Story originally published by DeSmog
Climate litigation had a momentous year in 2023. Courts worldwide heard evidence and arguments at pivotal trials and hearings. Landmark rulings marked progress in holding governments to account for climate inaction or denial, and new climate cases continued to be filed. With climate lawsuits now totaling nearly 2,500 worldwide, it is clear that courts have become a critical venue for seeking climate justice and accountability. Here are some of this year’s highlights. Major Court Victories United States In a groundbreaking ruling in August, Judge Kathy Seeley of the First Judicial District Court of Montana found in Held v. State of Montana that the state’s ongoing support for and promotion of fossil fuel development — including directing state regulators not to consider a project’s climate impacts during the permitting process — violated Montana’s constitutional guarantee of the right to a clean and healthful environment, which extends to a stable climate. This case, brought by 16 children and teens against their state government in 2020, was the first constitutional climate case in the U.S. to reach trial, as well as a case brought by youth plaintiffs. It was also just the second time that climate scientists have given expert testimony in a trial setting in a U.S. court. Montana — a state known for both its natural splendor, and its coal mines and oil and gas operations — had no answer to the robust scientific evidence presented to the court. The scientists who testified on the plaintiffs’ side included experts such as award-winning climate scientist Steven Running, who has contributed to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports; ecologist Daniel Fagre, an expert on Montana’s Glacier National Park; and Mark Z. Jacobson, a world-leading expert on renewable energy and the energy transition. Legal experts say this ruling could have broad implications. “It may provide something of a roadmap for future cases,” Jennifer Rushlow, dean of the Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment, professor of law, and faculty director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School, told DeSmog. According to Delta Merner, lead scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Science Hub for Climate Litigation, this victory also demonstrated the importance of bringing climate science into the courtroom. “The judge’s dismissal of Montana’s feeble defense underscored the irrefutable nature of climate science,” Merner wrote in a recent blog post, “offering hope for future cases and represents a crucial step toward aligning legal systems with the urgency of climate action.” Europe As the annual United Nations climate conference — known as COP28 — kicked off in Dubai on Nov. 30, an appeals court in Belgium handed down a victory in a human rights lawsuit brought by an association of Belgian citizens against the national government and several regional jurisdictions. The court ordered the Belgian government to slash carbon emissions by at least 55 percent (below 1990 levels) by 2030. This is only the second time that a court has imposed a binding emissions reduction target on a country, — following the historic 2015 Urgenda ruling in the Netherlands. This ruling followed a 2021 decision in the same case, in which the court ruled that the governments had violated their legal obligations, under Belgian civil law and European human rights law, in failing to protect citizens from dangerous climate change. Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Urgenda Foundation’s Climate Litigation Network, told DeSmog this is only the third time any court has “order[ed] a government to close the ambition gap between its weak [greenhouse gas] target and what science demands.” In 2021, Germany’s highest court ordered the German government to revise its national climate law, finding it to be insufficiently protective of youth and future generations. In Norway, a climate lawsuit trial got underway during the same week as the Belgium ruling. Greenpeace Nordic and Young Friends of the Earth Norway have challenged the Norwegian government’s approval of three new North Sea oil fields. This case builds upon a previous legal challenge to Norway’s licensing of offshore oil and gas development. This case has been strengthened by authoritative statements from expert sources, such as the International Energy Agency, emphasizing that new fossil fuel development is inconsistent with the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C. “This case in Norway joins a rising tide of litigation around the world challenging the decisions to expand fossil fuels in the face of mounting climate chaos,” Nikki Reisch, director of the Climate and Energy program at the Center for International Environmental Law, said during a press conference at COP28. It is a reminder that “governments have existing legal duties outside and will be held accountable to them in court,” said Reisch. Human Rights and Accountability Cases Advance As devastating climate impacts intensify and accelerate, courts are increasingly seeing cases alleging that insufficient government climate policies amount to human rights violations. United States In the U.S., climate accountability lawsuits targeting major oil and gas companies for alleged deception and disinformation made significant advances in 2023. The Hawaii Supreme Court heard an appeal from the industry defendants in City and County of Honolulu v. Sunoco