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You'd probably have to arrest and put on trial 80-85 percent of the American public that doesn't give a crap about global warming...which is pretty sad.
Don't Believe Global Warming & Talk About it = War Criminal
A U.S. based environmental magazine that both former Vice President Al Gore and PBS newsman Bill Moyers, for his October 11th global warming edition of “Moyers on America” led “Is God Green?”
have deemed respectable enough to grant one-on-one interviews to promote their projects, is now advocating Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming.
Grist Magazine’s staff writer David Roberts called for the Nuremberg-style trials for the “bas s” who were members of what he termed the global warming “denial industry.”
Roberts wrote in the online publication on September 19, 2006, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bas s -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.”
Gore and Moyers have not yet commented on Grist's advocacy of prosecuting skeptics of global warming with a Nuremberg-style war crimes trial. Gore has used the phrase "global warming deniers" to describe scientists and others who don't share his view of the Earth's climate. It remains to be seen what Gore and Moyers will have to say about proposals to make skepticism a crime comparable to Holocaust atrocities.
The use of Holocaust terminology has drawn the ire of Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. “The phrase ‘climate change denier’ is meant to be evocative of the phrase ‘holocaust denier,’” Pielke, Jr. wrote on October 9, 2006.
“Let's be blunt. This allusion is an affront to those who suffered and died in the Holocaust. This allusion has no place in the discourse on climate change. I say this as someone fully convinced of a significant human role in the behavior of the climate system,” Pielke, Jr. explained.
The article Global Warming: The Chilling Effect On Free Speech last week in ed Online addresses this new found penchant by environmentalists and some media members to charge skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming with “crimes against humanity” and urge Nuremberg-style prosecution of them.
You'd probably have to arrest and put on trial 80-85 percent of the American public that doesn't give a crap about global warming...which is pretty sad.
Way to miss the point Duff.
It is serious that a guy with absolutely no governmental power believes that it is possible that, if down the road people have allowed global warming to become horrifically serious, we should charge the opponents with war crimes???
How does this scare you? Would you be frightened if I said that everybody that did not elect me King of America should be shot?
Come on...Drama!
turambar loses all credibility because he's a fan of the pistons.
lol, I am a fan of defense in basketball. I am a fan of losing the me-fist mentality. The Pistons and the Spurs are to good examples of this new mode of team basketball...but I just happen to be east-coast, so i get to watch a few more Pistons games than Spurs games. They just happen to be shown more in this area.
Sorry! But I do like the Spurs, and hate the Mavs.
Credibility back?
This is one of those problems that will correct themselves: Crude-oil is finite. Our demand will excede our ability to produce in the not-so-far future...
Alternitive scources of power will eventualy become cheaper than OPEC can match, and when that happens (at about 8 to 10 dollars per gallon in the US) we will switch to something like solar (hydrogen fuel cell can be based on solar power to seporate hydogen from water).
Adam Smith's guiding hand... cost and benifit will guide the hand towards something else.
Sounds good enough to me.
Isn't everything David Roberts said protected by free speech?
Easy there turambar, I was hoping to throw my hat into the ring for the upcoming "King of America" election, looks like I have some compe ion.
Protected from what?
no excuses, the words or never hurt anyone, even es from michigan
Talk about missing the point. Peak oil and climate change are two linked but seperate problems. Transport is a major contributor to greenhouse pollution, and thus climate change, but coal-fired electricity is the bigger problem. "We will switch to something like solar..." entirely ignores the massive time and cost of switching the world's transport and electricity generation to other sources, which will probably require at least a generation and many TRILLIONS of dollars. Anyway, we've already discussed in depth all of the assumptions you get wrong here, and I'm not going to re-hash the entire discussion.
Climate change will not "correct itself". Adam Smith's invisible hand pertains to markets, not environmental problems, and the history of the industrial revolution ably demonstrates that the market does not, and never will, solve environmental problems because it does not incorporate the cost of externalities (pollution) into production. If it did, we would not be in such a bind because switching to renewable energy sources on a large scale would have been occuring by now given that the cost of coal-generated electricity, with externalities incorporated, is about the same as wind and solar, and far more expensive than natural gas.
