Can a bunch of crab fishermen save the earth?
It's not as silly a question as you might think. On Nov. 14, in an unprecedented action by private individuals in a U.S. court, commercial fishermen in California and Oregon sued 30 oil, gas and coal companies, seeking compensation for their losses because the Dungeness crab market in the Pacific Ocean has been harmed by rising temperatures caused by burning fossil fuels.
Some legal experts say the little-noticed lawsuit filed in Superior Court in San Francisco was a legal earthquake. It shows that lawyers and private individuals are ready to use the overwhelming evidence of climate change—and Big Oil's efforts to suppress the facts of its culpability—to their advantage in the courts, even as politicians such as U.S. President Donald Trump continue to cast doubt on the science that demonstrates it is man-made.
“It is the first time in the United States that a private plaintiff has sued the fossil fuel industry for damages,” said David Bookbinder of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank based in Washington that is leading efforts to change conservative thinking on climate change. The suit joins a slew of recent lawsuits that have been filed by U.S. towns and other public entities against Big Oil and Gas.
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