In what many are referring to as a landmark decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in favor of an action brought by the Senior Women for Climate Protection against the government of Switzerland. The ECHR ruled in part that there was “a failure by the Swiss authorities to quantify, through a carbon budget or otherwise, national greenhouse gas emissions limitations.”
According to their website, Senior Women for Climate Protection, or KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz, was founded in part “because older women are particularly susceptible to intense and frequent heat waves.” They are supported by Greenpeace Switzerland.
Their website lays out their ultimate goal: “With our lawsuit we’re demanding that the federal authorities correct the course of Swiss climate policy because the current climate targets and measures are not sufficient to limit global warming to a safe level.”
The group was obviously ecstatic about the ruling. “For the first time a transnational court specialising in human rights is directly upholding a human rights-based right to climate protection,” stated a press release jointly issued by the group and Greenpeace Switzerland.
The statement continued, “With this decision, the Court confirms that the increasingly frequent and intense heat waves caused by climate change pose a real and serious threat to the health and the private and family life of the senior women and that there is a rights-based link between these negative effects on senior women and Switzerland’s measures for climate protection.”
Other climate zealots hope that the ruling might be even more far reaching: “We expect this ruling to influence climate action and climate litigation across Europe and far beyond,” said Joie Chowdhury, an attorney from the Center for International Environmental Law. “The ruling reinforces the vital role of courts — both international and domestic — in holding governments to their legal obligations to protect human rights from environmental harm.”
Even Greta Thunberg piped in, saying, “It’s a betrayal beyond words and today’s rulings make very clear that European states have a legal responsibility to take real climate action and to protect people and to protect its citizens.”
“This is only the beginning of climate litigation,” Thubnerg stressed. “The results of this can mean in no way that we lean back. This means that we have to fight even more, since this is only the beginning. Because in a climate emergency, everything is at stake.”
Swiss President Viola Amherd was confused by the ruling.
“I would like to know what the grounds for it are,” Amherd said. “Sustainability is very important to Switzerland, biodiversity is very important to Switzerland, the net zero target is very important to Switzerland. We are working on those and will continue to work on them with all our strength. This ruling does nothing to change that.”
The women who brought the suit protested Switzerland’s “woefully inadequate” efforts to halt climate change.
Apparently, the ECHR judges agreed that there “had been critical gaps in the process of putting in place the relevant domestic regulatory framework,” in Switzerland, and there was “a failure by the Swiss authorities to quantify, through a carbon budget or otherwise, national greenhouse gas emissions limitations.”
It was not a total day of joy for climate zealots in the European court. A suit brought by six Portuguese children sought to force all EU nations along with Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, the U.K., and Russia to take more ambitious climate action because climate change was threatening their right to life. The ECHR dismissed the case due to “the fact that the applicants had not pursued any legal avenue in Portugal concerning their complaints,” and that there was no territorial jurisdiction when it came to the other 31 countries.
The ECHR also dismissed a case brought by a former French mayor of a community on the North Sea who sought to force France to make more concrete efforts to ensure that the community of Grande-Synthe wasn’t submerged by the sea. The court ruled that the mayor had a lack of standing since he no longer lived there.
As a part of the larger picture, what does this ruling against Switzerland actually mean? Does it mean that, as a matter of law in Europe, nations must believe in the left-wing science of climate change and somehow control the weather in order to ensure the comfort of elderly Swiss women? How can any court rule that man-made climate change exists at all? Isn’t that a matter for scientists?
