'We’re Talking Very Big Bucks’: New Bill Could Put Oil Companies on the Hook for Climate Change Costs
Oil companies have become some of the wealthiest organizations in history by producing a product that we now know is endangering the future of humanity.
Many of these companies have known about the effects of carbon dioxide for decades, yet while they adapted their own businesses to survive climate change, they actively undermined efforts to understand it.
Should Canadians be able to sue oil companies for that?
“They are in a position to pay for this damage; they have the responsibility to pay for this damage,” Peter Tabuns, the NDP’s climate change critic in the Ontario legislature, told DeSmog Canada. “We’re talking very big bucks.”
Tabuns has introduced legislation, the Liability for Climate-Related Harms Act, that would open oil companies up to lawsuits in Ontario.
The bill sets out a legal framework for individuals and the government to sue fossil fuel companies for climate-related damages like flooding or wildfires, and to force them to pay for infrastructure that protects against those effects.
The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy estimated in 2011 that by 2020 climate change would cost the Canadian economy $5 billion per year — and more than $40 billion by 2050. Around the world, that number is closer to $600 billion annually.
Tabuns’ bill is modelled after lawsuits that are ongoing in the United States.
The question of legal culpability used to be a sticking point for these kinds of cases, but according to Keith Stewart, energy campaigner at Greenpeace Canada, that’s beginning to change.
“We used to say, ‘oh, you can’t attribute any particular disaster to climate change,’ — well, now you can,” he says.
That ability to parse what contribution climate change made to the strength of a hurricane, for example, means a dollar value can now be put on a lawsuit. Directing that lawsuit at a particular company is also now possible thanks to a more thorough accounting of emissions.
“We have evidence of which company has produced which percentage of greenhouse gas emissions,” he says.
https://www.desmog.ca/2018/03/28/we...d-put-oil-companies-hook-climate-change-costs
Oil companies have become some of the wealthiest organizations in history by producing a product that we now know is endangering the future of humanity.
Many of these companies have known about the effects of carbon dioxide for decades, yet while they adapted their own businesses to survive climate change, they actively undermined efforts to understand it.
Should Canadians be able to sue oil companies for that?
“They are in a position to pay for this damage; they have the responsibility to pay for this damage,” Peter Tabuns, the NDP’s climate change critic in the Ontario legislature, told DeSmog Canada. “We’re talking very big bucks.”
Tabuns has introduced legislation, the Liability for Climate-Related Harms Act, that would open oil companies up to lawsuits in Ontario.
The bill sets out a legal framework for individuals and the government to sue fossil fuel companies for climate-related damages like flooding or wildfires, and to force them to pay for infrastructure that protects against those effects.
The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy estimated in 2011 that by 2020 climate change would cost the Canadian economy $5 billion per year — and more than $40 billion by 2050. Around the world, that number is closer to $600 billion annually.
Tabuns’ bill is modelled after lawsuits that are ongoing in the United States.
The question of legal culpability used to be a sticking point for these kinds of cases, but according to Keith Stewart, energy campaigner at Greenpeace Canada, that’s beginning to change.
“We used to say, ‘oh, you can’t attribute any particular disaster to climate change,’ — well, now you can,” he says.
That ability to parse what contribution climate change made to the strength of a hurricane, for example, means a dollar value can now be put on a lawsuit. Directing that lawsuit at a particular company is also now possible thanks to a more thorough accounting of emissions.
“We have evidence of which company has produced which percentage of greenhouse gas emissions,” he says.
https://www.desmog.ca/2018/03/28/we...d-put-oil-companies-hook-climate-change-costs
