Swiss miss
Under the headline European court rules human rights violated by climate inaction
, Georgina Rannard reports that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Swiss government violated the human rights of a group of elderly Swiss women. It did so by failing to act quickly enough to address climate change. This is, apparently, the first time the ECHR has ruled on global warming.
How large is Switzerland, in comparison to Europe, let alone globally? How long are these elderly women expected to live? Does the ECHR have nothing better to do?
Questions 3 : 0 Answers
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A group of older Swiss women have won a partial victory in their climate case in the European Court of Human Rights.
Georgina Rannard, climate reporter, BBC News
It's only been about five minutes, but Georgina's story has approximately doubled in length, while at the same time losing that breaking news advisory. It's almost as if she's pressing the publish
button rather than save
in her haste to the scoop.
Word count: 242
Now a partial victory
has become it's the most you could have had
, according to lawyers for KlimaSeniorinnen, and The biggest victory possible
. Although it's not clear whether the latter is the lawyers' words or the plaintiffs' interpretation.
Because it seems to me that the concepts of partial victory
on the one hand, and the most you could have had (expected)
/the biggest victory possible
on the other, are not mutually exclusive if their expectations were unrealistic and therefore, for all intents and purposes, legally impossible.
Word count: 416
According to Estelle Dehon KC, the judgement comprehensively dismisses the argument that courts cannot rule on climate legal obligations because climate change is a global phenomenon or because action by one state is just a 'drop in the ocean'
. Note here that there's a difference between climate change obligations and climate change consequences. I'd be surprised if the ECHR ruled on the latter, not least because it is a global phenomenon.
It's fair to say that if the Swiss government failed to comply with its duties under the Convention concerning climate change
, as the ECHR adjudicated, there should be consequences for that failure. Nevertheless, the point still stands: if it had acted in an adequate manner to fulfil its emission reduction targets, what difference would this have realistically made to a group of old Swiss ladies? If their case was built on the government not meeting its obligations and that in turn impacting their health—otherwise why mention it?—then that would explain why their victory was earlier described only as partial
. It might also explain why the world's most trusted international news broadcaster
™ hasn't expounded further, because it doesn't fit the overall media narrative.
Sadly for the KlimaSeniorinnen though, India and China don't give a rat's arse for their human rights.
Word count: 717