Can countries that foul our atmosphere with gases that warm the world be held legally accountable for the consequences?
Yes, say six schoolchildren from Leiria in Portugal. They are planning to take dozens of European nations to court to answer for forest fires that hit their region in June, one of which resulted in 64 deaths. The youngsters 鈥� aged 5 to 14 鈥� say lack of action on global warming makes these disasters more likely.
They are poised to in the European Court of Human Rights, a body whose rulings are binding on 47 countries including the UK. The children want those nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases and commit to keeping most of their existing fossil fuel reserves in the ground.
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鈥淚t鈥檚 not just David versus Goliath,鈥� reads their appeal for funds. 鈥淚t鈥檚 David versus many Goliaths,鈥� since the plaintiffs will have to confront the arguments of multiple nations.
Other climate suits are being brought on behalf of young people in the US, India, France, Ukraine, Belgium and other countries
More broadly, litigation by citizens and environmental groups is booming worldwide. The lion鈥檚 share is in the US, where more than 600 climate-related cases have been filed in recent decades.
But such claims pose unique legal 鈥� as well as scientific 鈥� challenges. For example, how exactly do you prove in a court of law that climate change is culpable for events such as the Portuguese wildfires?
Backed by science
Heidi Cullen of US environmental organisation Climate Central says the science itself can now reliably provide the smoking gun.
She is a pioneer in a field called extreme event attribution science. In the past, scientists were reluctant to draw links between climate change and any given weather event. However, Cullen says that investigators now have far better analytical tools to assess how climate change has altered the likelihood and intensity of extreme events such as hurricanes and droughts 鈥� and can do so with surprising precision.
So what do these tools tell us about Portugal鈥檚 wildfires? An by Cullen and other researchers shows that human-caused climate change made the record-breaking 2017 summer temperatures in Europe鈥檚 Mediterranean region at least 10 times more likely than in pre-climate change days.
Moreover, devastating heatwaves such as the one that helped drive the Leiria fires have been more frequent in recent years, and could become the new norm by 2050 if we don鈥檛 get our climate act together, says Cullen.
She has been getting a lot of calls lately from lawyers who are keen to better understand climate attribution. One of the biggest uses of the developing science will be in the legal arena, to provide solid evidence in cases like that being brought by the Portuguese children.
At the heart of this is the question of political will. The intended withdrawal of US president Donald Trump鈥檚 administration from the Paris accord demonstrates that we cannot necessarily depend on our leaders to do the right thing. In the UK, on emissions targets are also growing.
As Mary Wood, a law professor at the University of Oregon, has said, where our leaders fail us, the courts must take up the slack. And who better to goad the courts to act than the young? They have the most to lose, with their lives literally on the line.
