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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. It's day five of Climate Week NYC, time to coincide with world leaders gathering here for the Annual UN General Assembly and the UN's Climate Ambition Summit which took place yesterday. The Brian Lehrer Show, as some of you know, is doing a segment every day this week for Climate Week NYC in conjunction with Covering Climate Now, the media collaboration that includes this show and WNYC.

Covering Climate Now also announced its 2023 Journalism Award winners. Those awards recognize outstanding coverage of the climate emergency and its solutions. We're having the winners on on various programs of ours on this show this week. Today in this series, we'll turn to a new powerful tool that activists are using to try to mitigate the impact of climate change and hold governments and private companies accountable, The Law.

On this show again, as some of you know, we've covered a landmark climate case from Montana recently where a judge decided that that state has to take into account climate change impacts whenever it weighs future fossil fuel projects and how it may provide a roadmap for climate change law in New York state too. In California, a major oil-producing state and the fifth-largest economy in the world, on Friday, they became the first oil-producing state.

You don't think about California necessarily as an oil-producing state like you might think of Montana or Alaska or somewhere, but they are. California, as of Friday became the first oil-producing state to file suit against five major oil companies for knowing and then lying about how the fact that their products cause climate change affects the world, but these types of climate lawsuits are happening all over the world and that's part of what we're going to draw attention to now.

They're happening in the UK, they're happening in the Netherlands, they're happening in Brazil, they're happening in Pakistan. Amanda Burrell, Executive Producer and Correspondent for Al Jazeera English, their series Earthrise explored some of these lawsuits and their global implications in her series last year. It won the 2023 Special Honors for covering Climate Matters Journalism Awards in the Solutions Stories of the Year category.

The Case for the Climate is the first episode of a four-part series which looked at how the law, business, and faith are being used to force, encourage, and inspire the systemic changes which are so desperately needed to counter climate change for today and for the next generations to come. She joins us now. Amanda, welcome to WNYC, and congratulations on your distinction in this year's Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards.

Amanda Burrell: Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: I will tell the listeners that in this episode you begin in the United Kingdom where three NGOs, non-governmental organizations, Friends of the Earth, Client Earth, and the Good Law Project bring a case against the government for allegedly violating its own net zero strategy. First, for listeners who may not be familiar, can you talk about the UK's Climate Change Act and why it's a big deal?

Amanda Burrell: Absolutely. Well, it was the first climate change act passed in any country in the world, which it was in 2008. It was passed almost unanimously, cross-party, and it was the first to enshrine a commitment to reduce emissions in national law. It was updated by Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019, to raise the target to net zero by 2050. It means that getting to net zero by 2050 is now a matter of law. UK governments have to follow the law and must bring emissions down.

The thing is, of course, that the law is there, but the government needs to keep on track. As part of that law, a climate change committee was set up to monitor the government's five-yearly targets that the government had to prove, in which government had to state how they were going to bring emissions down and what targets they were aiming for within those five years. These organizations who brought the case proved in court that the government was off track with its targets and therefore was failing on its mission, on its legal duty to reach net zero by 2050.

Brian Lehrer: Let's listen to a clip from the episode. I want our listeners to hear this. You speak with David Wolfe KC, who represents the Friends of the Earth. That's the UK's largest climate grassroots network that's taking the country and companies to court. Here's 20 seconds of what he had to say about the lawsuit against the government.

David Wolfe KC: This is the UK's bit of something which is absolutely enormous. What's really at stake here is whether the government in this country and elsewhere around the world actually takes the action that needs to be taken now to tackle climate change. We talk about net zero in 2050, but to bring about net zero in 2050, things have to happen now.

Brian Lehrer: David Wolfe KC. I think the initials KC stand for King's Council. That's a lawyer designation in the United Kingdom. Talk about that clip. What did the NGOs argue and how far did they get?

