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Climate Justice

After 12 Years, Trial Against Alleged Defamers Begins For Climate Scientist

January 22, 2024 DeSmog. , , , , ,
A defamation lawsuit 12 years in the making brought by climate scientist Michael Mann opened January 18th in Washington, D.C. Superior Court. The two conservative commentators accused of defamation mounted separate defenses, and both continued to disparage Mann during the first day of this long-anticipated trial. The case centers around statements made in 2012 by right-wing blogger Rand Simberg and Fox TV personality Mark Steyn that attacked Mann, a scientist and professor who holds a doctorate from Yale. Simberg is an analyst at the far-right think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has a long track record of platforming climate science denialists.

Youth Climate Case Against U.S. Government Should Go To Trial

January 7, 2024 Climate in the Courts. , , ,
​A federal trial court judge in Oregon has rejected the US government’s latest attempts to quash the constitutional climate case Juliana v. United States, once again allowing the youth-led civil rights lawsuit to advance to trial. In a ruling issued on December 29, 2023, US District Judge Ann Aiken denied the government defendants’ motions to dismiss and to further stall the litigation as well as their request to bring another pre-trail appeal. Aiken’s ruling also orders the parties to arrange a pre-trial conference to discuss next steps including scheduling a trial date. The case had been previously slated to start trial five years ago on October 29, 2018, but the government’s extraordinary and repeated obstruction tactics derailed the trial and ultimately resulted in a federal appeals court ordering the case be dismissed in January 2020.

2023 Has Been A Big Year For Climate Accountability In The Courts

December 26, 2023 Dana Drugmand, DeSmog. , ,
Climate litigation had a momentous year in 2023. Courts worldwide heard evidence and arguments at pivotal trials and hearings. Landmark rulings marked progress in holding governments to account for climate inaction or denial, and new climate cases continued to be filed. With climate lawsuits now totaling nearly 2,500 worldwide, it is clear that courts have become a critical venue for seeking climate justice and accountability. Here are some of this year’s highlights. In a groundbreaking ruling in August, Judge Kathy Seeley of the First Judicial District Court of Montana found in Held v. State of Montana that the state’s ongoing support for and promotion of fossil fuel development — including directing state regulators not to consider a project’s climate impacts during the permitting process — violated Montana’s constitutional guarantee of the right to a clean and healthful environment, which extends to a stable climate.

Americans Abandoning Neighborhoods Due To Rising Flood Risk

December 20, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , ,
As flooding becomes more common due to the shifting and strengthening weather patterns and sea-level rise associated with climate change, so does climate migration. New research by the First Street Foundation (FSF) has combined historic population change trends with flood risk data to reveal climate migration patterns happening in areas with high flood risk across the United States. “Much of the world’s population is exposed to some kind of extreme weather event exacerbated by climate change. These events have been directly connected to impacts on human systems including economic, social, and political crises,” the authors of the study wrote.

Youth Climate Lawsuit Against Canadian Climate Policy Can Go To Trial

December 16, 2023 Dana Drugmand, DeSmog. , , , , ,
A federal appeals court in Canada breathed new life into a youth-led constitutional climate lawsuit against the Canadian government, allowing it to proceed towards trial on a narrower scope and partially reversing the trial court’s ruling that the entire case should be tossed. In its opinion issued on December 13, Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal determined that one part of the legal claims asserted in the case was viable and that a trial would help assess whether that claim violates the constitution. Initially filed in 2019 by 15 young Canadians, La Rose v. His Majesty the King alleges Canada’s policies and actions that perpetuate fossil fuels and worsen the climate crisis amount to violations of youths’ fundamental rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Climate Movement Wins ‘Transition Away From Fossil Fuels’ Language

December 15, 2023 Climate Justice Alliance. , , ,
Thanks largely to the work of climate and environmental justice leaders from around the world, we won the inclusion of ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ language in the final agreement. The inclusion is a big win in a COP held in an oil state, overseen by an oil executive, and where we witnessed the largest number of oil and gas lobbyists in attendance ever. However, we must be clear that this language does not meet the full, rapid, fair, and funded fossil fuel phase out without abatement technology that civil society demanded. It also falls immensely short because net zero is not an adequate solution to the climate crisis we find ourselves in. Instead, the agreement excludes oil and gas from phase down language, and uplifts false, unproven solutions– techno fixes like Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), hydrogen, and language on transition fuels which yet again leaves the door open for the expansion of the gas sector across the world.

International Solidarity At The First ‘World Congress For Climate Justice’

December 7, 2023 John Malamatinas, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Milan, Italy — For many years, transnational movements like “Fridays for Future” or “Extinction Rebellion” have tried to push governments to comply with the 1.5 C climate threshold set in 2015 by the Paris Agreement, yet activists believe not enough has changed. The struggles against mega-projects — be it coal mines, pipelines, motorways, train lines, construction for Olympic games, or water privatization — are still happening in every continent, and many are crying out for an immediate reaction to a dystopian future. One such reaction happened in October in Milan, Italy: The World Congress for Climate Justice (WCCJ).

