Climate Change Could Destroy His Home in Peru. So He Sued an Energy Company in Germany.
Increasing glacial melt is creating unstable, increasingly problematic glacial lakes, especially in the Andes and Himalaya Mountains. In Peru, Guardians are charged with watching these lakes to try to prevent a catastrophic flood.
Using similar methods that eventually were successful in bring lawsuits against Big Tobacco, vulnerable populations are trying to sue the large corporations that have overwhelming contributed to climate change. Surprisingly, just 90 companies are responsible for two-thirds of all the greenhouse gases emitted between 1751 and 2016. More than half those emissions have occurred since 1988. Still, it is an incredibly complex question to figure out the harm and recompense involved in large-scale, complex systems like earth’s climate.
Since 2017, eight United States cities, including New York and San Francisco, six counties, one state and the West Coast’s largest association of fishermen have brought suit against a host of corporations — Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, Peabody Energy, among others — for selling products that caused the world to warm while misleading the public about the damage they knew would result.