Amanda Burrell: Well, they argued that the steps which were laid out in the government's net zero strategy would not get the country to net zero by 2050 and actually failed to deliver on the upcoming carbon budgets in 2035. They won. It was a two-day hearing. The judge went and considered the case for two months, came back, and agreed that the government needed to do more and therefore had to go back to the drawing board and to rewrite its net zero strategy.

This has been blown out of the court, if you like, by the recent statement by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that he's actually pulling back on some of the steps that were going to be taken to reach net zero. For example, the banning of diesel and petrol cars. Friends of the Earth are now going to go back to court. They're preparing to have to go back to court again to make sure that the government does stick to its legal commitments.

Brian Lehrer: Why did the Prime Minister go back on that? Do you know his rationale?

Amanda Burrell: Why did he? Well, I think it's a very good example of how, my understanding of it or my perception of it is it's a way of distinguishing himself from the Labor Party, the opposition party, as national elections approach next year. This is a very good example of the short-termism of the political system, which means that political leaders want to stay in power to the next election and is a very key reason why it's so important to get commitments to net zero, commitments to reduce emissions enshrined in law in order to hold politicians to a long term view rather than playing to what they see is going to be a popular move in order to win votes.

Brian Lehrer: That sounds related to a thing we've been covering on the show happening in the United States right now with the United Auto Workers strike, where Democrats are saying, "Yes, there's too much greed at the corporate level. They should be sharing their profits more with the workers," and Republicans are saying, "No, the real issue is the transition to electric vehicles that the Biden administration is encouraging with incentives and requirements and that's what's causing these auto companies to have trouble with the workers."

That same kind of division, I realize it's not exactly the same expression of it, but targeting the EVs for a backlash by conservative party or conservative-leaning politicians in both countries. Back to your episode. You then head to the Netherlands where activists are using existing civil and human rights laws to force not only the state but an energy giant to reduce emissions. Can you talk about the case against the state and what precedents it set? This might be new to our listeners, using human rights laws to attack climate emissions.

Amanda Burrell: Absolutely. It was started by a woman called Marjan Minnesma who runs a cooperative called Urgenda that set out to scale up climate solutions. After several years she realized that the solutions are great, but without the systems changing, they're effectively a drop in the ocean. The systems need to support them. She spoke to the government about this and the Netherlands government at that time had said that it was going to reduce emissions but was not reaching its targets.

In order to try and force change, she decided to take the government to court. She'd come across this book by a very visionary lawyer called Roger Cox called Revolution Justified, which used the concepts of civil law of duty of care and also human rights, which conceived a way in which these principles could be used to hold polluters to account. The Urgenda case against the Dutch government was actually the first time that these principles, that this idea was tried in court. In 2015, the court ruled in favor of Urgenda. It said that the Dutch government had to reduce its emissions by 25% by 2020. The government appealed. They appealed two times, and finally, in the end, Urgenda won. The different stages of the case, that the first hearing, it was a duty of care, which won the day.

Then in the second and third hearings, a principle which actually had been dismissed in the first hearing was used, which was human rights, saying that in abandoning its duty of care, duty of care being the idea that if there's a danger present to one party and another party is aware of the danger but fails to take the action to prevent the danger, then they are abrogating their duty, failing to deliver on their duty of care. In doing this, the Dutch government was therefore not delivering on its duty on human rights. It was a European article on human rights, a European Convention of Human Rights, Articles two and eight, which were the right to life and the right to private life.

Therefore, the Dutch government was in breach of its human rights commitments to its people for not reducing emissions and averting climate change.

Brian Lehrer: That's so interesting. Has that suit been resolved one way or the other yet?

Amanda Burrell: It has, absolutely. The final judgment was passed in 2019. The really exciting thing is that judgment and that victory has inspired other activists, other citizens around the world to take out cases against their states as well. I think it's now around 70. Last year it was around 80. Last year it was 70. Now I understand there's around 80 cases around the world which have been inspired by the Urgenda victory.

