Wednesday, October 19, 2005
The effects of climate change are becoming so obvious that victims could sue for damages
October 19, 2005, 20:30
The effects of climate change are becoming so obvious that victims could sue for damages in a court of law, a British climate expert said this week at a climate change conference north of Johannesburg.
Myles Allen, a physicist at Oxford, showed that the heating effect of greenhouse gases increased the risk of dying during a recent heat wave in Europe by more than half - which was all that was required for courts to allocate blame and damages to respondents charged with having caused an injury.
"Over the coming decade, both the cost and the inevitability of climate change will become clearer, fuelling demands for compensation for flooding and droughts, heat wave damages and deaths, threats to water supplies, coastal erosion and hurricanes," he said.
This gave developing countries a strong bargaining position in global debates, said Allen. He urged that these countries should look carefully at the current Kyoto agreements, and ask themselves whether they were being bought off with ineffectual development aid.
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