Claimants to argue lack of adequate action is breach of human rights, in largest climate legal action to date
Six young people are preparing to appear at the European court of human rights to try to compel 32 nations to rapidly escalate their emissions reductions in the world’s largest climate legal action to date.
Aged from 11 to 24, the six Portuguese claimants, say they were driven to act by their experiences in the wildfires that ripped through the Leiria region in 2017, killing 66 people and destroying 20,000 hectares of forest.
After another summer in which wildfires raged across Portugal, Greece, Spain, Croatia and Italy, the young people will argue in the grand chamber of the Strasbourg court in 13 days’ time that the 32 European nations’ policies to tackle global heating are inadequate and in breach of their human rights obligations.
Crowdfunded by people around the world, who have donated more than £100,000, they are seeking a binding ruling from the judges to force the countries to rapidly escalate their emissions reductions in what would be a historic milestone in climate litigation.
Rishi Sunak is considering weakening some of the government’s key green commitments in a major policy shift.
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First, the government would push the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars – currently set to come into force in 2030 – back to 2035. The 2030 date has been government policy since 2020.
Second, the government would significantly weaken the plan to phase out the installation of gas boilers by 2035, saying that they only want 80% to be phased out by that year.
Third, homeowners and landlords would be told that there will be no new energy efficiency regulations on homes. Ministers had been considering imposing fines on landlords who fail to upgrade their properties to a certain level of energy efficiency.
Fourth, the 2026 ban on off-grid oil boilers will be delayed to 2035, with only an 80% phase out target at that date.
In addition, Britons will be told that there will be no new taxes to discourage flying, no government policies to change people’s diets and no measures to encourage carpooling.
Mr Sunak is also likely to rule out what he sees as burdensome recycling schemes.
Today the outgoing Dutch Minister for Climate and Energy Policy, Rob Jetten, published an analysis of the Netherlands’ fossil fuel subsidies, estimating these at between €39.7 and €46.4 billion a year, more than 4% of the Netherlands’ GDP. According to campaigners the analysis underlines the importance of an urgent phase-out plan, in line with the Dutch government’s long-standing promise to end these subsidies by 2025.
Recent research by Dutch research and environmental organizations shows that this would allow the Netherlands to reduce its CO2 emissions by up to 20% by 2030, while creating space for innovative and sustainable businesses and freeing up billions that can be reinvested in climate justice and social protection measures. The conclusions of the impact analysis for companies of subsidy removal that were also covered in today’s government publication mainly emphasize the short-term impacts for a select group of large energy-intensive companies that run on cheap fossil energy. Researchers and campaigners say this is too limited a perspective and should not stand in the way of an urgent phase-out plan.
A protester is led away by a New York City police officer during a September 18, 2023 climate protest in Lower Manhattan. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The activist group Climate Defiance asked: “Why are we getting handcuffed while people who literally torch the planet get celebrated for their ‘civility’ and their ‘moderation’?”
A day after tens of thousands of climate activists marched through Manhattan’s Upper East Side demanding an end to oil, gas, and coal production, thousands more demonstrators hit the streets of Lower Manhattan Monday, where more than 100 people were arrested while surrounding the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to protest fossil fuel financing.
Protesters chanted slogans like “No oil, no gas, fossil fuels can kiss my ass” and “We need clean air, not another billionaire” as they marched from Zuccotti Park—ground zero of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement—to pre-selected sites in the Financial District. Witnesses said many of the activists attempted to reach the New York Stock Exchange but were blocked by police.
“We’re here to wake up the regulators who are asleep at the wheel as they continue to let Wall Street lead us into ANOTHER financial crash with their fossil fuel financing,” the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition explained on social media.
“No oil, no gas! Fossil fuels can kiss my a**!”
Blocking the entrances to the @federalreserve as arrests happen.
The Fed is SHUT DOWN.
We need policies to protect the climate and communities, stop fossil fuels, not subsidies and bailouts for fossil fuels! pic.twitter.com/5RPRUpuCBb
Local and national media reported New York Police Department (NYPD) officers arrested 114 protesters and charged them with civil disobedience Monday after they blocked entrances to the Fed building. Most of those arrested were expected to be booked and released.
“I’m being arrested for exercising my First Amendment right to protest because Joe Manchin is putting a 300-mile-long pipeline through my home state of West Virginia and President [Joe] Biden allowed him to do it for nothing in return,” explained Climate Defiance organizer Rylee Haught on social media, referring to the right-wing Democratic senator and the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
As she was led away by an NYPD officer, a tearful Haught said Biden “sold us out.”
“He promised to end drilling on federal lands, and he’s selling out Appalachia’s future for profit,” she added.
