Goodbye landmark. Yet another attempt to use the courts to try to establish the myth that governments can somehow control the climate bites the dust, for now at least.
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An Australian court on Tuesday threw out a landmark legal ruling that the country’s environment minister had a duty to protect children from climate change, reports Phys.org.

Last year’s legal win by a group of high school children had been hailed by environmental groups as a potential legal weapon to fight fossil fuel projects.

But the federal court found in favour of an appeal by Environment Minister Sussan Ley, deciding she did not have to weigh the harm climate change would inflict on children when assessing the approval of new fossil fuel projects.

The judgement overturned a July 2021 ruling by a lower court that found the minister had a duty to “avoid causing personal injury or death” to under 18s due to “emissions of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere”.

Anjali Sharma, 17, who launched the legal action in 2020, said the minister’s successful appeal had left the students “devastated”.

“Two years ago, Australia was on fire; today, it’s underwater. Burning coal makes bushfires and floods more catastrophic and more deadly. Something needs to change,” she said.

Izzy Raj-Seppings, 15, said the court had accepted that young people would “bear the brunt of the impacts of the climate crisis”, which she described as an important step in climate litigation.

However, the federal court found emissions from the mine at the centre of the case—Whitehaven’s Vickery coal mine—posed only a “tiny increase in risk” to the students.

Minister Ley welcomed the verdict.

Full report here.

via Tallbloke’s Talkshop

March 15, 2022, by oldbrew 

Australian court strikes down landmark climate ruling