Chicago announces plan to reduce area emissions to Kyoto Protocol levels
The ongoing federal-state disagreement over the regulation of greenhouse gases has not prevented a major U.S. city from initiating its own efforts to reduce emissions. As recently reported in the New York Times and Washington Post, Mayor Richard Daley announced a plan to reduce Chicago’s climate-changing emissions. The express goal of the climate plan is to reduce Chicago emissions – by 2020 – to a Kyoto Protocol-inspired level of 25% less than the city’s 1990 emissions.
Continue Reading...Schwarzenegger proposes climate policy summit to counter federal inaction
Saying he was "tired of waiting for Washington to act," this week California Governor Schwarzenegger announced plans to organize a "climate policy summit" to be held next month and he plans to invite the Governors of all 50 states, as well as leaders of regional and local states and provinces from Canada, China, India, and other countries. Governor Schwarzenegger plans to use the summit to get state leaders to agree on a plan for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which no doubt is intended to put pressure on the next administration to incorporate these regional initiatives into a federal plan of action. The summit is scheduled for November 18 and 19 in Los Angeles.
Continue Reading...Oxfam launches "Climate Change Litigation Competition" while declaring that "Litigation is seldom the best way to solve a dispute"
Oxfam’s recent report, Climate Wrongs and Human Rights, advocates a human rights-based approach to climate change. The report largely focuses on the application of human rights principles, defined by Oxfam as a “fundamental moral claim each person has to life’s essentials – such as food, water, shelter, and security,” to international climate policymaking. But it also advocates changes to human rights laws and institutions to overcome what Oxfam cites as barriers to litigation against “countries and corporations that have long been producing excessive greenhouse gas emissions.”
Continue Reading...British jury in Kingsnorth case finds in favor of climate change protestors
By a majority verdict, a British jury found five protestors who shut down the Kingsnorth coal-fired power plant had a “lawful excuse” to close the plant to prevent greater damage from global warming. Greenpeace activists, protesting the contribution of coal-electric power plants to climate change, scaled a chimney and painted the word “Gordon” on the chimney before they were forced down (“Gordon” is a reference to British prime minister Gordon Brown). The protest shut down the power plant temporarily and the graffiti cost about $62,000 to remove. The jury verdict in favor of the protestors illustrates how a U.S. jury might respond to similar protests.
Continue Reading...Kivalina climate change litigation presents new context for familiar legal questions
The latest in the growing number of climate change lawsuits is Native Village of Kivalina, Alaska v. ExxonMobil, et al., Case No. CV-08-1138, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Previous tort-based climate change lawsuits have largely been dismissed on political question grounds in which the courts have resisted taking on the issue of global warming before global warming legislation and regulations have been implemented by the political branches of government. While the Kivalina case raises additional and novel theories of civil conspiracy that must be watched closely, one of the key issues in the case will be the familiar question of the appropriate role of regulatory findings in establishing causation in tort litigation.
Continue Reading...Law professor's novel advocacy of public trust doctrine in climate litigation faces hurdles
A University of Oregon law professor has urged the use of the public trust doctrine to address climate change issues. Professor Mary C. Wood, speaking at the March 2008 Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, advanced what she refers to as “atmospheric trust litigation” as a new legal strategy in climate change litigation. She asserted that the atmosphere is an asset owned in common by the people and the government is the trustee of that asset. Her theory is “part of a roadmap for citizens to bring suit against their government.” Professor Wood says relief would come through declaratory judgments and “injunctive backstops” in which a court would require the government to show that “it’s reducing carbon in accordance with the scientifically defined fiduciary obligation.
Continue Reading...Investors ask SEC to include climate risk disclosure obligations in revised oil and gas reporting requirements
In response to a June 26, 2008 SEC proposal to modify the oil and gas reporting requirements, a group of investors and environmental organizations (including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and Ceres) submitted a letter to the SEC on September 8, 2008 urging the SEC to consider climate-related risks in the course of revising the reporting requirements. The group's comment letter follows the release in late July of a WWF (formerly World Wildlife Fund) study, "Unconventional Oil", which reports that "increased investment in unconventional fossil fuels, such as Canadian oil sands and US oil shales, may dangerously contribute to climate change" and "demonstrates the significant investor risk associated with these unconventional oils." Among the study's conclusions: "Oil sands extraction produces three times the carbon emissions of conventional oil production, whilst oil shale extraction produces up to eight times as much."
Continue Reading...Opening of the Northwest Passage triggering international disputes
Increased annual melting of Arctic ice is opening the waters of the Northwest Passage to navigation and other activities and may lead to sovereignty, natural resource and environmental protection disputes in an area that once was impassable. A New York Times editorial summarized the brewing areas of disagreement:
What was once solidly frozen is now, increasingly, accessible, leading to fierce disputes over territory and natural resources. Perhaps the biggest of these disputes is whom do the waters in the Northwest Passage belong to: Canada, or are they international?
Continue Reading...Insurer seeks to avoid climate change claim coverage obligations
Sometimes great storms announce themselves with a simple breeze and the same can be said about litigation that is likely to ensue between corporate policyholders and insurers as they begin to grapple with difficult insurance coverage issues surrounding climate change. A recent case filed in Virginia by Steadfast Insurance Company seeking to avoid any coverage obligations relating to allegations in the Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., et al. litigation reveals some of the arguments the insurance industry is likely to make in this arena.
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