This is interesting. I have mixed feelings about it but it is probably a necessary step in forcing the reality of this issue into the correct legal and political context. Actions have consequences and actors have responsibilities.
The only question I have is that the respnsibility is really shared by all of us as consumers of fossil fuels, in some sense it is not fair to place all the respnsibility on the fossil fuel companies.
Of course when they intentionally create misinformation to avoid addressing the problem, the face a corresponding increase in culpability.
Read it below:
Katrina victims seek to sue greenhouse-gas emitters
Victims of Hurricane Katrina are seeking to sue carbon gas-emitting multinationals for helping fuel global warming and boosting the devastating 2005 storm, legal documents showed.
The class action suit brought by residents from southern Mississippi, which was ravaged by hurricane-force winds and driving rains, was first filed just weeks after the August 2005 storm hit.
"The plaintiffs allege that defendants' operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming," say the documents seen by AFP.
The increase in global surface air and water temperatures "in turn caused a rise in sea levels and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which combined to destroy the plaintiffs' private property, as well as public property useful to them."
More than 1,200 people died in Hurricane Katrina, which lashed the area, swamping New Orleans in Louisiana when levees gave way under the weight of the waves.
The suit, claiming compensation and punitive damages from multinational companies including Shell, ExxonMobile, BP and Chevron, has already passed several key legal hurdles, after initially being knocked back by the lowest court.
Politics
Environment
Comments
It would be tough to prove in court. For one, you can probably get experts to testify for both the positions rather well. The IPCC is not terribly clear on tropical cyclones, in my view, and its statements as to the nature of the relationship are largely based on modeling.
Tropical cyclone data is extremely noisy. The Katrina season was an outlier, even if we accept that the number of storms and/or their intensity is driven by sea surface temperatures.
Personally, I'm as confident as one could be, from what I've seen in the raw data, that the number of storms, at least in the Atlantic, is driven by SSTs. But again, the data is very noisy, so you can't really see it year to year. I recently revisited this topic here.
Posted by: Joseph | March 4, 2010 6:07 PM
It would be easier to pin on the oil companies for dredging channels for oil pipelines, allowing salt water to penetrate further into wetlands resulting in erosion and buffer loss. Or the Army Corps of Engineers for making levies that didn't hold up. For that matter, how many times has New Orleans flooded in the past? Who do you blame for flood damage to a building (re-)built in a flood plain?
Posted by: george.w | March 4, 2010 6:38 PM
Coby said:
"The only question I have is that the responsibility is really shared by all of us as consumers of fossil fuels, in some sense it is not fair to place all the responsibility on the fossil fuel companies."
When they are subsidized with tax payer money it is indeed fair for citizens to sue them for damages caused by the use of that money.
Al
Posted by: Al | March 4, 2010 7:31 PM
I wish them luck but i dont think they will win. First you have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that an increase in CO2 actually caused Katrina.
If only someone here (hint, hint) had a legal background.
I would have thought it would be easier to sue G.W Booosch as he was the one who cut back on money to maintain the levies.
Posted by: Crakar | March 4, 2010 7:36 PM
The worst outcome they can get is what they would get by not suing at all. Anything more than nothing is far more than what they would have gotten by doing nothing. So you have to call it a big win just by the fact they're doing it. This is a good strategic volley, since even if it doesn't succeed, it helps establish the beachhead and a causal nexus. Read "The Riverkeepers" by John Cronin about how local fishermen on the Hudson River in the 1980s stopped gross pollution by suing the polluters under a long-forgotten 1899 law. This is how it's done.
Posted by: Douglas Watts | March 4, 2010 11:19 PM
"The only question I have is that the responsibility is really shared by all of us as consumers of fossil fuels, in some sense it is not fair to place all the responsibility on the fossil fuel companies."
Thankfully, the law doesn't see it that way.
This would make "consumers" of Ford Pintos equally liable for the faulty gas tank that caused them to explode, because the poor saps unwittingly bought them and drove them, thereby encouraging Ford to continue making them.
Of course when they intentionally create misinformation to avoid addressing the problem, the face a corresponding increase in culpability.
Exactly. In a case of liability, as this is, the focus is on whether the oil companies knew, or should have known, their activities could cause the disaster but did it anyways.
