Science Snippets: Will Legal Action Prevent Runaway Climate Change?

Draft script:

The first question we must ask with respect to legal action preventing runaway climate change is this: Are we already committed to runaway climate change? If so, then it’s a little late for legal action. One could argue that principles are important, regardless of practicality. In this case, it’s never too late to do the right thing.

According to the designed-to-fail Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Earth is already amid climate change that is both abrupt and irreversible. How abrupt? The fastest in planetary history. As I have reported many times in this space, the IPCC’s 8 October 2018 report, Global Warming of 1.5° concluded that “even abrupt geophysical events do not approach current rates of human-driven change.”

Less than a year later, the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate concluded that climate change was irreversible. This report was published on 24 September 2019 and it pointed out that an overheated ocean was responsible for the irreversibility of climate change. Both reports relied heavily upon peer-reviewed evidence in reaching these conclusions more than five years ago. We rarely read or hear about them.

If principles matter, then an ongoing legal case is worth our attention. An article published 8 April 2025 by the Guardian is titled ‘All other avenues have been exhausted’: Is legal action the only way to save the planet? The subhead reads “Monica Feria-Tinta is one of a growing number of lawyers using the courts to make governments around the world take action.”

The second paragraph of the article quotes Ms. Feria-Tinta: “Are we entitled to nature? Is that a human right? I would say yes. It’s not an easy argument, but it’s a valid one.”

This issue has arisen many times. I learned about legal action as a means of attempting to save the remnants of the living planet as an undergraduate college student in the early 1980s. Forty-five years later, the topic still merits mention in corporate media outlets. In fact, paragraph three of the article in the Guardian includes these lines: “Since the early 1980s, communities and campaigners have turned to the courts to fight back against polluting industries. But traditional environmental claims are geographically specific – as in West Virginia, say, where residents sued the chemical firm DuPont for failing to prevent toxic chemicals from leaking into their water supply.”

But wait: There’s good news. The paragraph follows with this tidbit: “Climate litigation presents very different challenges. A vast number of actors are responsible for emissions, making it hard to establish legal responsibility, and often the worst harms occur in a different continent to the worst emissions. But in the last decade, a series of court cases around the world have sought to change the legal status quo.”

ClientEarth is an environmental law charity that has led the way on legal action. Its chief programmes and impact officer is quoted in the Guardian article: “It’s been a huge shift. Judges now see the environmental issues we’re facing as existential, and have allowed the interpretation of human rights law to shift to grasp that.”

We have been waiting a long time for this admission: “Judges now see the environmental issues we’re facing as existential.” The scientifically conservative judicial system views environmental issues as a threat to Homo sapiens. Along with other scientists, I have been making this claim for many years.

The peer-reviewed literature also views the ongoing climate crisis as an existential threat. A paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on 18 December 2023 is titled First exploration of the runaway greenhouse transition with a 3D General Circulation Model. The Abstract of this peer-reviewed, open-access paper includes this definition of runaway greenhouse: “a dramatic positive feedback induced by water evaporation.”

Clarification is provided in the following sentences: “The resulting rise in the global surface temperature leads to the evaporation of the entire water reservoir, separating two very different population of planets: 1) temperate planets with a surface water ocean and 2) hot planets with a puffed atmosphere dominated by water vapor. Therefore, the understanding of the runaway greenhouse is pivotal to assess the different evolution of Venus and the Earth.”

Further information from a peer-reviewed source is provided in the 5 December 2024 issue of Science. Written by three scholars, this paper is titled Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo. The Editor’s summary asks “Why was the year 2023 so much warmer than expected?” A partial answer is provided in the following sentence: “Anthropogenic forcing and El Niño have been suggested as at least part of the reason, but they cannot account for the magnitude of the temperature jump.” The Editor’s summary points out that the peer-reviewed paper has identified another cause: “a record-low planetary albedo caused mainly by reduced low-cloud cover in the northern mid-latitudes and tropics. If this shift represents an excursion into a new normal, our future could be hotter faster than expected.”

In other words, the Editor’s summary in this peer-reviewed, open-access paper in the renowned journal Science points out that “our future could be hotter faster than expected.” Neither this paper in Science nor the paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics quote the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is as if Global Warming of 1.5° and the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate do not exist. Still, though, “our future could be hotter faster than expected.”

The planet continues to warm at an exponential rate. And, yes, “our future could be hotter faster than expected.” For most people, the could be is a will be. The consequences of exponential warming include a future that will be hotter faster than expected.