Climate change goes to court

Though businesses and governments around the world have begun transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy to try to cut the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change, a slew of court cases and legal actions look to speed up that effort.

Here's the latest from Yahoo News' partner network.

International Court of Justice

On Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that clears the way for the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion that can be cited in future court cases regarding the legal responsibilities among nations in regards to climate change, BBC News reported.

The resolution, which was sponsored by more than 130 countries, was the brainchild of law students in Fiji and championed by Vanuatu, two Pacific island nations threatened by rising seal levels.

Though the forthcoming opinion by the International Court of Justice will be nonbinding in and of itself, it will most certainly be used in subsequent climate change court cases that deal with such thorny issues as how to settle international disputes over the damages caused by rising global temperatures.

"This is not a silver bullet, but it can make an important contribution to climate action. The world is at a crossroads, and we as the international community have the obligation to take greater action," H.E. Ishmael Kalsakau, prime minister of Vanuatu, said in a video address to the U.N. on Wednesday. "Together we can send a loud and clear message into the future that on this very day the people of the United Nations acting through their governments decided to leave behind their differences and act together to tackle the challenge of climate change."

European Court of Human Rights

Also on Wednesday, cases brought against the governments of France and Switzerland got underway in the European Court of Human Rights.

In France, the case has been brought by Damien Carême, the former mayor of Grande-Synthe, a suburb of Dunkirk, Agence France-Presse reported. He alleges that the government has failed to protect citizens from global warming, which has raised the risk of flooding in Grande-Synthe.

The case against the government of Switzerland has been brought by the Club of Climate Seniors, an association of older residents, who note that temperatures have risen twice as fast there as the global average. Lawyers for the Swiss government say the allegations that it has done nothing to combat climate change are "baseless."

"If the European court recognizes that climate failings violate the rights of individuals to life and a normal family life, then that becomes precedent in all of the council's member states and potentially in the whole world," Corinne Lepage, a former French ecology minister and one of Carême's lawyers in the case, told the AFP.

Held v. Montana

In the United States, meanwhile, a case brought by young environmental activists in Montana will be the first of its kind to proceed to trial. Filed in 2020 by Kalispell, Mont., residents Badge and Lander Busse and 14 other local youth, the lawsuit is based on language found in the state's constitution that guarantees “the right to a clean and healthful environment,” the New York Times reported.

The case, which is scheduled to begin on June 12, will decide whether Montana's reliance and promotion of fossil fuel energy such as coal, oil and gas, is unconstitutional because it is exacerbating climate change and thus depriving citizens of "a clean and healthful environment."

Lawyers for the state dispute the scientific evidence that burning fossil fuels is causing climate change. A spokesperson for Gov. Greg Gianforte, echoed the sentiment of many Republican lawmakers that even if climate change is happening, the United States must not turn away from relying on fossil fuels.

“We must focus on American innovation and ingenuity, not costly, expansive government mandates, to address our changing climate,” Kaitlin Price, a Gianforte spokesperson, told the Times. “The United States must also have an all-of-the-above energy policy, like Montana does, to make our country energy independent and secure again.”