Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Sue world leaders $1 billion for global warming?
In a global stunt, a U.S. environmental activist is poised to lodge a $1 billion damages class action lawsuit at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against all world leaders for failing to prevent global warming.
Activist and blogger Dan Bloom says he will sue world leaders for “intent to commit manslaughter against future generations of human beings by allowing murderous amounts of fossil fuels to be harvested, burned and sent into the atmosphere as CO2″.
He intends to lodge the lawsuit in the week starting Sunday, Dec. 6.
The prosecutor’s office at the ICC, the world’s first permanent court (pictured below right) for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, says it is allowed to receive information on crimes that may fall within the court’s jurisdiction from any source.
“Such information does not per se trigger a judicial proceeding,” the prosecutor’s office hastened to add.
The question is: will or should the prosecutor take on the case?
One might argue in defence that world leaders are in fact trying to impose climate-saving measures. In Vienna last year, almost all rich nations agreed to consider cuts in greenhouse emissions of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Talks on a new climate treaty will be held in Poznan, Poland, from Dec. 1-12.
I’m not sure how this guy is being taken so seriously when he uses language like “manslaughter”. I agree that something should be done, but I think he is going about it the wrong way.
The government can prevent prevent global warming using various techniques such as adding a Pigouvian Tax on industries that pollute the environment and contribute to climate change, but if Dan Bloom wants to sue someone it should not be world leaders for not imposing the correct restrictions, but instead the corporations that contribute to global warming. Why sue governments when they are not the ones causing the problem. there are other organizations such as http://www.claimer.org/howwill that are trying to do just that. they should combine their claims together into a large lawsuit, but not at governments, but at the corporations.