People like you who spread this nonsense that "it's not our problem" because "technology" or "the market" will solve it just give an excuse to the masses who believe them not to do anything about their own behaviour, and that is an extremely negligent and counter-productive at ude. All of our children will pay for our myopic ignorance.
Now, to the OP. Cheap ad hominem attacks don't deny the science, and although I don't believe that the war crimes analogy was apt, THE SPONSORSHIP OF ACTIVE MISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS BY INDUSTRIES SHOULD BE ILLEGAL. In Australia we have seen this with forestry industry, uranium, coal, petrol, fast food, cigarettes... the fact is, and there is extensive do entary evidence to prove it, including the confessions of the lobbyists who have run campaigns in the past, that large companies and industry peak bodies pay advocates to use untruthful methods to cast doubt in the minds of the ignorant masses about the truth of situations that will damage their industries.
It's happening all around you, all the time, and websites like Steve Milloy's "Junk Science", paid for by Exxon and used by most message board neo-cons as the "evidence" to question everything from climate change to the risks of passive smoking, should have to display the source of their bias. The average citizen should also take the time to educate themselves about issues from primary sources, rather than 'taking the word' of industry hired guns.
Here's a great article by George Monbiot about exactly this:
WHO'S PAYING
When pundits discuss contentious issues on air, they must reveal their financial interests.
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 26th September 2006.
On the letters page of the Guardian last week, a Dr Alan Kendall attacked the Royal Society for “smearing” its opponents. It had sent an official letter to Exxon, complaining about the oil company’s “inaccurate and misleading” portrayal of the science of climate change, and its funding of lobby groups which deny that global warming is taking place. The letter, Dr Kendall argued, was an attempt to “stifle legitimate discussion”(1).
Perhaps he is unaware of what has been happening. The campaign of dissuasion funded by Exxon and the tobacco company Philip Morris has been devastatingly effective. By insisting that manmade global warming is either a “myth” or not worth tackling, it has given the media and politicians the excuses for inaction they wanted. Partly as a result, in the United States at least, these companies have helped to delay attempts to tackle the world’s most important problem by a decade or more(2).
Should we not confront this? If, as Dr Kendall seems to suggest, we should refrain from exposing and criticising these groups, would that not be to “stifle legitimate discussion”?
There is still much more to discover. It is unclear how much covert corporate lobbying has been taking place in the United Kingdom. But the little I have been able to find so far suggests that here, as in the US, there seems to be some overlap between Exxon and the groups it has funded and the operations of the tobacco industry.
The story begins with a body called the International Policy Network (IPN). Like many other organisations that have received money from Exxon, it describes itself as a “think tank” or “an independent educational charity”. It seems to me that a more accurate description would be “lobby group”. But while the BBC would seldom allow someone from Bell Pottinger or Burson Marsteller onto the air to discuss an issue of concern to their sponsors without revealing the sponsors’ iden y, it has frequently allowed Julian Morris to present IPN’s case without declaring its backers. The International Policy Network has so far received $295,000 from Exxon’s corporate headquarters in the United States(3). Julian Morris told me that he runs his US office “solely for funding purposes”(4).
The IPN argues that attempts to prevent (or mitigate) manmade climate change are a waste of money. It would be better to let it happen and adapt to its effects. It published a book this year arguing that “humanity has until at least 2035 to determine whether or not mitigation will also be a necessary part of our strategy to address climate change … attempting to control it through global regulation of emissions would be counterproductive.”(5) Morris has described the government’s chief scientist, Sir David King, who has campaigned for action on global warming, as “an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to his country.”(6)
Like many of the groups which have been funded by ExxonMobil, IPN has also received money from the cigarette industry. Morris admits that it has been given £10,000 from a US tobacco company(7). There is also a question mark about his involvement in a funding application to another tobacco company, RJ Reynolds.