Brian Lehrer: So interesting and so relatively unknown in the United States. I'm so glad you reported on this and that we could spotlight it a little bit. Staying in the Netherlands, you spoke to Dutch lawyer Roger Cox, who wrote a book called Revolution Justified, which you say inspired these activists to go after the country. We're going to play about a 30-second clip with what he told you about his take on how the judiciary is the last hope for change. Listeners, this begins with Amanda's voice and then goes into Roger Cox.

Amanda Burrell: Meeting the targets ratified by the Paris Agreement in 2015, a 45% reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050 seem ever further away.

Roger Cox: The consequences of dangerous climate change will be such that nobody can escape it and that it will be the largest human rights violation that we've ever witnessed in the world for eternity because there's no way back once we reach certain tipping points. Then the question arises, what does this mean for private entities like oil, gas, and coal companies?

Brian Lehrer: As I understand that the activists then went on to tackle a major oil company and try to order the energy giant, Royal Dutch Shell, to slash its emissions. What were their arguments and were they successful against the company? As I think you were describing, they were successful against the government.

Amanda Burrell: It was a different group of activists. Urgenda brought the case against the Dutch state. Then against Royal Dutch Shell, it was Milieudefensie, which is the Dutch arm of Friends of the Earth. It wasn't just them. They were actually joined by 17,000 co-plaintiffs. I think that's one of the really exciting things about these types of cases is that they can become a way for citizens, many citizens, to take action against corporations and their governments. Roger Cox was the main lawyer in both the Urgenda case and also the Milieudefensie case against Shell. He used the same arguments.

When the court did rule in favor of Milieudefensie, they found that Shell was breaching its duty of care and also the European Convention of Human Rights Articles two and eight. The same principles that won against the Dutch government also won against Shell. The thing is that Shell is appealing now. The appeal hearing will take place in April next year. The lawyers, Milieudefensie lawyers, are absolutely confident that they will win. It will be very interesting to see what happens.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking with Amanda Burrell, Executive Producer and Correspondent for Al Jazeera English, their series, Earthrise, which explored lawsuits and their global implications for global warming using human rights law and human rights claims, as we were just hearing in the case of the Netherlands and some other countries, to try to stop climate emissions or at least slow them down. We can take some phone calls for her as we continue to dot from country to country for another few minutes representing the work from her series, which has now been given a Covering Climate Now 2023 Journalism Award. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692.

I think Bill in Beacon, New York has a question about this Dutch example. Bill, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Bill: Hi. Given the seriousness of this decades-long crime of covering up the climate consequences of fossil fuels, I'm wondering if any of these suits will result in the imprisoning of any of the people who participated in depriving people of their rights.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting question. I have a follow-up question to that because I think that the way Bill characterized what the oil companies have been doing will remind people of the old lawsuits against the tobacco companies, but we'll get to that. His question is, is anybody potentially going to go to prison with these successful outcomes in court by the environmentalists?

Amanda Burrell: That's an interesting question. At the moment, the cases that are being brought very much against the companies, against specific individuals. There is a new trend, which is to bring cases against directors of big oil companies. There was one actually brought by an organization, an environmental law charity called Client Earth in Britain against the directives of Shell, but the judge said this can't be actually assessed in the court because the issue of climate change is so complex, it can't be placed on one individual's shoulders. It doesn't mean that it won't happen, but it means that it's the next step in the process.

Brian Lehrer: I cited those old tobacco lawsuits, I imagine you're familiar with them, where there were these lawsuits that revealed that the tobacco companies knew about the disastrous health effects of their products from studies that they did or were aware of and covered them up for a long time. Therefore, they were required to pay huge sums in damages as a result of court cases that have gone to public health, anti-smoking measures, and things like that. Are any of the suits that you're covering around the world focused on exposing oil companies' knowledge of the impact on the climate, and therefore the impact on humanity, of their products and covering those up and potentially being held liable for that?

Amanda Burrell: I think the case, which has been brought by California, was a huge one because it's the first one that is saying that five oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute knew of the devastating consequences of burning fossil fuels since the 1970s. It's hugely exciting because if they win, then it sets a precedent. There's been such a lot of work done over the past few years about the deliberate deception by oil companies of covering up the consequences of their business. Now the work that's been done has got the possibility of being the opportunity to be used in court.

