European court rules human rights violated by ‘climate inaction’

A victory for cloud cuckoo land thinking. The court has in effect granted a disputed hypothesis the status of truth, based on its assumption that ’emissions’ are driving changes in the climate. Once courts can pick sides in scientific debates, where does that lead?
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A group of older Swiss women have won the first ever climate case victory in the European Court of Human Rights, reports BBC News.

The women, mostly in their 70s, said that their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to the effects of heatwaves linked to climate change.

The court said Switzerland’s efforts to meet its emission reduction targets had been woefully inadequate.

It is the first time the powerful court has ruled on global warming.

Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg joined activists celebrating at the court in Strasbourg on Tuesday.

“We still can’t really believe it. We keep asking our lawyers, ‘is that right?’ Rosemarie Wydler-Walti, one of the leaders of the Swiss women, told Reuters news agency. “And they tell us it’s the most you could have had. The biggest victory possible.”

The ruling is binding and can trickle down to influence the law in 46 countries in Europe including the UK.

The Court ruled that Switzerland had “failed to comply with its duties under the Convention concerning climate change” and that it had violated the right to respect for private and family life.

It also found that “there had been critical gaps” in the country’s policies to tackle climate change including failing to quantify reductions in greenhouse gases – those gases that warm Earth’s atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas. [Talkshop comment – unproven assertion].

The Swiss women, called KlimaSeniorinnen or Senior Women for Climate Protection, argued that they cannot leave their homes and suffer health attacks during heatwaves in Switzerland.

On Tuesday data showed that last month was the world’s warmest March on record, meaning the temperature records have broken ten months in a row.

More than 2,000 women are in the KlimaSeniorinnen group. They launched the case nine years ago, calling for better protection of women’s health in relation to climate change.
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Member of the KlimaSeniorinnen Elisabeth Stern, 76, told BBC News that she has seen how the climate in Switzerland has changed since she was a child growing up on a farm.

Full report here.