English references

A German court has delivered a landmark ruling in a climate lawsuit brought by Peruvian farmer, Saúl Luciano Lliuya, against German energy giant RWE. The German Higher Regional Court of Hamm has ruled that, in principle, companies can be held liable to people halfway around the world for their contribution to the impacts and risks of climate change . While the Court ultimately dismissed Mr Lliuya’s claim, its reasoning represents a significant breakthrough for climate litigation globally. Below we explain what the Court decided, why it matters, and what it might mean in a New Zealand context with Smith v Fonterra still moving through the courts.

Previous health impact assessments of temperature-related mortality in Europe indicated that the mortality burden attributable to cold is much larger than for heat. Questions remain as to whether climate change can result in a net decrease in temperature-related mortality. In this study, we estimated how climate change could affect future heat-related and cold-related mortality in 854 European urban areas, under several climate, demographic and adaptation scenarios. We showed that, with no adaptation to heat, the increase in heat-related deaths consistently exceeds any decrease in cold-related deaths across all considered scenarios in Europe. Under the lowest mitigation and adaptation scenario (SSP3-7.0), we estimate a net death burden due to climate change increasing by 49.9% and cumulating 2,345,410 (95% confidence interval = 327,603 to 4,775,853) climate change-related deaths between 2015 and 2099. This net effect would remain positive even under high adaptation scenarios, whereby a risk attenuation of 50%

Over the past week, police have taken brutal steps to suppress ecological movements in Europe and the United States. In Germany, police evicted and destroyed the long-occupied village of Lützerath in a massive operation in order to expand an ecologically devastating open pit coal mine.