In the archives the cigarette companies were forced to open as part of the settlement of a class action in the United States, there is a do ent en led “Environmental Risk”(8). It is a funding application to the tobacco company RJ Reynolds, to pay for a book about “the Myth of Scientific Risk Assessment”. “The principal objective of this book is to highlight the uncertainties inherent in “scientific” estimates of risk to humans and the environment”. Among the myths it would be contesting were the adverse health effects of passive smoking. It was requesting £50,000 to publish the book. The editors, the application said, would be “Roger Bate and Julian Morris”.
Julian Morris insists that his name was added to the do ent without his consent. He says he had “nothing” to do with the book(9). It was published in 1997 under the le “What Risk?”(10). It has a foreword by David Davis MP. It claims that passive smoking is no more dangerous than “eating 50g of mushrooms a week” and attacks “politically correct” beliefs such as “passive smoking causes lung cancer” and “mankind’s emissions of carbon dioxide will result in runaway global warming.” Julian Morris is not named as its co-editor, but he is the first person thanked in the acknowledgements, for his “editorial suggestions”.
The book’s editor, Roger Bate, is currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Ins ute – which has received $1.6m from ExxonMobil(11) – and the Compe ive Enterprise Ins ute, which has received $2 million(12). Until 2003, he was Julian Morris’s predecessor as head of the IPN. When the book was written, he ran the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), which published “What Risk?”. The registered owner of ESEF’s website is Julian Morris(13). He claims he had nothing to do with ESEF either, and registered the name purely “as a favour to a friend”(14).
PRWatch alleges that ESEF was originally called Scientists for Sound Public Policy (SSPP), and was founded by a public relations agency working for the tobacco company Philip Morris(15). Do ents in the tobacco archives show that SSPP was the subject of a fierce turf war between the PR firms Burson Marsteller and APCO, who were vying for Philip Morris’s account. Burson Marsteller’s proposal argued that “industrial resistance” to regulation is “perceived as protection of commercial self-interests”. A different “countervailing voice” was required, consisting of “international opinion formers supported financially by the industry”. Their role would be “educating opinion leaders, politicians and the media.”(16) The group would also seek funding from other industries. Some of the people ESEF recruited as “academic members” were people working for US lobby groups later funded by Exxon, who have made false claims about climate change(17).
Like Julian Morris, Roger Bate has often appeared on radio and TV programmes. Interviewed by the Today programme about climate change, he argued that cutting carbon emissions has been “folly all along”. Instead, we should concentrate on adapting to climate change(18). In 2000, he presented a film on BBC2 called “Organic Food: The Modern Myth”, on which Julian Morris also appeared. Bate has not yet answered the Guardian’s requests for a response.
There is no law against taking money from corporations, or advancing arguments in the media that accord with their interests. Nor should there be. The problem is what appears to be a failure to declare an interest. When someone speaks on an issue of public importance, we should be allowed to see who has been paying them. This should apply to all advocates, pressure groups and thinktanks, from Greenpeace to the Compe ive Enterprise Ins ute.
The BBC’s producer guidelines are clear on this point. “We need to ensure that we do not get involved with campaigning programming which is politically contentious. Programmes should not embrace the agenda of a particular campaign or campaigning group …”(19). Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, some of us warned that campaigning groups did not always describe themselves as such. We were ignored. The BBC now seems to have woken up to the problem. But we have lost ten years in which climate change could have been tackled.
www.monbiot.com
1. Alan Kendall, 22nd September 2006. Global warming debate must be heated. The Guardian.
2. This process is described in Heat: how to stop the planet burning.
3. http://www.exxonsecrets.org./html/or...eet.php?id=108
4. Discussion with Julian Morris, prior to BBC interview, 14th September 2006.
5. The Sustainable Development Network, 2006. Carrots, Sticks and Climate Change. International Policy Press, Bedford Chambers, London.
6. Antony Barnett and Mark Townsend, 28th November 2004. Greenhouse effect ‘may benefit man’. The Observer.
7. In interview for Newsnight, conducted 14th September 2006.
8. http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/cgi/g...df&ref=results
9. In interview for Newsnight, conducted 14th September 2006.
10. Roger Bate (Ed), 1997. What Risk? Science Politics and Public Health. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.