LP et al. in August, and ruled on October 31 to uphold the trial court’s denial of their motions to dismiss. While another motion to dismiss, claiming that the lawsuit violates the industry defendants’ free speech rights, is still pending at Hawaii’s Intermediate Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court’s ruling puts the case firmly on track towards trial. Several climate liability suits brought by municipalities and states across the U.S. also are moving ahead in state courts, aided by the Supreme Court’s April decision to decline petitions from the industry defendants that sought to procedurally derail the litigation. These cases had been tied up for years while the fossil fuel industry attempted to get them moved to federal courts. The Supreme Court’s decisions declining to intervene, Rushlow said, will “unlock a lot of movement in cases that have just been plugged up.” “It does feel like some of the chains were broken this year,” she told DeSmog. The Supreme Court has so far denied industry petitions in climate lawsuits filed by the states of Rhode Island and Delaware; the cities of Baltimore, Maryland and Hoboken, New Jersey; Colorado’s Boulder and San Miguel counties and the city of Boulder; and California’s San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Marin counties and and the cities of Richmond, Imperial Beach, and Santa Cruz, as well as Hawaii’s Maui and Honolulu counties and the city of Honolulu. Europe In 2023 the European Court of Human Rights held its first-ever hearings in lawsuits challenging governments’ inadequate climate responses on human rights grounds. All three cases heard by the European Court of Human Rights seek to compel governments to align their climate policies with what science demands in order to safeguard human rights. In late March, the Strasbourg-based court heard two climate cases. KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland was brought by a group of elderly Swiss women who are vulnerable to worsening health impacts from extreme heat. Carême v. France was filed by a French citizen and the former mayor of a coastal village in northern France that is exposed to heavy flooding. In September, the Human Rights Court heard a third climate case, this one brought by six Portuguese youths against 32 European countries in what one legal expert described as a “truly historic” hearing, marking the first time that dozens of national governments have been forced, in a single case, to defend their climate policies before a court. The young people launched their lawsuit in 2020, following several years of record-breaking heat in Portugal, as well as deadly wildfires in 2017. The year also saw an unsuccessful attempt in the UK to hold an oil company’s board of directors liable for disregarding climate risk. The UK-based environmental law organization ClientEarth brought a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in February against Shell’s board of directors, arguing that Shell’s failure to align its business and energy transition strategy with the goals of the Paris Agreement breaches UK corporate law. The High Court of England and Wales, and subsequently the Court of Appeal, ultimately dismissed the case. However, some experts believe it could be just the beginning of climate litigation against corporate boards of directors. Asia-Pacific In Australia, a class action climate lawsuit against the federal government, filed by two Indigenous Torres Strait Islanders on behalf of all of the area’s island inhabitants, advanced to trial with a two-part evidentiary hearing. At the first hearing in June, held in the Torres Strait Island communities, the court heard and saw evidence directly on how climate change is adversely affecting the area. The second hearing, which was held in November in federal court in Melbourne, featured expert testimony from climate scientists. The lawsuit seeks a court order that would compel the Australian government to take measures that will protect the Torres Strait Islands from climate harms, and to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in line with the best available climate science. New Climate Cases United States In June, Multnomah County, Oregon – home to Portland, the state’s largest city – sued more than a dozen oil and gas companies and several of their trade associations. The county seeks to hold them liable for billions of dollars in damages related to the deadly heat dome that scorched the Pacific Northwest in June 2021, including $50 million in actual damages and $1.5 billion in future damages. The county is also seeking $50 billion to study, plan and upgrade municipal services and infrastructure to safeguard against future extreme heat events. The 2021 heat dome killed more than 60 people in Multnomah County, where it has been described as a mass casualty event. Multnomah County’s lawsuit is the first climate case to name McKinsey & Company, a corporate consulting giant that has worked on the behalf of fossil fuel companies. This signals the growing potential for PR agencies and consulting firms that help bolster the fossil fuel industry to be implicated in climate litigation. In September, California entered the fray. The state’s climate lawsuit, filed against five oil and gas majors and the American Petroleum Institute, charges the defendants with deliberately deceiving Californians for decades about the climate risks of their products and continuing to mislead consumers through greenwashing and false advertising. The state seeks monetary damages, paid into an abatement fund, to help the state pay for escalating climate-related costs. Given California’s position as the world’s fifth largest economy, as a national leader in climate action — and as an oil-producing state itself — this suit is a seismic shift in the legal fight against Big Oil, adding substantial pressure to calls for fossil fuel industry accountability. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta have encouraged other states and jurisdictions to join them in suing fossil fuel titans for lying about the harmful impacts of the use of oil, gas, and coal. This strand of U.S. climate litigation is grounded in evidence of the industry’s deception, though the legal claims and remedies sought vary to some degree. Several cases are based strictly on state consumer fraud claims and seek judicial decrees to end the alleged deceptive conduct. Others have been brought under state tort claims like nuisance and failure to warn, and demand monetary damages. Some feature a combination of consumer fraud and cost recovery approaches. In early December, Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit law firm behind the Held case in Montana, launched a new lawsuit against the Biden administration on behalf of over a dozen California youth. The case, Genesis B. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, alleges that the EPA is knowingly endangering the health and welfare of children by permitting unsafe levels of greenhouse gas emissions, and further discriminates against them by discounting the economic value of their lives in regulatory cost-benefit analyses. The 18 youth plaintiffs, who range in age from 8 to 17 years old, are seeking a declaration that their constitutional rights have been violated, along with an order clarifying the standard of judicial review to protect the rights of children as a distinct and protected class — meaning a decision on whether U.S. law includes unique protections for children in the context of climate change. On December 20, a pair of Native American tribes in Washington State also launched accountability lawsuits. The Makah Indian Tribe and the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe each filed complaints in King County Superior Court against six major oil and gas companies: ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Phillips 66. Alleging historical and ongoing deception by the companies — including promoting and funding climate denial and, more recently, portraying their businesses as climate-friendly through misleading advertising — the lawsuits aim to make them “pay for the damage their deceptive conduct has caused and will cause for decades to come.” Europe In Italy, climate campaigners and citizens sued Italian oil major Eni in May for alleged deception and greenwashing. The case, brought by Greenpeace Italy, ReCommon, and 12 Italian citizens, argues that Eni has deliberately downplayed the climate dangers of its products, and has failed to align its business strategy with global climate goals. Saying that this violates human rights law, the groups and citizens have demanded that the court order Eni to reduce its emissions by at least 45 percent by 2030. The case builds on the successful 2021 Milieudefensie case against Shell in the Netherlands, in which the Dutch court determined that Shell has a legal duty to respect human rights, and ordered the company to slash emissions across its supply chain by 45 percent by 2030. The Eni case came as new evidence emerged indicating Eni knew of the climate consequences of its products at least as early as the 1970s, yet continued to market methane gas as a clean fuel. Legal Threats to Activists This year also saw new lawsuits brought by oil majors against climate campaigners. In November, Shell brought a lawsuit of its own against Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International, in response to protestors boarding a Shell oil platform earlier in the year. According to a Greenpeace press release, Shell has demanded that Greenpeace permanently cease protests at its offshore infrastructure or face potential damages of $8.6 million. The group described the lawsuit as “one of the biggest legal threats against the Greenpeace network’s ability to campaign in its more than 50-year history.” Greenpeace has said it will agree to the protest ban if Shell agrees to “stop wrecking the climate,” by complying with the Dutch court order in the Milieudefensie case. In August, Eni targeted some of the climate activists suing the company, announcing potential plans to countersue Greenpeace Italy and ReCommon on defamation grounds. Looking Ahead to 2024 Expect even more new climate lawsuits to be filed over the next year. United States Among them, Our Children’s Trust has stated that it plans to launch a new youth climate lawsuit against the state government of Alaska, while Milieudefensie has said it will be suing a Dutch financial institution. Friends of the Earth International’s Sara Shaw said, during a COP28 press conference, that Milieudefensie will announce the name of the company on January 19, 2024. In Hawaii, a second constitutional climate case brought by youth is set to go to trial in June, when Honolulu’s Environmental Court hears the lawsuit Navahine F. v. Hawaii Department of Transportation. In this lawsuit, 14 Hawaiian children and teens have sued the state transportation agency, contending that it authorizes