Climate change: Dogs of law are off the leash

PARIS — From being a marginal and even mocked issue, climate-change litigation is fast emerging as a new frontier of law where some believe hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake.
Compensation for losses inflicted by man-made global warming would be jaw-dropping, a payout that would make tobacco and asbestos damages look like pocket money.
Imagine: a country or an individual could get redress for a drought that destroyed farmland, for floods and storms that created an army of refugees, for rising seas that wiped a small island state off the map.
In the past three years, the number of climate-related lawsuits has ballooned, filling the void of political efforts in tackling greenhouse-gas emissions.
Eyeing the money-spinning potential, some major commercial law firms now place climate-change litigation in their Internet shop window.
Seminars on climate law are often thickly attended by corporations that could be in the firing line -- and by the companies that insure them.
But legal experts sound a note of caution, warning that this is a new and mist-shrouded area of justice.

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MrVicchio said:

AFP: Climate change: Dogs of law are off the leash

Remember folks, who would win a case against big tobacco, what a stupid idea...

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Albert Di Salvo said:

The way to deal with environmental litigants is to offshore everything. Then there will be no jobs for Americans, and we can blame environmentalists for killing jobs.

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spud_meister said:

:lol: I grazed my knee on concrete when I slipped over in the rain, obviously the rain was due to global warming, who can I sue?

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MrVicchio said:

You laugh, somewhere, someone is trying to find that loophole.

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spud_meister said:

I agree with this though, if you can prove that an individual or a corporations actions led directly, solely and incontrovertibly to a weather event, you should be entitled to compensation just for being able to prove that. :mrgreen:

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