From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Managing Producer Jenni Doering with Pat Parentau, emeritus professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, on the ruling this week by a Montana judge in favor of a group of youth plaintiffs who claimed in a lawsuit that the state’s promotion of fossil fuel development violated their constitutional right to “a clean and healthful environment.” With Executive Producer Steve Curwood. STEVE CURWOOD: In a first of its kind ruling in the U.S., sixteen young plaintiffs have won their suit against the state of Montana over its refusal to protect them from climate change. This climate case is one of several that have been filed by youth plaintiffs in states including Hawai’i, where extreme heat, drought, and hurricane-fed winds recently fueledhe nation’s deadliest wildfires in a century. So, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Joe Manchin, oil companies, and anyone in power who denies climate change, to me are the arsonists here.  And we’re living the climate emergency.   JENNI DOERING: Young plaintiffs in Hawai’i seek to hold the state Department of Transportation accountable for projects that lock in the use of fossil fuels, with a trial set for June 2024. There are also youth climate lawsuits against the states of Virginia and Utah, and the Juliana case against the federal government is still in play in Oregon. In her 108-page ruling on the Montana case, J udge Kathy Seeley cited the strong scientific record on climate change presented at trial and linked it to the harms the young plaintiffs are already experiencing.....READ ON          https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19082023/montana-youth-climate-lawsuit-pat-parenteau/   

Climate Lawsuits Are On The Rise. This Is What They're Based On. Litigation is increasingly being used to compel countries, municipalities, and companies to reduce their carbon emissions or achieve net zero, says a new report by Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the UN Environment Programme.According to the report, the number of climate cases has more than doubled in the last five years, and litigation is expected to continually increase. The report says that as of the start of this year, there are 2,180 climate change cases underway around the world, with 1,522 in the United States alone. There are cases in 55 countries, with many in Britain, Europe, and Australia, along with a growing number in Asia and the Global South. Apart from the report, the director of global legal strategy at the Foundation for International Law for the Environment in the Netherlands said that about 50 percent of cases are being won. “Litigation is a critical tool that’s available to a wide range of actors, including governments at all levels, nongovernmental organizations and community groups, individuals and the private sector to seek to advance climate action,” said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center. Many U.S. cases so far have been thrown out of court, however, or are being stalled by procedural arguments or jurisdictional battles. Climate cases have often fared better in other countries because of legally binding human rights commitments or constitutions with enshrined environmental rights. What are climate lawsuits based on? The report describes six major categories of climate lawsuits. 1. Climate rights....five more- read on                   https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/08/09/climate-lawsuits-are-on-the-rise-this-is-what-theyre-based-on/

  Iceland Named Most Peaceful Country—Again—as US Ranking Steadily Declines. The United States has fallen 10 spots in the last three years in the Global Peace Index, driven by a high degree of militarization and a rising homicide rate. Iceland was named the most peaceful country in the world for the 15th consecutive year in the annual ranking compiled by the Institute for Economics & Peace on Wednesday, while the organization warned that militarization in the United States is steadily making the wealthiest country in the world less peaceful. In its 2023 Global Peace Index, the group ranked 163 countries where 99.7% of the world's population lives, determining how countries compare based on the level of "societal safety and security," "ongoing domestic and international conflict," and the degree of "militarization." The change from 2022's index "was driven by a deterioration on the safety and security domain," reads the report, "particularly in the perceptions of criminality and homicide rate indicators." The U.S. homicide rate is "now above six per 100,000 people and more than six times higher than most Western European countries," according to the IEP. The nation's epidemic of gun violence—and policymakers' refusal to impose strict regulations on gun ownership—has become well-known throughout the world, with Amnesty Internationalissuing a travel warning due to the crisis in 2019. Gun violence replaced vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death in children in the U.S. in 2022.The U.S. ranked close to the middle of the 163 countries in terms of societal safety and security. Its lowest ranking was in the category of militarization, a pattern that has been evident in the IEP's previous Global Peace Indexes.The country was behind only Russia and Israel in terms of its degree of militarization this year.      https://www.commondreams.org/news/iceland-most-peaceful-country#:~:text=Iceland%20was%20named%20the%20most,in%20the%20world%20less%20peaceful.

Game changing’: spate of US lawsuits calls big oil to account for climate crisis. Guardian- Dharna Noor Wed, 7 June 2023      Next week the first constitutional climate lawsuit goes to trial amid signs fossil fuel companies are facing accountability tests. Climate litigation in the US could be entering a “game changing” new phase, experts believe, with a spate of lawsuits around the country set to advance after a recent supreme court decision, and with legal teams preparing for a trailblazing trial in a youth-led court case beginning next week. The number of cases focused on the climate crisis around the world has doubled since 2015, bringing the total number to over 2,000, according to a  report last year led by European researchers.T he US has not always led the way, but experts say that could be changing as....... The first constitutional climate lawsuit in the US go to trial on Monday next week (12 June) in Helena, Montana, based on a legal challenge by 16 young plaintiffs, ranging in age from five to 22, against the state’s pro-fossil fuel policies.........A federal judge ruled last week that a federal constitutional climate lawsuit, also brought by youth, can go to trial.......More than two dozen US cities and states are suing big oil alleging the fossil fuel industry knew for decades about the dangers of burning coal, oil and gas, and actively hid that information from consumers and investors..........The supreme court cleared the way for these cases to advance with rulings in April and May that denied oil companies’ bids to move the venue of such lawsuits from state courts to federal courts.........Hoboken, New Jersey, last month added racketeering charges against oil majors to its 2020 climate lawsuit, becoming the first case to employ the approach in a state court and following a federal lawsuit filed by Puerto Rico last November.                                                                                                                                                                                           “I don’t know of another time in history where so many courts in so many different levels all over the globe [have been] tasked with dealing with a similar overarching issue,” said Karen Sokol, law professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.Research also continues to unearth more about the fossil fuel industry’s knowledge of climate change. A January study revealed that Exxon had made “breathtakingly” accurate climate predictions in the 1970s. The vast majority of climate-focused cases in the US have previously focused on the regulation of specific infrastructure projects, such as individual pipelines or highways, said Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. But the new forms of climate litigation are different, as they grapple not with particular projects’ emissions, but on responsibility for the climate crisis itself. Sokol, who dubbed these new suits “climate accountability litigation”, says though they will not alone lower emissions, they could help reshape climate plans.......read on             https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/07/climate-crisis-big-oil-lawsuits-constitution?utm_term=64a69fdf99125affa1d98ca303eb90eb&utm_campaign=DownToEarth&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=greenlight_email