unsafe levels of climate pollution, which violates their rights under the Hawaiian state constitution. “It seems like we could be coming up on some busy times for [climate] trials,” said Vermont Law’s Rushlow. “It does feel like a significant moment.” Europe Significant court decisions may also be made, such as judgments in the climate cases heard this year by the European Court of Human Rights. The coming year will see an evidentiary hearing in the Luciano Lliuya v. RWE case in Germany’s Hamm Regional Court. In this case, Peruvian farmer and mountain guide Saúl Luciano Lliuya has sued German energy utility RWE, aiming to hold the company liable for its contribution to global greenhouse gas pollution that has resulted in localized flooding of his village as mountain glaciers melt. Additionally, an appeals court in the Netherlands will hear Shell’s appeal in the Milieudefensie v. Shell case, as the company seeks to overturn the groundbreaking 2021 verdict holding the company accountable for failing to align its business with the decarbonization aims of the Paris Climate Agreement. Milieudefensie’s Eline Zeilmaker said during a COP28 press conference that the hearing is scheduled to start on April 2, 2024, with a final ruling hopefully coming by the end of the year. Asia-Pacific Further hearings in the Torres Strait Islanders’ case against Australia are also scheduled for April in Cairns. A ruling is expected later in the year, according to Grata Fund — an Australian foundation supporting the litigation.
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The UN climate negotiations in Dubai have wrapped up following a historic push to compel the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties to confront what is at the core of the climate crisis – to finally use the ‘F’ words in the official text. While it is significant that the outcome document recognized (after nearly 30 years) the need to transition away from fossil fuels, it is immensely far from the ambitious agreement that climate advocates called for. The question now seems to be, where do we go from here? Some have suggested the whole process is broken, at a point of near-total takeover by the major polluters (and abetted by PR firms) and should be fixed by changing the rules of the game. Others say we should look to mechanisms and fora outside the UNFCCC. Initiatives are underway to work towards a Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty, to criminalize ecocide, to seek climate change advisory opinions from several international courts and tribunals, and to transform anthropocentric legal systems by adopting rights of nature laws. All of these approaches (and more) are needed to overhaul the status quo governance response to the climate emergency. What does seem clear at this point is that the law is an essential part of pursuing climate action and accountability. These two ‘A’ words go together, and, as climate journalist Amy Westervelt has said, accountability is not just another climate solution but actually has to be the first one. This is where climate accountability litigation – lawsuits generally aimed at holding governments or corporations accountable in the context of the climate crisis – comes in. A lot is happening in this space. In just the last two weeks at COP28 there have been discussions, in side events and press conferences, touching on the increasing importance of bringing climate into the courts. I’ll get to some highlights of these discussions in a moment. But first it is worth mentioning a couple of developments in climate litigation that arose at the same time that COP28 was underway. While world leaders and delegates assembled in Dubai, courts in Europe and the US saw climate accountability in action with a trial in Norway, a verdict in Belgium, and a new lawsuit filed in California. Governments “Will Be Held Accountable” in Court The trial, held in Oslo District Court from November 28 to December 6, put the Norwegian government on defense over its recent approvals of three new oil fields in the North Sea. Greenpeace Nordic and Natur og Ungdom (Young Friends of the Earth Norway) argue in their latest lawsuit against the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy that assessments of the fields’ expected contribution to global emissions were highly insufficient or (for one of the fields) not done at all. The groups base their legal challenge on a ruling from Norway’s Supreme Court determining that the government has a duty to assess the climate effects of new oil fields under consideration. By approving the new fields, the Ministry has contravened climate science and the law, the case contends, in violation of the Norwegian constitution and the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. A successful outcome in the case would mean “that the assessments we are disputing would have to be redone according to science, and that means a 1.5-degree [Celsius] scenario, and we know there is no room for new oil and gas in a 1.5-degree scenario,” Klimentina Radkova, climate and energy adviser and legal campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic, said during a COP28 press conference on December 6, speaking remotely from outside the courtroom in Oslo. Norway is among five wealthy countries that are responsible for 51 percent of planned oil and gas expansion through 2050, according to a September report from Oil Change International. Another recent analysis of planned fossil fuel