11. http://www.exxonsecrets.org./html/orgfactsheet.php?id=9
12. http://www.exxonsecrets.org./html/orgfactsheet.php?id=2
13. From: whois.networksolutions.com:43
Registrant: European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF-DOM) UK
Domain Name: ESEF.ORG
Administrative Contact: Morris, Julian (JM4309) [email protected]
European Science and Environment Forum
Kersfield Road
London, SW15 3HE
14. In interview for Newsnight, conducted 14th September 2006.
15. http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2000Q3/junkman.html
16. Burson-Marsteller, 1994. Scientists for Sound Public Policy. http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/cgi/g...df&ref=results
17. The full list is included at the back of What Risk? It includes S.Fred Singer, Sherwood Idso, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon and others.
18. The clip can be played at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/746453.stm
19. BBC Producer Guidelines – Programme Funding and External relationships, viewed at www.ucipe.org/do entos/fundamentos.pdf
As for you fools who don't believe the top scientific ins utions in the world, you may as well believe in a flat earth. It's incredible that otherwise intelligent people would put more faith in the words of non-scientist hired guns than in the combined scientific muscle of the best the world has to offer in environmental and climatic science!? I mean, when did you lose you minds?
Come on down to Australia some time and we'll show you what climate change is already doing to us. In Australia we are in the midst of a 6 year drought, the worst on record, and have just gone into an El Nino drought with no sign of real rain on the horizon. Most Australian cities are at less than 50% of their dam capacity, and Austrlia's wheat production this year will be 20% of the average. Entire regions of irrigated cotton and other agriculture have not produced a thing for years because they have no water. Desertification (the process whereby ag land becomes desert) continues to worsen as rainfall patterns change. All of these things were predicted by CSIRO, our peak scientific organisation, using climate models in the 1990s.
How exactly are we going to adjust to the widespread devastation of our agricultural belt? This is happening across the globe, so where is all of the food coming from as the climate shifts and traditional food growing areas become marginal or desert? And if the sea level rises by 2m, where are the 1/2billion displaced people going??? As for the asertion that we should "adapt" to climate change, these people don't know what they are saying. The cost of "adapting" to the aftermath will be massively more than the cost of averting the disaster.
But nah, let's just let the disaster happen and clean up afterwards! What a smart idea.
Last edited by RuffnReadyOzStyle; 10-18-2006 at 12:42 AM.
Oh, and 101A, this is not a freedom of speech issue. This is truth in advertising. Tobacco companies paid out billions of dollars on the basis that they knew about the detrimental effects of smoking and lied to people about them. The scientific community has known about and had conclusive evidence for anthropogenic climate change for 5-10 years now, and yet Big Fossil Fuels are still spreading lies about the scientific concensus. That is misleading advertising.
This issue is now in the mainstream everywhere in the world but America, which is of course the worst greenhouse offender in the world. America uses 30% of the world's energy and resources on 4% of the world's population. Is there any wonder that the lies continue?
Oh, and Australia also has a terrible record on EGW because we sell huge quan ies of coal, especially to Asia. However, people here are now cognisant of the problem, and with a change of government I think our policies will change.
The ultimate irony of the situation is that switching to clean energy is going to generate millions of jobs and billions of $ in profit, but because coal and oil are artificially cheap, no-one is cashing in yet and we continue to dig a deep hole for ourselves in terms of the environment.
Last edited by RuffnReadyOzStyle; 10-18-2006 at 12:46 AM.
oh, and as for those who doubt the SCIENTIFIC CONCENSUS concerning climate change, such as our friend Yonivore (who is increasingly looking like a complete fool on this issue), here's a study I've been trying to find for a while. 928 papers, not one of which questions the scientific concensus that climate change is occuring and that it is anthropogenic. So, where's that lack of consensus amonst the scientific community (which has been asserted more than once by Yoniviore) again?