Stop scrolling. Stop scrolling. Our organizer Rylee just got arrested at the New York Fed. It is morally outrageous that Rylee is being taken away in handcuffs while climate criminals get honorary Harvard degrees and Davos keynotes. It is morally outrageous. pic.twitter.com/vIjNcbeFr3
Responding to the “block-long” line of arrestees, Climate Defiance asked: “Why are we getting handcuffed while people who literally torch the planet get celebrated for their ‘civility’ and their ‘moderation’?”
Alicé Nascimento of New York Communities for Change toldWABC that the protests—which are part of Climate Week and are timed to coincide with this week’s United Nations Climate Ambition Summit—are “our last resort.”
“We’re bringing the crisis to their doorstep and this is what it looks like,” said Nascimento.
At least a thousand End Fossil Fuels protesters have surrounded the Federal Reserve on NYC Wall Street protesting the financing of fossil fuels. Several dozen arrests thus far. pic.twitter.com/25mbZidLna
As they have at similar demonstrations, protesters called on Biden to stop approving new fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency. Some had a message for the president and his administration.
“We hold the power of the people, the power you need to win this election,” 17-year-old Brooklynite Emma Buretta of the youth-led protest group Fridays for Future told WABC. “If you want to win in 2024, if you do not want the blood of my generation to be on your hands, end fossil fuels.”
Gas companies “cynically used… the Russian invasion of Ukraine to frighten governments into massive, unneeded investment into and expansion of fossil gas imports and infrastructure,” one campaigner said.
As part of the Global Fight to End Fossil Fuels, activists from Greenpeace France attempted to block a new TotalEnergies liquefied natural gas terminal [tanker] from entering the port of Le Havre Monday morning.
Kayakers paddled between the port entrance and the tanker carrying the terminal—the Cape Ann—and wrote “Gas kills” in white paint along its side, Reuters reported.
“This LNG terminal is yet another blatant example of ‘shock doctrine,’ where gas operators shifted their public messaging and lobbying from ‘energy transition’ to ‘energy security’ and cynically used the opportunity after the energy supply concerns triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine to frighten governments into massive, unneeded investment into and expansion of fossil gas imports and infrastructure,” Greenpeace France oil, transport, and ocean campaigner Hélène Bourges said in a statement.
ation unit did arrive at the port in Western France Monday morning, TotalEnergies told Reuters.
But the Greenpeace activists argue its arrival contradicts French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2022 promise to make France the first major nation to abandon the fossil fuels driving the climate emergency. What’s more, the gas is mostly U.S. shale gas, obtained by fracking—a method banned in France because of the harm it does to the global climate and the health and environment of local communities.
The activists in kayaks carried banners reading “Total: shale dealer,” “Macron: shale dealer,” and “End Fossil Crimes.”
Members of Scientists in Rebellion also came to Le Havre to support the action.
“This LNG terminal is a sham that responds neither to the crisis nor to energy sovereignty and pushes us into a scenario of climate chaos,” the group wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Nous étions ce matin au Havre avec pour dire 📢📢📢 STOP 📢📢📢 aux projets suicidaires du Gvt et de @TotalEnergies
Ce terminal méthanier est une imposture qui ne répond ni à la crise, ni à la souveraineté énergétique et nous enfonce dans un scénario de chaos climatique pic.twitter.com/19uYvwaQed
Greenpeace challenged the narrative that increased LNG is necessary to help France and the rest of Europe meet their energy needs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a report copublished in June with Disclose, Greenpeace France pointed out that the country’s existing LNG terminals did not use their maximum capacity in 2022 and were underutilized during the first half of 2023.
“If France really suffered from a gas supply crisis in 2022 that was severe enough to justify the new floating terminal in Le Havre, it’s surprising that the capacities of existing terminals, particularly the ones at Dunkerque and Fos Tonkin, were underutilized,” the report authors wrote.
“This summer’s extreme weather events have highlighted the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels.”
Instead, they argued that the LNG increase was the result of lobbying from the oil and gas industry.
“The only beneficiaries of the LNG gas infrastructure in Le Havre are TotalEnergies, the operator of the floating terminal, and its shareholders, whose private interests and gains prevail over climate action and people’s health, with the complicit support of the French government that granted an unprecedented legal preferential regime to set up this operation,” Bourges said in a statement.
Greenpeace’s action followed a summer of deadly heatwaves, fires, and floods and a global mobilization to end fossil fuels from September 15-17.
“This summer’s extreme weather events have highlighted the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels,” Greenpeace France wrote on social media.
The group said it had two demands for Macron: to prevent the new terminal from being used and to kill any other fossil fuel projects under consideration.
