December 22, 2021
Climate litigation rising: Hot spots to watch
Benjamin Franta, JD, PhD
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The legal profession’s concern over climate change isn’t new (the first climate lawsuit was filed in 1986),
but what is new is the unprecedented scale and diversity of claims related to climate change across the United States and internationally. Since 2015, over 1,000 new climate-related cases have been brought worldwide, and the cumulative number of cases has more than doubled. Most of these cases sit in U.S. courts, but they span nearly 40 countries around the world.
As climate change litigation grows, its complexity does, too. Many academic centers have been established to track, inform, and interface with climate lawsuits, such as Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, New York University’s Climate Litigation Accelerator, and the University of Oxford’s Sustainable Law Programme.
For busy lawyers, getting a handle on this emerging growth area can be a challenge. Here are hot spots to watch as climate litigation expands worldwide.
American tort and consumer protection law flexes its muscle
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/environment_energy_resources/publications/trends/2021-2022/january-february-2022/climate-litigation-rising/
