People
from Seattle to Fiji are filing lawsuits over global warming.
Climate
action is finally gaining ground in Washington. No, not that Washington.
Following
their victory in a Seattle court, eight children are pressing Washington
State’s Department of Ecology to crack down on carbon pollution. The agency
has until August 7 to reach an agreement with the youths, who
sued after the department rejected their petition. Otherwise, the kids will go
back to court.
“I
hope our voices are heard,” said Aji Piper, a 14-year-old and one of the
plaintiffs.
Judge Hollis Hill, for one, is listening. She agreed with the
teens and tweens in a first-of-its-kind ruling, citing a “historical lack of
political will to respond adequately to the urgent and dire acceleration of
global warming.”
Climate change mashes up environmental, moral, meteorological, economic, political, scientific, and industrial challenges. Given that complexity, it’s no wonder it took more than 25 years of international climate talks for global emissions to even stabilize.
Slashing
climate pollution may take something new — like suing governments for failing
to shield their constituents from a climate catastrophe and prosecuting the
oil, gas, and coal industries for this mess. Ultimately, climate lawyers could
replicate successes scored with tobacco litigation and the legal actions that brought
about marriage equality.
The
biggest breakthrough came right after the Washington ruling when a Dutch courtordered the government of the Netherlands to reduce
that nation’s emissions by 25 percent within five years. As the low-lying
nation currently aims for only a 17 percent cut, this case filed on behalf of
900 people marked a global precedent.
More
lawsuits are in the pipeline.
One
pits South Pacific islanders whose countries are threatened by
rising sea levels against big oil companies. These folks from Vanuatu,
Kiribati, Tuvalu, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and the Philippines may already
have Exhibit A.
It’s
an email from Lenny Bernstein, a scientist who worked for both Exxon and Mobil
when they were separate companies. In this note, obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Bernstein reveals that Exxon
was already taking climate-related risks into account with its investment
decisions by 1981.
Experts
say the scientist’s email shows that corporate leaders knew for more than 30
years that their oil and gas operations were bound to harm the climate. Instead of changing their ways,
they emulated Big Tobacco by bankrolling climate denial.
Proving
government liability might also be easier than you’d think. The record shows that U.S. officials began to fret about
climate change by 1965.
President
Richard Nixon’s advisor — and future Senator — Daniel Patrick Moynihan made
this clear in a 1969 memo he wrote to another Nixon aide. In it, he
outlined “the carbon dioxide problem” caused by fossil fuels.
“Goodbye
New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter,” Moynihan wrote of the
consequences of a potential 10-foot rise in sea levels. “We have no data on
Seattle.”
Julia
Olson is the founder and lead lawyer of Our Children’s Trust, one of the two
groups that helped file the Washington lawsuit. She says the evidence of
federal wrongdoing is clear.
“Fifty
years ago, they knew exactly what was happening and how to stop it,” she told
me. “The solutions at this point lie in the courts.”
She
came up with her youth-focused strategy after becoming a mom.
“Kids
don’t get to vote and choose the policies for their future,” Olson said. “They
are going to suffer the impacts of climate destruction more than the rest of
us.”
The
lawyer and her team have filed more than a dozen climate cases on behalf of
children. Suits in Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Colorado, and North
Carolina are pending. More are coming soon in Pennsylvania, Florida, and
Hawaii. Also on this deep docket: suing the federal government for a second
time by the end of July.
All
those lawsuits just might bring about a legal tipping point.
Columnist
Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit
national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies.
OtherWords.org.