In COP28 Speech, Colombian President Calls For A Free Palestine

December 3, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , ,
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) began on November 30 in Dubai. Around 70,000 delegates are participating in the nearly two- week conference, including member states, business leaders, young people, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples, journalists, and other experts and stakeholders. The conference seeks to bring together these diverse sectors in order to build serious, global solutions that can address the pressing climate crisis and accelerate collective climate action. It is taking place amid Israel’s genocidal war against the Gaza Strip, which world leaders have brought up in their addresses to the conference and in other events. In his opening remarks to the conference, Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the actions of rich countries which have yet to fulfill their key responsibilities and commitments.

UK Advertising Watchdog Bans Toyota SUV Ads On Environmental Grounds

November 23, 2023 T. J. Jordan, DeSmog. , , , ,
The UK advertising watchdog has banned two adverts for Toyota SUVs, ruling that images of cars racing over plains and through rivers condoned a style of off-road driving that “disregarded” the impact on nature. Climate advocates calling for tighter rules on advertising of heavily polluting products welcomed the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) move — the first time it had banned SUV ads for promoting driving that harms the environment. The adverts “had not been prepared with a sense of responsibility to society,” the regulator found in a ruling published on Wednesday, made in response to a complaint by campaign groups.

The Pioneers Of Cooperativism And Climate Justice: Owen, Fourier, Du Bois

November 23, 2023 Stefano Tortorici, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , , , ,
Platform cooperatives have emerged as a recent alternative to capitalist platforms. By bringing the cooperative principles online, they have positioned themselves within the rich heritage of the two hundred years of cooperative movement history. However, they have also inherited the burden of its unresolved problems. In fact, as Yochai Benkler (2017) has eloquently stated, cooperativism has not played a transformative role in the past two centuries of capitalism. The path to proving that platform cooperatives can have a transformative role, putting an end to the obscene inequalities and forms of exploitation of the digital economy, may require revisiting the roots of cooperative identity and addressing its obstacles.

An Urgent Call For Debt, Climate And Economic Justice

October 10, 2023 Debt for Climate. , , ,
Communities all over the world are struggling and resisting the impacts of multiple crises. At a time of intensifying climate impacts and speculative increases of food and energy prices, governments, particularly in the Global South, are responding to  unsustainable public debts and the lack of development and climate finance, with a rising wave of austerity, subjugation and extractivism. We vehemently denounce the role of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that, together with other private and public lenders, perpetuate  a flawed international financial architecture that exacerbates debt, climate, and economic crises, violating the basic needs and rights of millions of people and nature who have the least contribution, responsibility or control over these catastrophes.

Any Antidote To Climate Anxiety Involves Organizing

October 9, 2023 Paul Messersmith-Glavin, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
I first realized the ameliorative power of organizing when, as a teenager, awareness of the threat of nuclear war gave me overwhelming anxiety. In the 1980s people in the Reagan administration where talking about “fighting and winning” a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. A massive direct action movement rose up in opposition to this in Europe, where the U.S. hoped to station a new generation of “first strike” nuclear weapons, and it eventually rose in the U.S. as well. I threw myself into this movement, marching with 70,000 people in downtown Chicago and over a million in New York City; attending and organizing speak-ins, die-ins and teach-ins; and going to predawn blockades of weapons manufacturers.

Climate Litigation Is Increasing As Government Action Falters

October 2, 2023 Dana Drugmand, DeSmog. , , ,
Despite its name, ambition was largely lacking at mid-September’s Climate Ambition Summit at the United Nations in New York. Secretary General António Guterres asked nations to arrive at the session with concrete commitments for phasing out fossil fuels, observing in his opening remarks that “humanity has opened the gates of hell.” But the event was overshadowed by the major polluters who didn’t attend. Those absent included China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which continue to expand oil and gas production. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chose the very day of the summit to announce that his government will push off the deadlines for phase-outs of methane gas-burning boilers, as well as sales of new gasoline and diesel-fueled cars.

A Major Win Against Factory Farming In Oregon

September 30, 2023 Nick Engelfried, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
In July, Gov. Tina Kotek signed Oregon Senate Bill 85, which places a moratorium on factory farms’ ability to use unlimited amounts of groundwater. While some advocates consider the bill to be a diluted compromise, it has potential to significantly limit the destructive activities of CAFOs in a state where a healthy remnant of the family farming economy still thrives. On a national level, it represents the first major state legislative victory against factory farming in the U.S. in years. SB 85 is the product of a years-long organizing effort, whose ultimate goal is to pass a full moratorium on new factory farms in Oregon.

‘Climate Bill’ Enriches The Fossil Fuel Industry As Communities Suffer

September 18, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , , , , , ,
One year after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Big Green groups hailed as a 'climate justice bill,' the truth is surfacing that this legislation is lining the pockets of the fossil fuel industry to the detriment of frontline, especially Black and Indigenous, communities. Clearing the FOG speaks to Anthony Rogers-Wright, a national racial and climate justice advocate, about the ways Joe Biden and the Democrats are failing to address the climate crisis and Big Green groups are turning away from climate justice to embrace Green Capitalism. Rogers-Wright also describes better alternatives to the Big Greens and where people can focus their efforts effectively to struggle for a just and livable future.
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