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten.../306/5702/1686
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes*
Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.
The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric cons uents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].
IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are ac ulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].
Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).
The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).
The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.
Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.
This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.
The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.
Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.
References and Notes
A. C. Revkin, K. Q. Seelye, New York Times, 19 June 2003, A1.
S. van den Hove, M. Le Menestrel, H.-C. de Bettignies, Climate Policy 2 (1), 3 (2003).
See www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm.
J. J. McCarthy et al., Eds., Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).
National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001).
American Meteorological Society, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508 (2003).
American Geophysical Union, Eos 84 (51), 574 (2003).
See www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html.
The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because, although the authors had put "climate change" in their key words, the paper was not about climate change.
This essay is excerpted from the 2004 George Sarton Memorial Lecture, "Consensus in science: How do we know we're not wrong," presented at the AAAS meeting on 13 February 2004. I am grateful to AAAS and the History of Science Society for their support of this lectureship; to my research assistants S. Luis and G. Law; and to D. C. Agnew, K. Belitz, J. R. Fleming, M. T. Greene, H. Leifert, and R. C. J. Somerville for helpful discussions.
10.1126/science.1103618
Oh, and yet another interesting article. Tuvalu, a Pacific Island already suffering from rising sea levels, is suing for climate change damage:
Climate change could be next legal battlefield
Published by The Financial Times, 2003/07/13. View the original article online at http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentSe...=1012571727288.
First it was tobacco and asbestos. Then it was the turn of the food sector. Now litigators have yet another target in their sights: those responsible for climate change.
Two cases have already been launched in the US courts. More are in the pipeline, according to the newly formed Climate Justice Programme. This is a collaborative venture involving lawyers, scientists and more than 40 civil groups supporting the use of the law to combat climate change.
It believes that international and domestic laws – covering human rights, product liability, public nuisance, pollution and harm to other states – will be an effective weapon in forcing emission cuts and make perpetrators liable for the consequences of their actions.
"The potential compensation for climate change impacts would make the tobacco pay-outs look like peanuts," says Peter Roderick, a lawyer working for the Climate Justice Programme.
There is no shortage of potential plaintiffs. If predictions of rising temperatures, floods, droughts, forest fires, rising sea levels, disease epidemics, thawing permafrost and damage to crops and water supplies prove correct, global warming is likely to be the most damaging environmental problem in history.
Their case may have been strengthened by the 2001 scientific report from the intergovernmental panel on climate change, appointed by the United Nations. It concluded that: "Most of the observed warming over the past 50 years is likely [defined as a better than two-in-three chance] to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.
But litigators will need to overcome serious obstacles if climate change-related damage is to become the subject of billion-dollar lawsuits.
First, who is responsible? The companies that sell fuel or those who burn it in our cars, homes and factories? How can any particular emitter be held legally responsible for a problem caused by so many people?
Second, who should be compensated? The billions of people who will be affected? Or just those who face the severest losses?
Third, how can any particular disaster, such as a flood or crop failure, be blamed on man-made climate change? At present, scientists insist that it is impossible to attribute any particular weather-related event to climate change – in spite of their confidence that climate change is making extreme weather events more likely.
These issues present formidable, but not insuperable, barriers to successful legal action. Writing in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law recently, David Grossman, a Yale graduate, concluded that: "Some tort-based climate change suits have strong legal merits and may be capable of succeeding."
He thinks that coastal states, island states and nations, the State of Alaska and Alaskan villages could all be promising plaintiffs. Potential defendants could be fossil fuel companies, electric utilities and car manufacturers, whose liability could be apportioned according to their producer's carbon content or market share.
The difficulties of making a connection between global warming and specific environmental effects could be resolved using a statistical approach, according to Myles Allen, an Oxford physicist, writing in Nature earlier this year. With advances in the understanding of climate change, scientists might be able to determine that, say, the flood risk in a certain area had increased by a factor of 10. It might then be reasonable to attribute 90 per cent of the damage of a particular flood to past emissions.
