Swiss Women Lead the Charge of Legal Battle Against Climate Chaos (& other positive news)
On the legal front, a major victory for forcing action on the climate crisis emerges plus other news worth your time!
On the legal front, a major victory for forcing action on the climate crisis emerges plus other news worth your time!
As ever we’re looking for positive news on climate to help power action overall. Leading this issue of the newsletter is a story in The Guardian about how a group of Swiss women have won a major victory in the European court of human rights. What a group of over 2000 women successfully argued in court is that the failure of action by the government breached their rights to as they were particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate changed-powered heat waves;
The 17-judge panel did not prescribe exactly what Switzerland should do to address the problem, leaving it to the Council of Europe’s committee of ministers to come up with a solution.
But it did lay out minimum governance standards that states should have “due regard” to, such as setting carbon budgets and interim targets, keeping these updated and based on the best available evidence, and being transparent about how well they are being met.
Reisch said: “What the court did quite clearly was to say that, while the Swiss government retains some discretion to define the precise measures it will take, that discretion is not unfettered; it has to be within the bounds of what science shows is clearly required to prevent further harm.”
This is just one of a slew of legal cases winding their way through the courts of a number of countries that all focus on a similar point - failure of government action on climate crisis is a failure of government’s duty to its citizens. Other examples include this one here in the UK, where the Scottish courts are being asked to review the decision to open a large new oilfield and this one in the US brought by a group of young people against the EPA for decades of failure to regulate greenhouse gases.
In other news, a couple of other stories caught my eye;
Radia Wind Runner is a plan to build an enormous cargo plane - why is this a good idea I wondered? The makers are arguing that it is because it allows the transport of offshore sized wind turbines to many, many more locations on land. As the longer the turbine blades, the more energy you harvest, this could be a major upscaler of wind energy generation. There’s an interesting interview with the CEO of the company here.
AI is a technology that is using (and plans to use) a lot of energy - at a time when we need to be cutting emissions. A small positive sign that the industry is acknowledging that as an issue and investing heavily in fusion, renewables & nuclear. Much more on this story here too.
$19 Million For Innovative Solar Panel Installation Over Canals From Investing In America Agenda
A massive 605 megawatt PV plant in Germany is now Europe’s largest solar farm
(Image - WindRunner via here)