Legal Approach to Climate Change Resolutions

[Sigmetnow]

Fishermen Sue Oil Companies Over Rising Ocean Temperatures
The plaintiffs are seeking compensation for losses linked to algal blooms fueled by warmer waters
November 15, 2018

Commercial fishermen in California and Oregon sued dozens of oil and gas companies yesterday for hurting the fishing market in the Pacific Ocean by raising temperatures on Earth.

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) is seeking financial compensation for its losses from 30 companies, including oil and gas supermajors, according to the suit filed in a California state court.

“It’s industry to industry, one harming another with the causal connection to prove it,” Noah Oppenheim, executive director of PCFFA, said in an interview. “Certainly we believe that the merits of the case are pretty clear and self-explanatory.” ...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fishermen-sue-oil-companies-over-rising-ocean-temperatures/

[Sleepy]

California seems like Sweden, only warmer (not referring to the present tragedy).

Let's see if this history of milestones had any effect on Californian lifestyles:
Manabe and Wetherald 1967 (no need for a description)
Ramanathan and Coakley 1978 (no need for a description)
Jule Charney et al 1979 (ECS ~3° you know)
James Hansen 1988 (no need for a description)
JD Neelin et al 2013 (drought you know)
Etc, etc x1000...

Let's see:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34792
https://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=2850&id=2850

Looks similar to Sweden but we're not suing Norway. Maybe we should sue ourselves?

[Rob Dekker]

California seems like Sweden, only warmer (not referring to the present tragedy).

Exactly. Californians and Swedes share the same values, I think, when it comes to climate change.

a dollar’s worth of a haircut in Wyoming causes the same emissions as one purchased in California, although electricity purchased in California is much cleaner (e.g. Metcalf, 1999; Dinan and Rogers, 2002;...

Sure. But that's just because a dollar buys you a lot more in Wyoming than it does in California.

[Sleepy]

A dollar won't get you anything in Sweden. But why aren't we making any real progress, Rob? Are we too busy finding the enemies among ourselves? We are the enemy. All of us should at least recognize that we should have known for a very long time. Those fishermen above sue for financial compensation. What good will that do them in the long run? We are all in the same boat.

[Rob Dekker]

A dollar won't get you anything in Sweden. But why aren't we making any real progress, Rob?

We are making real progress, Sleepy.
Maybe not as fast as we would like, but renewable energy is a strong growth market.
Because it is lower cost than fossil fuel energy.

[Sleepy]

The world needs well over a hundred times that. Nowhere as fast as needed and you are gently steering away from where I started Rob, about suing ourselves for "not knowing" in the past into future promises and this might not be the right thread to continue but I'll make another comment about my pov since I started it here.

If a clean grid is the answer, Sweden should be home free? There seems to be some misconceptions out there regarding Sweden and I thought the numbers I posted above indicated the same story for California (unfortunately). Here's a recent comment I made in the Paris thread:

the Nordics are well on the way to being carbon Neutral

Not according to Swedish EPA.
https://www.naturvardsverket.se/Sa-mar-miljon/Statistik-A-O/Vaxthusgaser-konsumtionsbaserade-utslapp-Sverige-och-andra-lander/
Picture including consumption based emissions attached below.
Updated in depth analysis from 2017 (unfortunately in Swedish):
https://www.naturvardsverket.se/Om-Naturvardsverket/Publikationer/ISBN/6700/978-91-620-6782-3/
In domestic emissions there are some slight drops but hopefully we'll get a much more positive updated analysis shortly for 2018, but after looking out the window I'm not overly positive about that.

Edit; forgot to add the standard phrase, we use ~40% Nuclear, ~40% Hydro and ~10% Wind.

Along with another from the same thread along with quotes by Kevin Anderson about what Sweden really should do:

There is no (real) Nobel Prize in Astrology (or Economy).

But something did happened. Acceptance at the highest level. Acceptance is the first step.

But we've had acceptance at highest level for decades. In Sweden also along with huge amounts of positive thinking on mitigation for a decade, which still has led to zero emission reductions compared to the 90's. Which is the reason for my rolling eyes about that headline above (clear-message-from-IPCC-15-degree target-still-attainable) and also why I wrote this three years ago:

Maybe they are just trying to be positive.
But maintaining a positive attitude, while beeing lazy, will fail. It doesn't matter if you want to be successful in marathon, or be successful in mitigation.

