(This is Part 2 of a four part article being published in the Lawyer's Daily, based on a lecture I gave for Osgoode Hall Law School and the York Faculty of Environmental Studies.)
As shown in Part 1 of this article, the climate crisis is already causing large financial losses, and much more is ahead. Governments and individuals will increasingly face overwhelming bills. Most of the fossil fuels that are driving this crisis have been produced and sold by 103 companies, the Carbon Majors. Can they be made to pay for the resulting damage?
In Part 1, I showed some of the reasons why I expect governments, courts and public opinion to increasingly welcome the idea of making the Carbon Majors pay. When that appetite grows, lawyers will have options to offer, including:
A generation ago, courts usually refused jurisdiction over public policy issues that involved the public purse. They called them “non-justiciable”. But as the climate crisis worsens, even judges in their protected enclaves are starting to understand our deep jeopardy, and to think again before throwing cases out of court.
The leading world case on justiciability of government climate action is Urgenda v. Netherlands, Supreme Court of the Netherlands, December 20, 2019. Other cases are spreading around the world. (Full English text here.)
In Urgenda, an NGO asked the courts to force the Dutch government to keep its international commitment to limit the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by at least 25% by the end of 2020, compared to 1990. The Dutch government did not deny the seriousness of the climate crisis, but absolutely denied that it was the proper role of the courts to make the government act.
The trial court issued the order requested by Urgenda in 2015. The Dutch government appealed, but the order has now been upheld by the Dutch Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the Dutch government’s failure to slash GHG emissions breached its obligations under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The Convention gives Dutch residents the right to life, and the right to respect for private, family and family life. As a party to the Convention, the Netherlands is obliged to take appropriate measures when it knows of a real and immediate risk to human life or well-being. The Court ruled that the climate crisis creates such a real and immediate risk, because there is a serious risk that dangerous climate change will occur that threatens the lives and well-being of many in the Netherlands.
The Netherlands, like Canada, is a also party to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change. The aim of that treaty is to keep the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere low enough to prevent major disturbances of the climate system. To achieve this, all countries must take measures to prevent climate change, in accordance with their responsibilities and capacities.
Every country is therefore responsible for its share of emissions. The Court rejected the argument, often heard in Canada, that the Netherlands’ own emissions are relatively small on a global scale and that reducing their own emissions will not alone solve the global problem. This, the Court ruled, cannot relieve the Netherlands of the obligation to do its part, and to appropriately reduce GHG emissions from its territory.
Scientific evidence, summarized in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, show a great deal of consensus about the urgent need for rich countries to reduce their GHGs at least 25-40% by 2020. It is therefore the obligation of the Netherlands to do so. The government had failed to justify its policies to defer emission reductions to later years, given the strong evidence that leaving reduction measures until later means they will have to be more drastic and costly, while also causing a greater risk of abrupt climate change.
On the question of justiciability, the Court acknowledged that decision-making on how to reduce GHG belongs to the government and parliament. They have a great deal of freedom to make the necessary political decisions. But it is the task of the courts to ensure that the government and parliament act within legal limits, such as their constitutional obligation to protect the right to life. It is an essential part of a democratic constitutional state for courts to offer citizens legal protection even against the government. The government does not protect citizens’ constitutional right to life when it defers GHG emission reductions in the face of clear evidence of the likely consequences. The government must therefore achieve the emission reductions ordered, though it is free to choose how to do so.
The Urgenda decision is a powerful precedent for Canada. Both the federal and Ontario governments are already facing similar lawsuits, La Rose v. Her Majesty the Queen (Canada) in Federal Court, and Mathur et. al. v. Her Majesty in Right of Ontario in Ontario Superior Court. Both sets of young plaintiffs correctly allege that our governments’ failure to reduce climate pollution (GHGs) increases the risk of climate catastrophe and therefore violates their rights under sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As in Urgenda, they ask the courts to order their governments to set a science-based GHG reduction target, and to take effective action to meet it.
Faced with these powerful lawsuits, and at risk of being forced to act, governments may well be tempted to make the Carbon Majors pay instead of taxpayers. After all, that’s what they have done before. More details in Part 3.
Dianne Saxe