In an astonishing verdict, Europe's highest human rights court ruled on April 9 that countries must better protect their citizens from "The consequences of climate change." In the landmark ruling, setting a legal precedent across 46 member states of the Council of Europe, the court sided with a group of women called KlimaSeniorinnen or "Senior Women for Climate Protection." The elderly Swiss ladies claimed that their lives were endangered by heatwaves caused by "Climate change." In the court's judgment, there is no uncertainty that heat waves are induced - as "Scientific knowledge" supposedly makes clear - by fossil fuel use in modern industrial civilization.
Are we at an authoritarian point of inflection, where concerns about climate change are too important to be left to the will of ordinary people? Is the law the Trojan horse to breach the citadels of democracy? Is It Heat Or Cold? According to Worldometers, Swiss women have the world's fourth-highest life expectancy of 86 years, ranking behind Hongkong, Macao and Japan.
Climate Lawfare Is Not New To be sure, the KlimaSeniorinnen were not without powerful supporters in their legal quest.
In the push for "Net Zero" decarbonization policies around the world, rich and powerful foundations have been relentlessly supporting an avalanche of "climate lawfare" initiatives in the West.
In early 2020, the UK Court of Appeal's decision to stop the expansion of Heathrow airport was one outcome of the lawfare waged by climate zealots.
Not only is it kosher to stop large infrastructure projects that allegedly affect the climate adversely, but governments now can be compelled, on human rights grounds, to act against normal economic activity that allegedly leads to "climate change" and "extreme weather" events.
What The Elderly Swiss Ladies Have Wrought Climate lawfare is now a well-established route to avoid the checks and balances of democratic legislation.
The total number of climate change court cases is growing worldwide and has more than doubled since 2017 according to a 2023 report collating data to December 31st, 2022.
The report, published by the UN Environment Program and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, boasts "that climate litigation is becoming an integral part of securing climate action and justice.
In June 2021, Swiss voters rejected a new law which was proposed to help the country meet its target for cutting carbon emissions to tackle the alleged "climate crisis".
Climate lawfare, as the elderly Swiss ladies and their deep-pocketed climate-zealot backers have found, is one way around the populist backlash against immiserating climate policies pursued by virtue-signaling European governments dominated by the green parties.
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