expansion, the 2023 Production Gap Report, found that countries like Norway are set to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels by 2030 than would be compatible with the 1.5 degree C warming limit. These production plans “are not just scientifically unsound. They are legally impermissible,” said Nikki Reisch, director of the Climate and Energy Program at CIEL. “This case in Norway is a reminder that no matter what happens in these halls at COP,” she added, speaking at the Dec. 6 COP28 press conference hosted by Greenpeace, “governments have existing legal duties outside and will be held accountable to them in court.” A verdict from the Brussels Court of Appeal in a climate lawsuit against Belgium demonstrates that this is already starting to happen. On November 30 – the opening day of COP28 – the court upheld the lower court’s finding that Belgium’s insufficient climate ambition violates domestic and international law, and went a step further in ordering the government to take all necessary measures to reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030. This is only the second time, following the historic Urgenda case in the Netherlands, that a court has imposed a binding emissions reduction order on a country. Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network (a project of Urgenda), said this is a “significant ruling for the 40+ similar cases pending against high-emitting governments globally.” In the US, the federal government is facing a new constitutional climate lawsuit brought by young people. This case, filed in federal court in California on December 10 as COP28 was in its final days, specifically targets the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “EPA is the sole agency that was created to control air pollution and to protect public health,” said Andrea Rodgers, senior litigation attorney at the nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust. “For the last 50 years they’ve done just the opposite, by allowing amounts of climate pollution that EPA knows are life threatening to children.” Plaintiffs are 18 children and teens from California, and they allege that EPA knowingly endangers their health and welfare in violation of the US Constitution’s rights to equal protection and due process as well as the fundamental right to life. The case also charges EPA with discriminating against youth, particularly in discounting the economic value of their lives in regulatory cost-benefit calculations that favors present values over future ones. Although children and future generations are disproportionately burdened with climate impacts that worsen over time, they “do not have the political protections that adults have,” Rodgers explained. “That’s why they’re going to the courts.” The case is part of a burgeoning wave of rights-based climate lawsuits worldwide, many filed by youth, challenging governments’ responses to the climate emergency. Courts are increasingly recognizing the critical role they must play in this context. Speaking at a COP28 side event on December 10 – the first time that judges have convened institutionally at a UN climate summit - Chief Justice Luis Roberto Barroso of the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil said that courts have a duty to intervene on matters of climate change given the shortsightedness of politics, and the inability of some populations – like children and future generations – to have a voice in decision-making. In constitutional democracies, he said, courts not only act as a constitutional check on the other branches of government, but also act as an “enlightening” and representative force to address social demands that other branches have disregarded and to protect fundamental human rights. “History has shown that systemic changes almost always have been anchored in the legal system,” Christina Voigt, Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law and a professor of law at the University of Oslo, said in her keynote address at the side event. “Courts and judges are an indispensable part of this transition. The climate challenge at its core is a justice challenge.” “It is inconceivable that a court won’t intervene in what will be, and already is, the biggest violation of human rights in the history of mankind,” Eline Zeilmaker, a senior legal advisor at Milieudefensie, said during Greenpeace’s Dec. 6 press conference at COP28. “After all, if the law does not protect us against the destruction of our society, there is no justice.” Corporate Climate Accountability: Potential Game Changer? Mileudefensie won a groundbreaking judgment in 2021 in its climate accountability lawsuit against Shell. The ruling from the District Court of the Hague in the Netherlands ordered Shell to reduce GHG emissions across its entire supply chain by 45% (relative to 2019 levels) by 2030. It is the first judicial ruling to recognize that a corporation has a legal obligation to mitigate climate pollution in order to respect human rights and abide by the Paris Climate Agreement. Shell has appealed the ruling, and according to Zeilmaker, the appeals court will hear the case in April 2024, with a decision hopefully coming by the end of next year. Although Shell appears to ignoring the trial court’s verdict as it doubles down on its core oil and gas business, Sara Shaw of Friends of the Earth International said at a December 10 COP28 press conference that the oil major is not legally permitted to disregard the ruling. “The original verdict said that Shell could not delay acting and that it must comply with the verdict regardless of when it appeals,” she said. Regardless of the outcome, when it comes to litigation targeting powerful corporate entities, “There is going to be resistance,” human rights attorney Steven Donziger said during a December 7 panel on climate litigation, part of We Don’t Have Time’s COP28 Climate Hub at American University. He can attest to this from personal experience, having been targeted (and convicted) in a corporate-led prosecution after successfully securing a $10 billion verdict against Chevron for its pollution and poisoning of indigenous communities in Ecuador. Still, Donziger said, climate litigation “is a necessity. It’s an extremely important component of the climate justice movement.”
