Monday, January 24, 2011

Climate litigation: hundreds of billions of dollars



The AFP is writing about the emerging field of climate lawsuits:
Climate change: Dogs of law are off the leash
While no court has awarded anyone a single cent for climate-related damages yet, some people are getting ready for the possible explosion of such lawsuits in the future. At hundreds of billions of dollars, the damages could humiliate all the cancer-related tobacco and asbestos lawsuits. So it makes sense for many people to dream about these "opportunities" and to get ready.




If such lawsuits ever succeed - and are defended against appeal courts - it could show how amazing a visionary a regular TRF reader who is no longer with us has been.

In his 2005 novel, State of Fear, Michael Crichton wrote about George Morton, not to be confused with George Soros, who donated lots of money to environmental activism. He also gave $10 million to start a lawsuit in which the inhabitants of Vanutu island, not to be confused with Vanuatu, sued producers of CO2.

As AFP mentions, the number of climate-related lawsuits has ballooned in the last three years, pretty much from the 2008 death of Michael Crichton. Well, let's hope that Crichton's visions will keep their status of science-fiction fantasies. Transfers of hundreds of billions of dollars justified by hot air - an omnipresent and harmless trace gas - could throw the global economy into havoc.

Thanks to Marc Morano