Writing in The Economist, JamesThorntonCE argues that companies 'will never move fast enough voluntarily'
man, I wondered how I could help save life on Earth. I recall watching as the first Earth Day celebration began in 1970. Marching in the streets seemed emotional, not strategic. Politics seemed a waste of time. The most powerful tool I could identify was law. Only law levels the playing field between the individual and the largest forces in society, namely countries and companies.
Courts in America, though, have so far demurred. In 2015 a group of young people sued government officials, on the grounds that their failure to tackle climate change denied the plaintiffs their due process rights of life, liberty and property, among other things. In the case, known as, the court acknowledged the dangers of climate change, such as flooding, and accepted that the young plaintiffs had documented they would be injured by climate change. But then it failed to act.
Unless citizens used litigation to block the plants, a higher-carbon future would have been locked in. In America, the work of the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, and in Europe, the work of ClientEarth and its many partners, has blocked a new generation of coal plants in the courts over the past 15 years. In Asia, as of last year, some 600 new coal plants were still planned.
In Poland, when the government and Enea, a state-owned energy company, decided to build what may have been among the last new coal plants in Europe, ClientEarth brought a corporate-law case. We bought shares, and then commissioned an independent financial analysis showing that the plant was a bad investment. When the company announced it would go ahead, we answered with a case against the directors. We argued they were making a bad investment, violating their basic duty of care to shareholders.
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