Hooray, you won! After a lifetime of being able to travel around using fossil fuels, living the high life, you have now created a situation where the Swiss government will have to Do Something that will increase the cost of living, increase taxation, and reduce freedom and life choices. Kudos!
Swiss women win landmark climate case at Europe top human rights court
Europe’s top human rights court ruled on Tuesday that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change, in a decision that will set a precedent for future climate lawsuits.
The European Court of Human Rights’s ruling, in favour of the more than 2,000 Swiss women who brought the case, is expected to resonate in court decisions across Europe and beyond, and to embolden more communities to bring climate cases against governments.
The Swiss women, known as KlimaSeniorinnen and aged over 64, said their government’s climate inaction put them at risk of dying during heatwaves. They argued their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to such climate change impacts.
How many of them have given up their own use of fossil fuels and made their own lives carbon neutral? How many care that this will be foist upon the younger generations? Also, it’s rather insane that a court that is not in Switzerland can dictate how a sovereign nation acts. But, hey, they were warned that the creation of the EU would end up this way.
But in a sign of the complexities of the growing wave of climate litigation, the court (ECtHR) rejected two other climate-related cases on procedural grounds. One of these was brought by a group of six Portuguese young people against 32 European governments and another by a former mayor of a low-lying French coastal town.
Do the kiddies and mayor know they can actually practice what they preach and attempt to convince others to do the same?
