from dangers caused by climate change, in an unprecedented case that is being copied in Belgium.

And it sounds like Belgium is about to do the same.

It can be hard to know ahead of time which strategies are going to work in any situation. Who would have thought that Al Capone, responsible for countless murders and other heinous crimes, would be taken down by a tax charge? Sometime you just have to throw a lot of spitballs at the wall to see what sticks.

[Outcast_Searcher]

get out there and dramatically lower the planet's atmospheric CO2 level - just do it, because I said so" (details and practicality be damned)

Well, that's basically what the Dutch courts recently did:

http://www.rechargenews.com/wind/140410 ... ons-target

Court orders Dutch government to increase emissions target

A court has told the Dutch government to boost its 2020 greenhouse gas emissions target, to protect citizens from dangers caused by climate change, in an unprecedented case that is being copied in Belgium.

And it sounds like Belgium is about to do the same.

It can be hard to know ahead of time which strategies are going to work in any situation. Who would have thought that Al Capone, responsible for countless murders and other heinous crimes, would be taken down by a tax charge? Sometime you just have to throw a lot of spitballs at the wall to see what sticks.

OK. So they "raise the target". Fine. Not that this actually DOES anything.

Then when they go to implement it and the Dutch citizens discover it costs 99 kazillion Euros to try and implement. At which time those taxpaying citizens go ballistic.

Now what? Who gets blamed? And to what end?

I wouldn't call winning a suit mandating that a government "change a target" is much better than forming a committee. But then again, I worked for an industrial company (i.e. not government) where actual real-world results were expected, or else.

[Graeme]

Former Dept. of Justice Official Says Exxon News Worsens Liability Picture

The former Department of Justice lawyer who led the watershed lawsuit against tobacco companies, says that the news out today about oil giant ExxonMobil knowing as early as 1981 about the threat posed by climate change could worsen the fossil fuel industry's liability picture.

desmogblog

Around the world in 5 climate change lawsuits

When a Dutch district court ordered the Netherlands government to up its climate game, campaigners were overjoyed.

For the first time ever, last month judges accepted human rights arguments for demanding a country make deeper greenhouse gas emissions cuts.

“The State must do more to avert the imminent danger caused by climate change,” read the verdict.

The case, brought by pressure group Urgenda, does not set a binding precedent for any other jurisdiction. But it has emboldened environmental lawyers around the world in drawing up their own lawsuits.

“The legal arguments that we used in the case… are not unique to the Netherlands,” lawyer Dennis van Berkel told RTCC.

Top legal experts from around the world in March inked the Oslo Principles on climate change, setting out clear obligations on states and businesses.

“Avoiding severe global catastrophe is a moral and legal imperative,” they declared.

Here are five legal battles to watch.

rtcc

Oklahoma Court Rules Homeowners Can Sue Oil and Gas Companies Over Earthquake Damage

[Keith_McClary]

Former Dept. of Justice Official Says Exxon News Worsens Liability Picture

This info comes from The Climate Deception Dossiers, Union of Concerned Scientists .

For nearly three decades, many of the world's largest fossil fuel companies have knowingly worked to deceive the public about the realities and risks of climate change.

Their deceptive tactics are now highlighted in this set of seven "deception dossiers"—collections of internal company and trade association documents that have either been leaked to the public, come to light through lawsuits, or been disclosed through Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests.

Each collection provides an illuminating inside look at this coordinated campaign of deception, an effort underwritten by ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell, Peabody Energy, and other members of the fossil fuel industry.

[Graeme]

Dutch Court’s Climate Ruling May Force Other States To Cut Emissions – Or Else

A Dutch district court has ordered the Netherlands to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 25% lower than 1990 levels by 2020. This is several percentage points deeper than the 17% reduction the country had been envisaging.

While such a ruling may seem astonishing at first, the move by civil society to take on individual states for a global collective lack of progress on emissions reductions makes perfect sense. Whether anything will change in the Netherlands in the short term remains to be seen. Instead, by setting a precedent and inspiring further actions, this ruling may have its greatest impact elsewhere in the world.

