The Strasbourg High Court ruled on climate change: Greta Thurling, a nervous young woman, and a group of Portuguese citizens
This will be the first time an international court has ruled on climate change and it won’t be the first time activists have succeeded with lawsuits.
Europe’s top human rights court began its session Tuesday to help force countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
A decision against any of the countries involved could force them to reduce net emissions to zero by 2030. Currently, the EU has a target to be climate-neutral by the year 2050. Many governments say that it would be difficult to meet the goal in the near future.
A group of people gathered in front of the court building to cheer and wave flags, including climate activist Greta Thurling who was released after being arrested at a protest in the Netherlands.
We are nervous. A young woman who is part of a group of Portuguese people who brought a case to the Strasbourg court described herself as being nervous and excited.
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The 17 judges will rule in their favor, but they could decide in the other direction and undermine a previous ruling. In 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court ordered the government to cut emissions by at least 25% by the end of 2020 from benchmark 1990 levels.
“The extreme heat waves, the rainfalls, followed by heat waves, it is just choking us with greenhouse effects. I’m worried by the fact that they started happening more and more. That’s what really scared me. And, I thought to myself, well, what can I do?” She said it was true.
In addition to five more young people, Santos Oliveira took Portugal and many other nations to court, arguing the failure to stop emissions violated their fundamental rights.
A group of Swiss retirees want their government to do more. Senior Women for Climate Protection, whose average age is 74, say older women’s rights are especially in danger because of the extreme heat that will become more frequent due to global warming.
Earth shattered global annual heat records in 2023, flirted with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold, and showed more signs of a feverish planet, Copernicus, a European climate agency, said in January.
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In all three cases, lawyers argued that the political and civil protections guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights are meaningless if the planet is uninhabitable.
Switzerland is not alone in being affected by global warming, said Alain Chablais, representative of the country at last year’s hearings. The problem can not be solved by Switzerland alone.
Acknowledging the urgency of the climate crisis, the court fast-tracked all three cases, including a rare move allowing the Portuguese case to bypass domestic legal proceedings.
Judgments from the European Court of Human Rights aren’t legally binding against all 46 of its member states, but they set a legal precedent against which future lawsuits would be judged.
Climate change is making heatwaves more intense and frequent, and heatwaves pose greater risks to older adults, like the plaintiffs in this landmark suit. Older adults are more likely to have a chronic medical condition or take prescription medicines that affect the body’s ability to regulate temperature. Women have also been found to face disproportionate impacts from climate-related disasters, which intensify gender-based violence and existing disparities in access to resources.