Responsibility...
April 20, 2010
– Comments (13)
...is what "The Left" (the group that elected a Democratic Congress and President) is talking about today.
Mother Jones:
Is that, well—legal, you might ask? In international law, there's an established principle called transboundary harm, which means that if a Canadian factory belches toxic chemicals into a river, fouling a reservoir in Vermont, sooner or later the people at the Canadian factory will be hearing from some American lawyers. For the first time, Micronesia applied this tenet to climate change—arguing that its survival is jeopardized by any large power plant that doesn't curb its carbon footprint. "They're using a very creative approach to the international legal process," says Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development....
....Nevertheless, industries are bracing for a tide of climate lawsuits. The major insurer Swiss Re has warned that "climate change-related litigation could become a significant issue within the next couple of years." Pawa compares this nascent field to the epic court battles over tobacco and asbestos. "It's a process of learning by doing," said Pawa. "Just by bringing these cases over and over again, the judiciary [and] the public get used to the idea of liability." According to a forthcoming United Nations study, the world's 3,000 biggest public companies could be on the hook for $2.2 trillion—more than 30 percent of their profits—if they were made to pay for the fallout of their carbon emissions.
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