The judgment implies that failure to address climate change and the harm it may cause is seen as a civil wrong in the Netherlands, within the scope of the tort law that people can appeal to when they have been wrongfully harmed. True, the Dutch government had argued that it is fully complying with its international obligations. But the judges point out that, since the Netherlands agrees measures should be taken to limit global warming to 2℃ above pre-industrial levels, the presence of a gap between international obligations and what would actually be needed to meet the 2℃ target does not take away an independent duty of care.

cleantechnica

[dohboi]

And then there's: http://icecoalition.com/

[ROCKMAN]

"The petition specifically calls for a goal of getting the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere down from the current level of more than 400 to 350 parts per million by the year 2100." So the logic is that Washington state can effectively offset the global production of GHG by limiting its own contribution. I can understand children not realizing that even if the state cut it GHG emissions to zero it would have no global effect. What's truly sad is the adults who might think there's any importance to the ruling at all.

Of course given that the state is the 5th largest producer of fossil fuel products in the country it matters little how much it reduces its GHG footprint since it's exporting hundreds of times as much GHG that will be generated in others states. But what the heck...don't let the facts ruin a nice feel-good story. LOL. Maybe they should have asked the court to ban oil refining in the state if they really wanted to have an impact.

[Outcast_Searcher]

But what the heck...don't let the facts ruin a nice feel-good story. LOL. Maybe they should have asked the court to ban oil refining in the state if they really wanted to have an impact.

Never expect anyone (especially those who run to lawyers ASAP) to gore their OWN financial ox. The VAST majority of people are out for their OWN interest, at the end of the day.

The left is no different, no matter how shrilly they claim otherwise.

[dohboi]

Projection, much?

[dohboi]

Plant's gonna love this one:

Future generations' sue Obama administration over climate change

"This case presents the opportunity for a landmark decision like Brown v. Board of Education (on racial equality) or Obergefell v. Hodges (on marriage equality),” Julia Olson, one of the kids’ lawyers, wrote in a briefing sent to msnbc. It asks the court to decide whether children have a constitutional right to protection from fossil fuel policies that “knowingly create dangerous climate change.”

Olson is executive director of Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit that has spearheaded climate-related lawsuits in all 50 states. All have fallen short of success in one way or another. But this new federal filing goes further than anything the group – or anyone else – has filed in the past.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/future-gener ... ate-change

[ROCKMAN]

dohboi - What's interesting is that the plaintiff is part of the collective group (fossil fuel consumers) that are directly responsible for the vast majority of the GHG generated on the planet. But in a way they do have an argument: the US govt does not have policies that ban (or at least severely restrict) US citizens from consuming fossil fuels.

[dohboi]

Well, they're kids and the unborn (as I understand it), so they probably haven't done a lot of intentional burning of ffs.

Smokers also used the products that killed them, but I would aver that they were very much victims of the industry's decades of lies and their intentional attempts to hook them as children and keep them hooked.

People wake up every day wanting to get to work (ok, some not so wild about that one), cook their food, heat their houses and light their way...they don't long to burn fossil fuels.

If the gov and if companies had coordinated a way of fulfilling these and other vital functions without jeopardizing their own and their childrens' futures, I'm sure most people would be more than happy.

[onlooker]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/chev ... r-lawsuit/
http://www.chevron.com/ecuador/
http://business-humanrights.org/en/texa ... re-ecuador
This is a series of links to apparently a very complex suit bought by Ecuador against Chevron and I think other defendants related to contamination and environmental and human harm in areas of Amazonian Ecuador. I first heard of this case in a documentary on TV. Well looks like a US judge ruled in favor of Chevron alleging Rico violations and fraud. For those interested in litigation and stopping the FF industry should be very interesting to delve into this case.

[onlooker]

http://link.springer.com/article/10.100 ... -5#/page-1
This link is another article to the history of the denial campaign of Exxon. It certainly appears that their is enough evidence to take this behemoth company to trial and have a chance of winning. Critical mass may be approaching for the right circumstances to take Exxon to court.

[Cog]

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-015-1472-5#/page-1
This link is another article to the history of the denial campaign of Exxon. It certainly appears that their is enough evidence to take this behemoth company to trial and have a chance of winning. Critical mass may be approaching for the right circumstances to take Exxon to court.

Not if I am on the jury.

[onlooker]

I would not have assumed so. Thanks goodness you probably will not be on it.