I imagine that if California wins, obviously, there's a long way to go, but it will set a precedent in other states. Countries will be inspired to take similar action. That's one of the things I find really exciting about the law, is that a precedent is set. Even if the case isn't won, it gets the conversation going. That means, and we're talking about it here now, but there's a ripple effect. Precedent is set, it's picked up by other organizations around the world. Judges listen to other judgments. It's talked about in the media. Very much the idea that big oil has, for 50 years, been deceiving the public is reinforced by a court case like the Californian one.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, these big oil companies, like other big companies, have many ways of legally wriggling out of court rulings like the one you were describing in the Netherlands against Royal Dutch Shell. We can literally call this a Shell game because then they move their headquarters from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom I see. Just makes you want to go, "Oh, that was sleazy," to get away from that ruling and the restrictions that the Netherlands placed.

Amanda Burrell: Yes, they changed their name and moved their headquarters and continue to develop new oil projects. The fact is that the judgment in the Netherlands still stands. They will be back in court in April 2024. As I say, the Milieudefensie team are absolutely confident they will win. We shall see if that really is the case but no, Shell cannot get away from the judgment. Once a judgment is passed, it is there and they can't go into another country and change their name, is not going to affect that.

Also, Shell is one of the companies that the State of California is suing. It's not like there's a one chance to get these companies in one court. There's a number of different methods that can be approached to hold them to account by different courts around the world.

Brian Lehrer: One more clip from your series. You spoke with Catherine Higham, a policy analyst at the London School of Economics. I don't know if I'm saying her name right. Nevertheless, she authors an annual report on exactly this, climate litigation trends. Here's a 45-second clip of what she had to tell you about those.

Catherine Higham: We've seen exponential growth over time, and we see two new trends that are really important. One is cases that follow in the footsteps of Milieudefensie and Shell, and look at what a company has to do now in the face of the current scientific evidence. The other is about greenwashing. Companies setting net zero emissions targets, but having no credible plans to meet them.

Amanda Burrell: Here's the Netherlands where the Urgenda case was won. Have you seen any impact of that case?

Catherine Higham: Absolutely. The Urgenda case is one that has sparked more than 70 cases filed in countries around the world that are challenging governments on a similar basis.

Amanda Burrell: 70. Gosh, that's a lot.

Catherine Higham: It is a lot. It's a huge proportion of the overall number.

Brian Lehrer: 70 cases inspired by the one in the Netherlands against Royal Dutch Shell that we've been talking about in this segment. As we start to run out of time, Amanda, you want to give one other example of your choice from those 70? I know you report on litigation in Brazil, litigation in in Pakistan. Pick any one.

Amanda Burrell: The 70 cases, just to be clear in response to Urgenda, the case which was against the state. There are 70, I think it is actually, now 80 cases of citizens putting pressure on their governments through the courts. For example, in Colombia, young people won a lawsuit against the Colombian government. They claim that climate change threatened their fundamental rights and they won.

I think one of the things that's really interesting about that is that they said that the government actually violated their rights and those of future generations by not doing enough to combat deforestation in the Amazon. The Supreme Court ordered the government to take action to reduce emissions and also to address deforestation in the Amazon.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we will leave it there for today. Today's installment of our Climate Week NYC series in conjunction with the group Covering Climate Now, we will do one final episode in this series tomorrow with one more Covering Climate Now Journalism Award winner for 2023. My guest for this conversation has been Amanda Burrell, Executive Producer and Correspondent for Al Jazeera English, their series Earthrise.

Thanks so much for coming on once again, and congratulations again on your distinction in this year's Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards and for shedding light on this apparently very productive front. At least it's beginning to be productive litigation on human rights and other grounds to stop climate pollution. Thank you so much for your reporting.

Amanda Burrell: My pleasure. Thank you very much indeed.

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