Climate Law Insider, Newsletter 9/2021

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CLIMATE LAW INSIDER
Newsletter 9/2021, 09 September 2021

List of Contents

  • IPCC publishes Physical Science Basis report
  • Top law firms working with the fossil fuel industry on the rise, despite warming climate
  • Major oil and gas company faces lawsuit in Australia over alleged misrepresentation of ‘climate friendliness’
  • Australia’s Commonwealth Bank sued for allegedly financing carbon-intensive projects

- IPCC publishes Physical Science Basis report -

Coinciding with several climate change related natural disasters around the world, the IPCC released the first part of its Sixth Assessment Report in early August. Titled ‘The Physical Science Basis’, the report was prepared by Working Group One of the Scientific Assessment Panel. The release kicks off a series of publications by the IPCC. The report's key messages are startling: more clearly than ever, the report shows that it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land. It also shows that observed changes in extremes such as heat waves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and especially their attribution to human influence, have intensified since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) published in 2014. In addition, the latest evidence shows that global surface temperatures will continue to rise at least through to the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered.  Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C can only be avoided in the 21st century if emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases are sharply reduced in the coming decades. Together with the forthcoming Working Group 2 report on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability and Working Group 3's report on Mitigation of climate change, this new assessment will be the new reference work not only for climate policy, but also for future climate change litigation.
Learn more: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-i/

- Top law firms working with the fossil fuel industry on the rise, despite warming climate -

The US-American student group ‘Law Students for Climate Accountability’ released their new report on the role of the top law firms in the climate crisis in August. The 2021 Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard ranks the top 100 law firms and assigns a climate score ranging from a green A to a red F. The report uses data on transactions that finance fossil fuel development, data on litigation that exacerbates climate change and prevents climate accountability and data on lobbying for the fossil fuel industry. The study is the second of its kind. After the first report 2020 revealed that the top law firms conduct 5 to 10 times more work to exacerbate climate change than mitigate it, the second report shows that U.S. law firms are handling more deals and litigation for the fossil fuel industry than before. While 26 law firms received failing grades for their work in last year’s report, the number rises to 36 this year. Top 100 firms supported $1.36 trillion worth of transactions for the fossil fuel industry, received $35 million in compensation for fossil fuel industry lobbying and had 358 total representations exacerbating climate change from 2016 to 2020. The report on the role of the legal profession in the climate crisis is accompanied by an effort to phase out representation of the fossil fuel industry by pledges open to law firms and students to not take on new work that supports the fossil fuel industry.
Learn more: https://www.ls4ca.org/

- Major oil and gas company faces lawsuit in Australia over alleged misrepresentation of ‘climate friendliness’ -

On 25 August the Environmental Defenders Officers, acting on behalf of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR), filed a lawsuit against major oil company Santos before the Federal Court of Australia in New South Wales. ACCR argued that Santos’ advertisement of natural gas as a ‘clean fuel’ that provides ‘clean energy’ is misleading because the extraction of natural gas involves the release of ‘significant quantities of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere’. Additionally, the lawsuit seeks to dismantle Santos’ claim concerning its plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2040 by relying on carbon capture and storage (CCS) by pointing out to inconsistencies and contradictions in said plan. Plaintiffs assert this misleading or incomplete information is a breach of consumer laws, depriving new investors and existing shareholders of transparency and accuracy, thus providing the grounds to force Santos to issue ‘corrective statements regarding the environmental impacts of its operations’. According to plaintiffs, this lawsuit is the first in its kind to challenge the accuracy of corporate net zero emissions targets, as well as the first in Australia concerning potential greenwashing by the oil and gas industry.
Learn more: https://www.comcourts.gov.au/file/Federal/P/NSD858/2021/actions

- Australia’s Commonwealth Bank sued for allegedly financing carbon-intensive projects -

A shareholder of Commonwealth Bank (CBA) lodged a lawsuit against said company before the Federal Court in Australia to have access to documents detailing its decision to finance oil and gas projects despite their potential to breach the Paris Agreement goals. A similar action was undertaken in 2016, when the bank’s shareholders sued it because it violated the Corporations Act of 2001 by failing to disclose climate-related business risks within their report. On that occasion, shareholders withdrew their lawsuit after the bank released information that acknowledged the risk of climate change and pledged to undertake climate change scenario analysis to estimate the risks to CBA's business. Now, the same shareholder is seeking to inspect all documents created by CBA related to the bank’s assessment of the environmental, social, and economic consequences of CBA’s fossil fuel projects and whether they are in line with the Paris Agreement goals. This lawsuit is a new attempt at a trend in climate litigation to sue financial institutions due to transparency issues concerning their involvement in financing carbon-intensive projects, which are not in line with emissions reductions’ obligations.
Learn more: https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/cba-sued-in-climate-lawfare-first-20210901-p58ntj

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