Axios - Court cases involving climate change are taking on increased importance with global efforts proceeding far slower than the climate is warming and national policy subject to whiplash. Cases under deliberation at the Hague, newly decided in Montana and in process elsewhere show that courts are increasingly receptive to the duty of governments and corporations to limit emissions.
The surge in cases is a symptom of those entities' failures to act on climate, says Patrick Parenteau of the Vermont Law School. "The courts aren't going to save us, but when the political process is failing, that's where you turn to," he told Axios in an interview.
In the U.S., cities, states and citizens have pursued legal action to force the government and fossil fuel industry to take responsibility for causing global warming and enact new emissions curbs or provide compensation for climate change-related damage....
On Wednesday, a 6-1 majority on the Montana Supreme Court backed a lower court's decision that the state's fossil fuel policies and lack of action to curb global warming violated young people's constitutional right to a clean environment.The decision in Held v. Montana also directs state agencies to consider greenhouse gas emissions from proposed development projects.
The Montana decision is especially significant since several other states have similar constitutional provisions, potentially leading to a domino effect of state legal actions to force certain steps to be taken. Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have similar constitutional provisions, and efforts are underway to enact language in other states, said Michael Gerrard, a climate change law scholar at Columbia University. Read more
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