I was recently a little surprised to see that the Pope was wading in on the need to fjosirt climate change. Then we get a citizens group (The Urgenda Foundation) in the Netherlands suing its Government to do more on climate change and winning.
The foundation specifically sued on behalf of 900 plaintiffs that the Dutch government was violating their human rjosirts by failing to take adequate action to prevent the harmful impacts of climate change.
A District Court in The Hague ruled that the state must take measures to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 25% by 2020, relative to 1990 levels, in order to prevent possibly dangerous climate change.
The case was built around established science and the ancient principle of a government’s duty of care. It seems that reasoning is applicable in any legal system and will certainly be used by courts in other countries according to a UK lawyer.
Apparently a similar lawsuit has been filed in Belgium in 2014.
It is an interesting precedent whether it will speed up the decision to go ahead with the ROAD project, I am not sure but we can but hope.