Interesting. Hope they win.
Great post.
Posted by: Douglas Watts | March 4, 2010 11:29 PM
It was my understanding that increased hurricane damage was inevitable in Louisiana because of salt marsh loss along the coast due to the Corps controlling of the Mississippi and the resulting loss of silt deposition. I recall seeing a film in high school over 20 years ago about the Old River Control Structure and how the Mississippi switching channels and New Orleans flooding out were both just a matter of time.
Maybe the folks that lost their houses in the mudslides and fires here in Los Angeles can join in on the suit.
Posted by: Treespeed | March 4, 2010 11:49 PM
I have a simple idea that the plaintiff's might be able to use: 1998 + 7 = 2005.
Posted by: Joseph | March 5, 2010 9:07 AM
Where do the people line up to pay the said companies for increase in life expectancy and higher standard of living?
Good grief, will it ever end?
Posted by: PaulinMI | March 5, 2010 4:00 PM
Where do the people line up to pay the said companies for increase in life expectancy and higher standard of living?
At the gas station?
Posted by: pete | March 5, 2010 9:35 PM
At the gas station?
Exactly
Posted by: PaulinMI | March 6, 2010 5:47 AM
IANAL but I don't think civil trials require proof "beyond reasonable doubt", I'm pretty sure that the bar is set much lower than that.
Posted by: Jeeves | March 6, 2010 6:20 AM
"preponderance of the evidence" is the usual standard but i don't think we even have that here.
Posted by: skip | March 6, 2010 9:21 AM
IANAL either, but I don't think "caused Katrina" is required either, just "contributed to".
Posted by: coby | March 6, 2010 1:11 PM
This of course presupposes that global warming (or global climate change, or global cooling or whatever the current buzz word is) actively contributes to the strength of individual hurricanes (in contrast to the average strength).
I am amazed by the cognitive dissonance that is needed to pull this off: occurrences such as the massive snow storms in Scandinavia is rejected as a mere deviation from a trend of global warming, but individual strong hurricanes are not treated as a deviation, but as evidence for this trend.
It would seem as confirmation bias can be found even in scientific enterprises, especially in such highly politicized ones.
Is it just me who thinks that these people have discovered a way to greedily profit from other peoples winnings?
Posted by: Moridin | March 7, 2010 6:35 AM
Changing the 'buzzword' was the idea of the Bush admin (Frank Luntz) as "climate change" sounded less urgent than "global warming".
Strawman argument. No scientist would have said it was a deviation from a global warming trend. Extreme precipitation events are expected in a warmer globe--where temps are below freezing point of water that precip will fall as snow. They are not deviations, but expectations.
Strawman again. No scientist would say an individual hurricane is evidence for a warming trend.
It is like rolling a die loaded to come up with a 6. You can't say if the 6 came up due to chance or the loading, but over a number of rolls you'll see there is a higher probability of rolling a 6 than there should be. You'll know you've rolled more 6's than you should have, but you can't say which ones were due to loading or just chance.
See U.S. Climate Extremes Index (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei.html). They're just one of many places tracking the number of 6's.
Reconsider your sources of information. If you listen to them they will make you look foolish.
As for the whole suing, I'm also not sure what I think of that. I'll stick to the science.
--dan
Posted by: Daniel J. Andrews | March 7, 2010 12:58 PM
So in your opinion, both extreme precipitations and a warming (presumably less precipitations) are predictions of global warming? Then surely, global warming is unfalsifiable, since it predicts both A and non-A. A theory that can predict anything is of very little use scientifically.
But you just said that an individual whether event is evidence for a warming trend!
"No scientist would have said it was a deviation from a global warming trend. [...] They are not deviations, but expectations."
You seem to believe that cold weather is evidence for warming. That is kind of like saying evolution is evidence for creationism or the existence of god is evidence for atheism. Once a person believe something like that, one is unwilling to reconsider ones position that one might be wrong.
Posted by: Moridin | March 7, 2010 9:18 PM
I forgot to cite the source to my claim about Scandinavian snow storms and its implications for global warming. Al Gore, the Pope of global warming, stated it in an interview with Skavlan (part 6 of 11, 5th march) on Swedish television.
Posted by: Moridin | March 7, 2010 9:46 PM