Climate Change in the Courts: A US and Global Perspective

Abstract

Global temperatures continue to rise—year after year new heat records are set; the permafrost is melting and rotting—leading to damaging summer methane emissions; glaciers are receding everywhere; species are endangered—perhaps a quarter of species now on earth will be extinct by mid-century, and half by 2100; incidents of drought, poor water quality, crop losses, landslides, pest inundation, severe storms, raging wildfires, and tropical diseases are increasing and spreading; massive human dislocations—particularly in low-lying coastal areas inundated by rising seas—are already occurring and expected to get worse; deforestation—which also drives climate change—continues at ever rapid pace in the world’s great jungles; in the summer of 2004–2005, the oceans turned from carbon sink to carbon producers (Sinden 2007; Wood 2007; Irwin 2010). We are witnessing the “end of nature” where we have reached a “tipping point” such that the “feedback loops” have been triggered and devastating consequences are unavoidable. The scientific community is certain to a very high degree that the cause of these harms is anthropogenic (McKibben 1989; Sinden 2007; IPCC 2007). The anthropogenic impact on Earth has grown so massive that we have come to an epochal moment (Irwin 2010).