Considering climate change and government negligence

-      Robert McLean

Negligence leading to inaction in responding to climate change is a threat to humanity’s wellbeing.

Tim Baxter - he's discussing
the idea of negligence of
governments in their
response to climate change.
 

Governments guilty of such negligence appear, at least simplistically, vulnerable to a charge of crimes against humanity, but the idea is so extreme and counter populist thinking that it is rarely given serious thought.

However, the idea has made it to the top drawer in the Netherlands when in 2015 The Hague District Court found the Dutch government’s climate targets negligent in the case of Urgenda v The Netherlands.

The court ordered the government to increase its mitigation ambition in light of the pervasive threat of climate change and since then, there has been considerable interest in running a similar case in Australia.

Any suggestion that an individual, or group, might take action against the Australian Government for its inaction on climate change would in the first instance need assent from Australia’s Attorney-General, George Brandis.

The idea that action could be taken against the Turnbull Government will be discussed in Melbourne on Monday, August 22, at a session entitled: “Are Commonwealth climate targets legally negligent? An Australian Urgenda.”

Tim Baxter from Australian-German Climate and Energy College and the Melbourne Law School, will lead the discussion outlining the major hurdles to the legal claim’s success before contending that each may be surmountable. Promotion material for the hour-long seminar says: “Despite considerable barriers, a claim in negligence against the Commonwealth government for insufficient action on climate change has a prospect of success.

“The central claim, that the Commonwealth’s climate mitigation targets might form the basis of legally recognisable negligence, would be difficult to establish in Australian law,” it says.

Monday’s seminar at the Carlton Connect Initiative’s Swanston St, LAB-14, starts at one o’clock.

The idea of taking some action against the Australian Government was given some air on this blog in 2015 and resulted in the story “Failure to take action on climate change is not a criminal offence - Julian Burnside”.