Something like this would be better:




It's from this one (hope it's watchable elsewhere):
https://urplay.se/program/205843-ur-samtiden-baltic-sea-future-stabilitet-eller-kaos-vagval-for-klimatet

[Sciguy]

The Washington State Supreme Court is considering a case on whether the State Department of Ecology can implement caps on carbon pollution or whether the legislature would have to enact a law to implement the caps.

https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Washington-Supreme-Court-hears-case-on-carbon-cap-13700300.php

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The Washington Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the state Department of Ecology has the authority to implement a state effort to cap carbon pollution from major industrial emitters, something business groups and utilities have argued can only be sanctioned by the Legislature
 
Tuesday's 40-minute hearing was held as Gov. Jay Inslee — who directed state regulators in 2015 to use existing authority to limit carbon emissions from Washington's largest sources — is in the midst of a presidential campaign focused on climate issues.
 
A lower court judge had blocked the so-called Clean Air Rule, siding with the Association of Washington Business, several utilities and others who sued after the agency approved the rule in 2016.

[Juan C. García]

Federal judge casts doubt on Trump’s drilling plans across the U.S. because they ignore climate change

The decision by U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Rudolph Contreras marks the first time the Trump administration has been held to account for the climate impact of its energy-dominance agenda, and it could have sweeping implications for the president’s plan to boost fossil fuel production across the country. Contreras concluded that Interior’s Bureau of Land Management “did not sufficiently consider climate change” when making decisions to auction off federal land in Wyoming to oil and gas drilling. The judge temporarily blocked drilling on roughly 300,000 acres of land in the state.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/03/20/federal-judge-casts-doubt-trumps-drilling-plans-across-us-because-they-ignore-climate-change/?utm_term=.9f36f698de39&wpisrc=al_news__alert-hse--alert-national&wpmk=1

[Sciguy]

A data-analysis has calucated that 90 companies are responsible for roughly two-thirds of all GHG emissions.  May have some bearing on lawsuits.

http://mountaintownnews.net/2019/04/15/startling-climate-change-conclusions-6521/

A startling fact has emerged from what the New York Times Magazine describes as a basement full of dusty reports in the mountains of Colorado.

There, climate data researcher Rich Heede has concluded that if you include all the carbon extracted and supplied, just 90 companies are responsible for two-thirds of all the greenhouse gases emitted between 1751 and 2016.

“Even more startling,” the story goes on to say, “more than half those emissions have occurred since 1988, the year that the climate scientist James Hansen, then at NASA, appeared before Congress to urge that ‘it is time to stop waffling’ and recognize the clear link between the emission of greenhouse gases and the warming of the planet.”

The Times explains that Heede has spent much of the last 16 years searching through archives to find reports about how much fossil-fuel companies extracted during their sometimes long histories. He then “estimates how much fossil fuel was used for a company’s own operations, how much diverted for things like asphalt or petrochemical production, how much volatilized into the atmosphere.” It is, says the NY Times Magazine writer, Brooke Jarvis, tedious work.

But Heede’s work is also perhaps pivotal to a growing body of lawsuits being filed around the world against fossil fuel companies. They include a lawsuit filed last year by Colorado’s San Miguel County and two other local jurisdictions, the municipality of Boulder and Boulder County, linking the profits of Suncor and ExxonMobil with emerging impacts of increased wildfire, extreme weather, and so forth.

[Sleepy]

Earth Rights Conference coming up this weekend, this time with online participation.

http://www.earthrightsconference.org/
What idea is powerful enough to heal the relationship between humans and nature?

A space for dialogue and co-creation about the idea that nature, not just humans, have rights.

Can this idea be the foundation for a new dimension of respect and harmony between humanity and the planet? The legal and existential dimensions of this question are raised and examined, in dialogue with leading voices for Earth rights from different parts of the world. This is the second international conference on Earth rights arranged by the Sigtuna Foundation in cooperation with Lodyn and Cemus.

[Sleepy]

We, as the global citizens of Earth, hereby CLAIM THE SKY! and Demand the Creation of an Atmospheric Trust.
http://claimthesky.org/

The global atmosphere is certainly one of our major common assets and should be held in trust and protected from harm for current and future generations. Under the public trust doctrine, all countries are co-trustees in the global atmosphere. A subset of countries can therefore agree to establish an Atmospheric Trust (AT), as an independent agency to serve as trustee.

We, the undersigned, are calling on the V20 to take the lead by creating this Atmospheric Trust (AT) that establishes community property rights over the atmospheric commons. As some of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, the V20 can use the AT as a legal instrument to increase their voice and power in addressing the climate crisis.

[gerontocrat]

We, as the global citizens of Earth, hereby CLAIM THE SKY! and Demand the Creation of an Atmospheric Trust.

Yet another example of ....
The Tragedy of the commons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action. The theory originated in an essay written in 1833 by the British economist William Forster Lloyd, who used a hypothetical example of the effects of unregulated grazing on common land (also known as a "common") in Great Britain and Ireland.[1] The concept became widely known as the "tragedy of the commons" over a century later due to an article written by the American ecologist and philosopher Garrett Hardin in 1968.[2] In this modern economic context, commons is taken to mean any shared and unregulated resource such as atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, roads and highways, or even an office refrigerator.

