US Edition
Climate campaigners bombard courts with action against oil execs
Further wave of action is expected as lawyers pioneer new legal concepts such as ‘ecocide’
Climate campaigners are bombarding the courts with lawsuits against energy companies in a new attempt to end the use of fossil fuels, a report from the London School of Economics (LSE) has found.
There are 132 climate cases in the British legal system at present, the LSE found, up from 102 a year ago. It makes this country the third highest centre for climate litigation in the world after the US and Australia.
The LSE suggested that this year will set a new record for the number of cases, with a further wave of action expected as environmental lawyers increasingly pioneer new legal concepts such as “ecocide”.
Their aim is to tie up oil and gas company executives with legal action or even trials over accusations that the emissions from their products killed people.
The report, authored by Dr Joana Setzer and Cathy Higham of the LSE’s Grantham climate research institute, said: “Increasingly, we are seeing the physical and mental health impacts of climate change becoming the focus of litigation – as both the scientific evidence and people’s lived experience of those impacts develop.”
The US had the highest number of running climate cases with a total of 1,745. Another 129 cases were filed in America last year. Australia has 132 cases.
The report comes on the eve of the biggest environmental case yet taken in the UK, over the 2015 collapse of the Fundão Dam in southeast Brazil, operated by BHP, a UK-based mining conglomerate.
The disaster killed 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. BHP is being sued by 700,000 plaintiffs seeking £36bn in damages.
The case, planned for a London High Court hearing in October, is expected to set legal precedents that will open the way for much more climate litigation.
The study follows last month’s Supreme Court ruling on a separate case taken by lone environmentalist Sarah Finch. It ordered that planning authorities considering new drilling sites must in future account for the emissions released by burning the fossil fuels produced.
The ruling has left the UK industry in turmoil, uncertain if it can ever develop another oil or gas field, and marks a likely final nail in the prospects for fracking in the UK.
The Telegraph sought comments from the UK’s two biggest oil and gas companies, Shell and BP, as well as from the industry trade body Offshore Energies UK. They all declined to respond.
Emma Montlake of the Environmental Law Foundation, which promotes climate litigation, said she expected cases against energy companies and governments to surge.
She said: “As climate chaos and sea level rises unfold and other impacts get worse, people will ask in ever-increasing numbers how legal reparations can be made by those who knew about the effects of burning fossil fuels but hid their conclusions.”