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Climate Change Case Proceeds San Francisco and Oakland, CA filed lawsuits against five of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies seeking damages to cover the costs of mitigating the effects of climate change. US District Judge William Alsup, the judge presiding over the consolidated cases, had requested a “tutorial” on climate science from both sides. The Bay Area cities enlisted three top climate scientists. One person from among the five defendants (BP, Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell) chose to present: the lawyer from Chevron.
globally as the effects of climate change increase.
Lawsuits have been an effective tactic in the U.S. for getting the federal government to address environmental issues for years. For example, in a landmark 2007 case the US Supreme Court sided with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in holding that the US Environmental Protection Agency is required to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act. The courtroom discovery process can be a way to introduce new information into public record, as occurred in the lawsuits against tobacco companies. Some experts are concerned that the climate change lawsuits will further deepen divisions but others see the courtroom as a more neutral forum for communication. Trial participants are “bound by procedural rules, by evidentiary rules, and there’s a neutral arbiter sitting in the front of the room, or on the side if it’s a trial by jury,” says Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University in New York. In such a formal setting, off-the-cuff theories, distractions, and distortions are less likely to gain traction. “Courts do hold the parties to higher standards of how they use science and evidence than [a legislature] certainly is held to,” agrees Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. “If the science is relevant to the legal claims … the judge will take it into account.” Many believe the recent cases are evidence of a new sense of urgency to deal with the problem of climate change. In the U.S., the cost of natural disasters in 2017 was the most expensive year on record.
On March 21, Chevron’s lawyer, Theodore Boutrous Jr., surprised the courtroom by stating “From Chevron’s perspective there’s no debate about climate science,” and declaring that humans are indeed playing a significant role in causing climate change. That’s a dramatic departure from the oil industry’s long-held public skepticism, even though recently revealed documents show that some companies not only knew about the risks but were considering their potential liability. Over the past several years, activists have increasingly brought climate grievances to court. In the 15 years prior to 2000, only six climate-related lawsuits were filed in the United States; since 2000, there have been more than 1,000. Not merely an American phenomena, as of March 2017, climate change cases had been filed in 24 countries and experts expect this trend to continue
Source: the Christian Science Monitor
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