[Tom_Mazanec]

AGW no longer up for debate in courts:
https://undark.org/article/in-courtrooms-climate-change-is-no-longer-up-for-debate/

[b_lumenkraft]

From Toms link:

Oakland and San Francisco are now appealing Alsup’s decision, but the judge’s active engagement with the science was nonetheless in stark contrast to a Supreme Court case 12 years earlier, involving the Environmental Protection Agency’s responsibility for regulating greenhouse gases. When Justice Antonin Scalia was corrected for confusing the layers of the atmosphere, he blurted out in frustration: “I’m not a scientist. That’s why I don’t want to have to deal with global warming.”

Holy shit, they just refuse to do their job. Tar and feather those people, don't make them supreme court judges!!

[Tom_Mazanec]

And here is about the lawyer who took down the Clean Power Plan:
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060580849
and is a stable climate a constitutional right?:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-right-to-a-stable-climate-is-the-constitutional-question-of-the-twenty-first-century

[Tom_Mazanec]

Holding emitters financially accountable:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/25/20726384/kirsten-gillibrand-2020-climate-change-plan

Why oil companies want AGW suits held in Federal court:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26072019/climate-change-lawsuits-cities-baltimore-rhode-island-legal-strategy-state-court-not-federal

[Tom_Mazanec]

Exxon accused of pressuring witnesses in climate case:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06082019/exxon-climate-fraud-investigation-witness-pressure-investors-new-york-attorney-general

[Tom_Mazanec]

Climate change: Should we sue politicians for crimes against humanity?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/climate-change-crisis-crime-against-humanity-sue-politicians-a9062551.html

When we think about climate change, the headlines are all about the damage hurtling down the track towards us: the consequences and, sometimes, the difficulties of putting a solution in place. Technical difficulties. Financial difficulties. Political difficulties.

We treat these last as though they are as much a fact of nature as the damage wrought by a warming climate. Increasingly, though, serious jurists and campaigners are beginning to ask whether those who stand in the way of reform, of repairing our climate, should be considered culpable for their actions – and criminally culpable at that.

In short, is the time coming for coordinated international action against those who, for all sorts of reasons, do not just stand in the way of measures to mitigate damage, but actively promote damaging policies? How should we treat those who benefit the climate apathy of their leaders while simultaneously decrying the systems that keep returning them to power?

[Tom_Mazanec]

Won't be legal approaches to climate change with Kavanaugh on SCOTUS:
The Oceans Don't Care What Associate Justice Boof Says

One of the more depressing papers to cross the pixels recently here at the shebeen concerns the climate crisis and the Supreme Court. The authors, Samuel Moyn and Aaron Belkin, come to the distressing conclusion that, even if the Congress were to be transfigured into the greenest of green operations, the current Supreme Court likely would strike down any serious attempts to confront the climate crisis up until at least the point when there are flounder in the streets of Ashtabula. I am exaggerating there.

[sidd]

Screw the kids: no standing to sue US government

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-lawsuit-children/u-s-appeals-court-orders-dismissal-of-youth-climate-change-lawsuit-idUSKBN1ZG252

sidd

[TerryM]

^^
Damn!
We let 'em ride in the front of the bus, if they can bare the fare, but driving anything motorized is for adults, adults with a permanent address that can afford to buy, license, insure, maintain, park, and fuel their gaudy, grubstaked vanities.


We don't allow them to set foot on our $B landscaped highways. The dirty, dusty byways and mean urban streets are sufficient for their unsteady lurching trudge. We lock them into schools, jails, or workhouses, even as we lock them out of access to consideration, to respect, especially to even a pretense of justice.


Hell, they don't even vote!


Why on earth would they expect justice from our politically appointed nabobs?
Lawyers are sleazy, Politicians are liars. Combine the two and they're somehow reborn as trusted, Learned Judges, deserving now of Respectful Esteem?


In the '60s some taught us to never trust anyone over 30. Others said "never trust Whitey"
Words to live by?
Terry

[nanning]

^^
Ramen!

[Aporia_filia]

This means, provably, the chances for a coordinated global effort to stop Doomsday's scenarios are finished. Only a storming of the Bastille as a chance. But that doesn't solve the overpopulation problem. 

[kassy]

The government argued that neither U.S. law or history supported the young people’s claim of a fundamental right to a “livable climate.”

And most US current US politics are aimed at undermining a livable climate for the masses...gutting EPA, gutting welfare etc. This is sadly a realistic ruling.