Prof. William Snape, assistant dean and director of the Program on Environmental and Energy Law at American University’s Washington College of Law, sitting beside Donziger on the panel, highlighted the state-law based climate accountability lawsuits brought by municipalities and states in the US against fossil fuel entities as a particularly significant strand of this litigation. If just one of these cases is successful,” he said, “that would be multiple of billions of dollars of liability. That would begin to change the game” In September the state of California launched the latest of these cases, filing what Attorney General Rob Bonta says is a “game changing lawsuit” against five of the biggest oil and gas companies and their chief trade association. Speaking at a COP28 side event on December 3, Bonta explained the reason his office has decided to take Big Oil to court. “Big Oil has known since the ‘60s their product would cause climate change and damage the planet, and they purposely chose to deny the truth. Why? In pursuit of endless profits,” he said. “The deception from these greedy corporations needs to stop and they need to be held accountable for their misdeeds, thus our lawsuit.” Bonta’s remarks from Dubai came as swarms of fossil fuel lobbyists and oil and gas executives – including ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods - were roaming the COP28 halls, and in the case of ADNOC’s Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, presiding over the entire conference. Some campaigners have called out fossil fuel heads and lobbyists as “merchants of death.” A new report from Greenpeace Netherlands released during COP28 attempts to put some numbers behind that label, estimating that global heating driven by the emissions of nine major European oil and gas companies in 2022 alone could result in at least 360,000 premature deaths before the end of the century. A companion publication issued with the report explores potential “entry points” for criminally prosecuting fossil fuel companies for recklessly endangering human lives in five countries – the UK, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. “We believe that it is time that prosecutors take that responsibility, take all the evidence that is already there, and make use of those entry points to hold fossil fuel companies legally to account for the deaths that they are causing with their emissions” Lisa Göldner, Fossil Free Revolution Campaigner, Greenpeace International, said during a December 5 COP28 press briefing hosted by Climate Action Network International. “Compelling Action, Holding Polluters Accountable” With the final text of COP28 failing to reflect the unwavering call for a full, fast, fair, and funded phase out of fossil fuels, as climate justice grounded in the science demands, the most climate-vulnerable communities will continue to turn to the courts amidst mounting loss and damage, aiming to hold the world’s biggest government and corporate climate polluters accountable. “We are confronting the sobering reality of a planet in peril,” said Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne, “a planet that these large polluters are literally burning to the ground.” Speaking at a COP28 High-Level Party Event hosted by the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative on Dec. 2, he suggested that climate accountability and justice calls for legal action. “If, as a consequence of all of our voluntary efforts, we are unable to protect that 1.5-degree threshold, if there’s going to be an overshoot, then perhaps the future discussion will be around legal action to hold large polluters accountable,” he said Climate litigation is certainly not the only answer or avenue for accountability, and it does come with significant challenges and limitations. “There are many reasons why litigation shouldn’t be the place to address climate change,” Jennifer Rushlow, a dean and environmental law professor and faculty director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School, told me via phone. “But it feels like none of the other methods that are available to us are working, and litigation is the only strictly enforceable way of compelling action, holding polluters accountable. And so while it’s slow and expensive, the outcome is a harder, more binding outcome.” “When politics breaks down,” CIEL’s Nikki Reisch said during Greenpeace’s December 6 COP28 press conference, “sometimes the law can break through.” “There’s really no sign of this litigation stopping,” she added. “It’s clear the movement is growing and the ratchet of accountability is coming.” |
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