Dr Mireia Ginesta told Politico that climate change may not have directly caused the "heat dome" over Western Europe this week, but it raises the background temperature on which weather systems operate. "In a cooler climate, this heatwave would have been less intense," she said.
Major fossil fuel companies have been aware since at least the 1980s that their products would destroy coral reefs around the world through ocean acidification, marine heatwaves, and intensified storms, according to new research from the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme.
Dr Mireia Ginesta told the Austin Chronicle that flood-risk planning should consider not just historical records, but climate projections about possible futures.
A new interdisciplinary study led by University of Oxford researchers examines the international legal framework governing states’ reliance on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in meeting climate targets – and identifies a series of legal ‘guardrails’ designed to ensure that such reliance does not undermine efforts to limit global warming.
Buttressed by scientific developments, law is catching up with corporate and state climate inaction and a new era of accountability may follow, write Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith and Dr Thom Wetzer in the BMJ.
"The misalignment of state and corporate action with their legal obligations means that in the aggregate, companies and states are breaching their legal duties. It is unpredictable as to who will be held responsible, but recent court decisions suggest that such liability may be just around the corner."
The European Union has slackened its sustainability reporting requirements in a bid to make the bloc more competitive. Dr Thom Wetzer, Director of the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme, warned that the move will de-stabilise and fragment policies that had previously anchored EU firms’ expectations. “There will likely be a wave of litigation against firms at the national level, with litigants seeking to impose transition obligations via domestic legal routes,” he said.
Granular survey of 37 major countries’ climate-related laws and regulations, compiled by Oxford University researchers and dozens of leading global law firms, gives most detailed view yet of how climate policy is developing at a time of unprecedented political contestation.
Medical and scientific evidence is proving invaluable in holding public authorities accountable for the impact of unlawful air pollution on people’s health, say Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith and Gaia Lisi in The BMJ’s climate issue today.
In the FT's Sustainable Views section, Gaia Lisi and Rupert Stuart-Smith explore how medical evidence has proved invaluable in holding public authorities accountable for the impact of unlawful air pollution on people’s health is now exposing the health burdens of climate change.