European court rules human rights violated by climate inaction

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68768598

by Craftbeef

35 comments

  1. **A group of elderly Swiss women have won a partial victory in their climate case in the European Court of Human Rights.**

    It is the first time the powerful court has ruled on global warming.

    The women said that Switzerland’s government violated their human rights by failing to act quickly enough to address climate change.

    The ruling is binding and can trickle down to influence the law in 46 countries in Europe including the UK.

    *Edit1:*
    The Swiss women, called KlimaSeniorinnen or Senior Women for Climate Protection, argued that they cannot leave their homes and suffer health attacks during heatwaves in Switzerland.

    On Tuesday data showed that last month was the world’s warmest March on record, meaning the temperature records have broken ten months in a row.

    The court dismissed two other cases brought by six Portuguese young people and a former French mayor. Both argued that European governments had failed to tackle climate change quickly enough, violating their rights.

    Member of the KlimaSeniorinnen Elisabeth Smart, 76, told BBC News that she has seen how the climate in Switzerland has changed since she was a child growing up on a farm.

    Asked about her commitment to the case for nine years, she said: “Some of us are just made that way. We are not made to sit in a rocking chair and knit.”

  2. Good. It’s time we start holding governments and corporations accountable for their inaction to tackle climate change.

  4. Whoa, talk about impressive. That’s the epitome of that greek saying: “A society becomes better when old people plant trees in which shade they shall never sit.” Infinitely grateful to the KlimaSeniorinnen.

  5. Is there more to this case than the article says? You can’t blame one country’s government for the global warming, and even of you could, their guilt should be very hard, if not impossible, to prove in a court.

  6. Even if whole Europe will stop CO2 emissions now, China and India alone will pollute world enough to destroy climate. Europeans should concentrate more on making our air clean rather than CO2 alone. Also we should not allow climate migrants from countries which are producing more CO2 than EU countries.

  7. genuinely surprised that for once someone actually was like “oh wait, we fucked up”

  8. I think EU should held an exemplary lead when it comes to climate change action, but also not needlessly sacrifice itself if others are not willing to meet us halfway.

    What I mean by that is that if other countries agree to net zero by 2050, then EU should strive for 2045, and so on. This way, we are never the main problem and no one can accuse us of not doing our part, but are not going out of our way to try to stop climate change if others are not doing something at least close to what we are doing.

    Thankfully, most climate change action is starting to make economic sense even in the shorter term (e.g. wind and solar power becoming much cheaper), so most of climate change action is not that much of a “sacrifice” but just something that makes sense to do anyway, regardless of what others are doing.

  9. So… They got to enjoy life while world was sane, but now they got convinced by doomsday prophets and want to fuck over economies for their children and grandchildren.

  10. That is an extremely interesting angle to tackle the issue on. As we tend to forget, we are the primary species threatened by climate change.

  13. Well yeah, I’d consider sweating my balls off in 40°C weather in august a human rights violation. It’s basically torture.

  14. Now let’s just hope that means something actually happens…which I honestly doubt…

  15. > the powerful court

    Meh, they cannot enforce anything. It is always dependent on the goodwill of the members states. On the other end, it has once freed Nawalny from Russian prison, so it can actually archive things.

  17. It’s good the court ordered that something should be done, but the term “human rights violations” seem to only be more and more diluted. Countries can have an obligation to do something against global warming and fail that obligation, which would still be very serious and horrible, without saying that it “violates human rights”. “Why care that Saudi Arabia and Russia violates human rights when everyone else also do it all the time?”

  18. In theory that’s great, what will the consequences be though? Are there going to be any meaningful consequences or a slap on the wrist which will amount to nothing?

  19. Oh nice. I did a case study on the KlimaSeniorinnen case for my LLB and have been following it through the Grand Chamber. Happy for them.

    What it will achieve in the long term remains to be seen, owing to the obvious problems with causation – how do you link a large climate system with many variables that affects everyone to individual cases of harm – but it is a symbolic victory at least.

  20. Okay but who is the defendant? All of Switzerland? And what’s the sentence for that „crime”? This is stupid.

  21. And how does that help exactly? Like I’m all for small wins but how does this address the issue about climate change?

  22. Oh cool, the first steps of totalitarian measures to “stop climate change” which will, unfortunately, mostly aim the oponents of the powerful

  23. Yeah and all while using smartphones and laptops made from materials mined from cleared rainforests :P. Hypocrites… Also I’m eagerly awaiting for the day when Muslim population will rise to some significant level like 25-30% 😛

  24. imagine the horror, the rich people that are pillaging the earth, maybe they will be forced to earn less money from fossil fuels and miss their growth targets… i will lose sleep over this.

  26. Ah yes again Europe guilty. We are doing our part. The rest of the world need to catch up, and it’s not our job to force them

  27. Meanwhile the US, China and India are pumping out pollution on a daily basis. It doesn’t just stay over their countries. What we’re doing is ripping off the public and is basically pissing in the wind

  28. So, now what?

    Know what also increases contributions to climate change, militaries. Is the court going to force the EU countries to stop building militaries and or supplying foreign nations with military supplies?

  30. (I preface this by stating I’m progressive and not a troll.)

    This case really makes no sense to me. 80% of Switzerland’s electrical grid is powered by renewables. While every country can always do better, how specifically has Switzerland been negligent in their duties? Like, I’m *actually* asking. Did they give tax breaks to gas-guzzlers or something? The article isn’t specific.

    Furthermore, let’s say hypothetically that a country was totally powered in every way by renewables, it would likely improve local air quality, which is great, but it would have very little appreciable affect on preventing heatwaves in that specific region as they have absolutely no control over their sovereign neighbors’ climate policies.

    Bring this case against a couple of other EU counties I can think of (but won’t name for civility), and then I’ll actually take this outcome more seriously. Going after Switzerland just seems like really low-hanging fruit and a hollow victory that climate activists shouldn’t be so quick to pat themselves on the back for.

    Again, just my take, until I receive or find more nuanced information. If my assessment is incorrect, I’ll of course acknowledge it after a reëvaluation.

  32. International law doesn’t exist so this does not matter. Who cares

  33. Surprisingly mild rage noises from the populist right considering this is r/europe

  34. Useless court with no real power rules that thing no one can stop even if they wanted to is actually unjust.

  35. Meanwhile, the German government passes a law that wishes future generations good luck in fighting climate change /hj

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