Climate change litigation

For instance, Smith v Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd argues for the new tort of climate change damage and the New Zealand Supreme Court duly ruled in 2024 that this novel civil wrong can be asserted in future proceedings.

[27][28][29][30] In 2017, San Francisco, Oakland and other California coastal communities sued multiple fossil-fuel companies for rising sea levels;[20] they lost.

The lawsuit alleges that parties, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and the American Petroleum Institute, deceptively used "pseudo-science, fabricated doubt, and a well-funded, sustained public relations campaign" to subvert scientific consensus over the course of decades.

[2] Cases in Australia include Torres Strait Islanders v. Australia (2019),[34][35] in which the United Nations Human Rights Committee found that the Australian government had violated the Islanders' human rights by failure to act on climate change, Youth Verdict v. Waratah Coal (2020),[36] and Sharma v. Minister for the Environment (2020),[37] in which eight young people unsuccessfully argued for an injunction against the expansion of a Whitehaven coal mine.

[44] In 2023, the Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court said the government's action on transport and housing fell short under a law setting upper limits for carbon emissions for individual sectors.

Under the ruling, Berlin must present emergency programmes to bring its policy on transport and housing back in line with the current Climate Protection Act from 2024 to 2030.

[46] The Supreme Court of Ireland ruled that the Irish government's 2017 National Mitigation Plan was inadequate, specifying that it did not provide enough detail on how it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

[47] On 5 June 2021, a group of 24 associations and 179 citizens (17 of whom were minor), led by non-profit association A Sud ('To South'), officially filed a lawsuit against the Italian government in the civil court in Rome, with the main goals of holding national institutions "accountable for the state of danger caused by [their] inertia in tackling the climate change emergency", as well as ruling that Italy must cut its greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 92% within 2030.

[48][49] On 9 May 2023, Greenpeace Italy and advocacy group ReCommon, together with 12 Italian plaintiffs from several areas directly affected by climate change,[50][51] officially announced that they would file a lawsuit against national energy company Eni, as well as the Ministry of Economy and Finance and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (both involved as co-owners),[50][51][52] requesting to set the beginning of the hearings in November of the same year.

[51][52] Also known as La Giusta Causa ('The Right Cause'),[53][54] and based on the Milieudefensie et al v Royal Dutch Shell court case,[51][52] it became the first climate lawsuit ever filed against a private-owned company in Italy.

[50][51] The allegations focused on Eni's central role in increasing fossil fuel usage throughout the latest decades, despite being aware of the emissions' worst risks.

[50][52] A DeSmog inquiry revealed further evidence supporting the lawsuit's claims: firstly, a study commissioned by Eni itself from an affiliate research centre between 1969 and 1970, which had underlined the risk of a "catastrophic" climate crisis by 2000 posed by an unchecked rise in fossil fuel usage;[52][53][55] secondly, a 1978 report produced by Tecneco, another company owned by Eni, which had accurately estimated that the CO2 concentration would have reached 375-400 ppm by 2000,[52][53] while noting that such changes to the thermal balance of the atmosphere could have had "serious consequences for the biosphere".

[50][52][53] DeSmog's investigation also found that Eni's official magazine, Ecos [it], had repeatedly included references to climate change in articles written throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, while hosting advertising campaigns wrongly claiming that natural gas was a "clean fuel".

In 2012, the Dutch lawyer Roger Cox gave the idea of judicial intervention to force action against climate change based on government targets for 2030 emissions reductions.

[59][60] In 2013, the Urgenda Foundation, with 900 co-plaintiffs, filed a lawsuit against the Government of the Netherlands "for not taking sufficient measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause dangerous climate change".

[59] In 2015, the District Court of The Hague ruled that the government of the Netherlands must do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to protect its citizens from climate change.

[62] In 2018, a court of appeal in The Hague has upheld the precedent-setting judgment that forces the Dutch government to step up its efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions in the Netherlands.

Thus, affirming that the government must cut carbon dioxide emissions by 25% from 1990 levels by the end of 2020, on the basis that climate change poses a risk to human health.

Smith argued that the principles of tikanga Māori — a traditional system of obligations and recognitions of wrong — can be used to inform New Zealand common law.

[88] The case alleges that the right to life must be used to interpret duties in company law, and that because fossil fuels must cease to exist, any investments using them pose a "risk of significant financial detriment".

[89] In February 2023, ClientEarth filed a derivative action claim against Shell's board of directors for putting the company at risk by not transitioning away from fossil fuels quickly enough.

Like Minnesota and the District of Columbia before it, New Jersey has also included the industry's top US trade group, the American Petroleum Institute in addition to ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, Chevron, BP and ConocoPhillips.

In December 2005 the Center for Biological Diversity joined with two other US NGOs (Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council) to petition that the Arctic Polar Bear be listed on the ESA.

[19] Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency before the Supreme Court of the United States allowed the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

[97][98] A third case, Comer v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., a class action lawsuit filed by Gerald Maples, a trial attorney in Mississippi, in an effort to force fossil fuel and chemical companies to pay for damages caused by global warming.

[100] The Sierra Club sued the U.S. government over failure to raise automobile fuel efficiency standards, and thereby decrease carbon dioxide emissions.

[111] The European Union adopted an anti-slapp directive aiming to protect human right defenders and journalists from lawsuits intended to silence them.

[115] On 29 March 2023, the United Nations adopted a resolution calling for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to "strengthen countries' obligations to curb warming and protect communities from climate disaster".

[18][118][20] For instance, groups went to court in order to protect people from climate change in Brazil,[119] Belgium,[61] India,[120] New Zealand,[121] Norway,[122] South Africa,[121] Switzerland[123] and the United States.

[18][124][20] In Germany, a court case brought by German citizens against their government based on a newly minted human right to breathe clean and healthy air could pave the way for future legislation.