Climate Change Court Cases Are on the Rise — Here’s Why

(Off-Guardian)—Yesterday, a group of senior women from Switzerland won what is being called a “landmark” human rights case concerning “Climate Change”.

At a hearing in Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights found the government of Switzerland had violated the women’s human rights by “failing to do enough” to combat the alleged effect of ‘man-made climate change’.

Calling it a “decision that will set a precedent for future climate lawsuits“, Reuters reports:

The European Court of Human Rights’ 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 […] 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.

The report goes on to add [emphasis mine]:

The verdict in the Swiss case, which cannot be appealed, will have international ripple effects, most directly by establishing a binding legal precedent for all 46 countries that are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights

This case is far from an isolated example. It’s part of an ongoing and widespread legal campaign to associate human rights with the spurious climate change agenda.

Famously, a group of Portuguese teens have been attempting to sue 32 countries for years (it used to be 33, but they dropped Ukraine from the list of defendants when it became expedient to do so).

EHRC “Youth Climate Case” could see courts forcing policy on nation-states

It seems likely neither the Portuguese teens nor the Swiss seniors represent genuine grassroots activism. They are heavily backed by corporate-supported NGOs like Avaaz, the Climate Litigation Network and others. And this tells its own story.

In Strasbourg, the ECHR is already hearing six further “climate change vs human rights” cases (not including the Portuguese teens case which was recently rejected on a technicality).

Other countries from Brazil to South Korea to Australia have similar cases in front of their national courts.

Just last week the Indian Supreme Court found that Indian citizens have a ‘right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change’, a truly bizarre finding that seems dangerously vague.

Those are just the current cases, with this decision in Strasbourg we can likely expect an avalanche of new ones, as Reuters observes, it will “embolden more communities to bring climate cases against governments.”

It’s not hard to see the purpose of this legal campaign.

Generally, supra-national courts handing down legal decisions impacting multiple countries is a way of creating quasi-global legislation in all but name.

For example, as Reuters notes, this single court case representing just 2000 people from one small country effectively forced the creation of a “binding legal precedent” in all 46 signatories of the ECHR, with a combined population of over 700 million people.

More specifically, by tying climate change to human rights governments can justify enforcing increasingly strict climate change policies, while simultaneously making it appear that the judiciary are forcing their hand.

Now they can effectively claim “You’ve got to switch to an electric car, or you’re infringing other people’s human rights”, but also, “don’t blame us our hands are tied by judges”.

It also enables a propaganda campaign of escalating divisive language, mirroring the vaccinated vs unvaccinated messaging during the “pandemic”.

Remember how we were told, “the unvaccinated are filling ICUs and making another lockdown more likely”? Well, in the future, that will become “climate change deniers are violating your human rights by refusing to use a smart meter”.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of this case is this phrase, repeated everywhere [emphasis added]:

Human rights violated by Swiss inaction on climate

Previously, rights violations have been generally considered active rather than passive. The idea you can violate someone’s rights through “inaction” sets the precedent that courts can – and should – compel action to “protect” the rights of others.

A very slippery slope. After all, if states and governments can be compelled to act, so can individuals.