For the moment, a company is unlikely to be successfully sued merely because of its greenhouse gas emissions, in the view of James Cameron of Baker & McKenzie, the international law firm.
He warns, however, that its risk could be greatly increased if it were deemed to have acted culpably by, say, lobbying against greenhouse gas regulations.
Companies that delay taking action on climate change are also at risk of being sued by their investors. They could be accused of incurring higher costs as a result of unduly delaying emission reductions, damaging a company’s reputation and failing to disclose investment-relevant information.
"Shareholders actions might follow, claiming that directors and officers of such companies should be liable for not adequately addressing the potential threats brought by climate-change related regulation," according to Swiss Re, the reinsurer that is concerned about the implications for directors and officers' liability insurance.
As well as pursuing direct legal action against companies, litigators are focusing on regulators and agencies. In February, the states of Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts filed a suit against the US Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act for failure to regulate carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.
Last August, a lawsuit was launched against the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank of the United States by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, some affected individuals and the cities of Boulder, Oakland and Arcata, which are worried about water supplies, floods and wildfires.
They accuse the agencies of failing to conduct environmental reviews before financing projects that contribute to global warming. OPIC will not comment on the litigation but it says that its power projects are predominantly natural gas, hydro-electric and geothermal, which are not a main contributor to climate change. Friends of the Earth’s response is that this ignores the long-term ulative impact of their operations.
Could the US itself join those agencies in the dock? Last September, the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu, which fears it will drown under rising sea levels within 50 years, threatened to bring a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in The Hague against the US and Australia.
This approach would be complicated because the US is not subject to the compulsory jurisdiction by the court. But there are several feasible options for bringing a case against the US in the International Court or other international forums, according to a recent paper by Andrew Strauss of Widener University Law School.
He concludes that the US rejection of the Kyoto protocol and its status as the world’s single largest emitter of greenhouse gases make it "the most logical first country target of a global warming lawsuit in an international forum."
Some of the bolder lawsuits being considered may seem too radical to succeed in the courtroom. But there is a sense of urgency on the part of would-be litigators trying to bring the force of law to bear on greenhouse gas emissions. They are anxious that the long gap between the first tobacco litigation and the first verdict sustained on appeal should not be repeated.
"We certainly do not have the luxury of 42 years in which to bring the weight of the law to bear against those who contribute to climate change," says Mr Roderick.
That the US does not submit itself to the jurisdiction of International courts is also a joke... a bad one. How can you expect anyone to listen to you, or follow your lead, if you are continually hypocritical?
RROS
I'm not a head in the sand conservative when it comes to global warming - but I absolutely do not think the US refusing to submit to international court jurisdiciton is a hypocritical, or weak position, at all.
How often do you think the US would be sued, for damn near everything, if it were to do so. Ever heard the maxim, "sue the guy with the money"; well we got the most money, so guess what? Who would we appeal a decision to? Kofi Annan?
LOL, that is a beautiful argument. We should not submit to international courts, and create a great example of the leading nation spearheading environmental issues because we might get sued if we it up.
Weak!
We abide by the rules which we agree to, then we are fine. And if we are above the laws, and too good to join, wouldn't it be just as easy to, if we are sued, and if they are frivolous, and if we lose, to just not pay them and drop out? We are, as you say, "the guy with the most money," and money is power...so we have nothing to fear.
So, get your head out of the sand, join the international courts, and lead my example for once. We sure didn't let international opinion stop us from throwing our weight around in Iraq, did we?
I hope some of you actually took the time to read what I posted above.
Anyway, 101A, America claims itself to be the bastion of justice on the planet, and yet it won't subject itself to the highest international court. How, then, will that court ever have any legitimacy? If the rest of the world sees America opting out of something, they figure "well, if they won't do it, why should I?" It's a little concept called "moral leadership" that the US Govt is really good at talking about and really bad at actually following through on.
I was watching the 3rd season of West Wing last night. Your govt would be far better off run by Professor Bartlett, Leo, Toby, Josh, Sam, and particularly CJ and Donna... oh, Donna...
Anyhoo...
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