In this photo, on 26 May in Paris, citizens block the entrance to the annual general meeting of petrochemical and energy group TotalEnergies with a ‘Climate Crime Scene’ banner. In recent months, more and more governments and multinationals have found themselves accused by legal institutions, and found guilty in some cases, of ‘climate inaction’ or failure to protect the environment.
Despite the calls for action to address the impacts of climate disruption – the floods and droughts, the heat waves and the raging fires – the world’s political and economic leaders still seem far too slow to respond and take the steps needed to prevent the situation from worsening. “If we persist in delaying key measures that are needed, I think we are moving into a catastrophic situation, as the last two records in temperature demonstrate,” insisted UN Secretary-General António Guterres at a press conference in New York on Thursday 6 July.
What can be done to turn awareness into action? What can we do when appeals and reports like those of the IPCC have no effect? What can we do when the right to demonstrate is increasingly trampled on and repressed? Can those who play a part in making the planet uninhabitable be held to account? And does it have any real impact?
In recent months, more and more governments and multinationals have found themselves accused by legal institutions, and found guilty in some cases, of ‘climate inaction’ or failure to protect the environment.
Every year, the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics compiles a list of legal proceedings around the world relating to these issues. In its report on the period from May 2022 to May 2023, the institute notes that such proceedings are becoming increasingly diverse, affecting more countries, more jurisdictions (from regional to transnational), more corporate actors, and a wider range of legal arguments are being used (claims for loss and damage compensation or for financial contributions to adapt to structural change, for failing to comply with international commitments, disinformation, etc.).
Climate litigation against private companies is a growing trend. Until recently, governments were the main target of the cases filed, overwhelmingly by NGOs and citizens (90 per cent of the cases) – and on occasion by local authorities, such as the legal action taken against TotalEnergies by the Paris and New York city councils. Belgium and France, following the historic precedent set by the Netherlands, have been condemned by the courts for their failure to reduce the risks associated with climate change.
It is encouraging to see that civil society remains mobilised and is constantly developing new ways of expressing its concerns and demanding better protection for individuals. In the four stories from our archives that we invite you to read, or reread, the people met by our journalists make it abundantly clear that no more time can be wasted, that there can be no more playing with words, using the illusion of “greenwashing” or vacillating over the amounts to be allocated to fair policies that will transform the economy and our lifestyles. It is time to act, because the solutions are there and mobilisation can pay off.
Faced with political inaction and “anti-climate” measures, scientists are leaving their laboratories and taking to the streets
By Clément Gibon
Members of the group Scientist Rebellion demonstrate in front of the German Federal Ministry of Transport in Berlin, April 2022. Their sign reads: “Stop fossil madness. Climate revolution now!” in German.
[...] Concerned by the speed of climate change and faced with political inaction and even “anti-climate” policies, scientists from every field are participating in civil disobedience. Long confined to media appearances and signature gathering, members of the scientific community have been ignored by political leaders despite the urgency of the issues at stake. Many feel that they have no choice left but to leave their laboratories and take to the streets. [...]
Read the full article on Equal Times
After calamitous floods, Pakistan makes a compelling case for climate reparations
By Farhad Mirza
People wade through a flooded area in Sewan Sharif, southern Sindh province, Pakistan on 6 September 2022. Monsoon rains and melting glaciers in Pakistan’s northern mountains have brought floods that have affected 33 million people and killed at least 1,300, including 458 children.
Pakistan experienced a cruel summer last year. Starting in June, floods of unprecedented severity began devastating the country. By September, a third of Pakistan was under water, over 1,300 people were dead, and as many as 30 million people are estimated to have been made homeless. [...]
Pakistan contributes less than 1 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and yet it is one of the countries that is most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. A growing movement of climate activists and relief workers in Pakistan are demanding climate reparations as a way of holding big polluters in the Global North accountable. They hope to challenge the language of charity that obscures the issue at hand: climate justice. As a term, ‘climate reparations’ is a conduit for a broad range of ideas and critiques that wish to connect climate justice to other forms of injustices, economic and social. [...]
Read the full article on Equal Times
Resistance to greenwashing grows in the struggle for a liveable planet
By Steve Rushton
A poster put up by environmental activists from Fridays for Future in front of Deutsche Bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, reads: ‘Deutsche Bank - Greenwashing kills, get out of coal, oil and gas!’
Despite irrefutable proof of the mortal damage caused to people and planet by Big Oil, and despite the fact that the extraction of fossil fuels remains their core business, major oil companies continue to pump false narratives about their supposedly ‘climate-friendly’ business models. While ExxonMobil and BP claim to be “Advancing climate solutions” and “Advancing the energy transition”, Shell is pledging “Net zero emissions by 2050” while Chevron claims to be producing “Ever-cleaner energy”.
However, the rhetoric does not match the reality. This is greenwash.
Despite being responsible for 10 per cent of global emissions since 1965, a new peer-reviewed academic paper on the clean-energy claims of the four biggest oil companies – the first and most comprehensive analysis of its kind – shows “a continuing business model dependence on fossil fuels along with insignificant and opaque spending on clean energy”. In essence, no green transition is actually taking place with fossil fuel multinationals. [...]
Read the full article on Equal Times
To combat pollution and its inequalities, European citizens are calling for the “right to clean air” for all
By Alexia Eychenne & Michalina Kowol
Since the death, at the age of nine, of her daughter Ella, the first officially recognised fatal victim of air pollution, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah has become a tireless defender of the right to clean air. London, March 2022.
Although Jo Barnes has been working on air quality for almost 20 years, it was only in the mid-2010s that this professor at the University of the West of England in the UK saw the emergence of a public debate on the social inequalities created by pollution. In other words, is clean air, that universal good par excellence, as equally distributed as it seems? In 2003, a pioneering study in the UK suggested that it was not.
Barnes and her colleagues went on to confirm “the presence of social inequality and environmental injustice” – the poor are often more exposed to pollution than the wealthy, and more vulnerable to its effects, even though they generate less. Linked to urban planning, housing and transport policies, it is a complex phenomenon that can be found in many European countries. [...]
