The Greatest Tort
Humans contribution toward the changes in the earth’s climate are a fact. The CO2 levels in the atmosphere averaged ca 280 ppm the last 10 000 yrs (in fact they have been in the 170–300 ppm range for almost 1 million years) to now rapidly accelerating beyond 400 ppm. Global warming and the impact on the world climate follow. And primarily all this due to fossil fuels where stored carbon is being burnt to CO2.
If you visualise the earth to be a 1-meter diameter ball, the atmosphere reaches 1 millimeter out. If we include the average depth of the oceans, we can add another 0.4 mm to this. Regardless how we look at it we must realise that the space we actually live in is very small. Into this our earthly habitat we are burning ca 20 million tonnes of coal, 80 million barrels of oil and 11 billion cubic meters of methane EVERY DAY and releasing it as CO2 into the atmosphere.
In the 1980s a series of lawsuits were raised against the tobacco industry by private individuals and (mainly US) public entities for their failure to properly warn their consumers about the dangers of their products although they were aware of them, and for the consequential costs to society at large for the same negligence. The largest settlement amounted to USD 246 billion.
In the late 2010s a similar series of lawsuits started to gain momentum against opioid manufacturers. Some have been settled, some are ongoing, in some cases the manufacturers have filed for bankruptcy or restructuring protection. The monetary amounts are again in the billions of USD.
We are now in a situation where climate changes pose life threatening dangers to humans and other species. More frequent extreme weathers causing droughts, floods and hurricane winds are battering the world. Even worse is the melting of glaciers and icecaps around the world, slowly but surely raising the sea levels. Low altitude areas and countries have to find means to cope with this or be submerged. The highest natural point in the Maldives is 2.4 meters above sea level. Together with other island nations such as Tuvalu, Barbados and Fiji they face the risk of losing most or all of their land to the sea. The issue so different than loss the of life and property which already is happening due to global warming. For what do you do when your country disappears? How do you put a price tag on a lost nation? At some point someone will start to ask “who is to blame”?
This is 2021. Oil majors, coal miners and gas producers are producing at record levels. In addition to earning money for their shareholders, the nations that sit on these resources have earned massive revenues from taxes and direct ownerships in the fields and quarries. From this whole frenzy of exploiting carbon that has been stored for millions of years there are therefore obvious losers and winners.
I predict that one day there will be a case made by one of the losers against one of the winners. A good strategy is to always start to go after the one with the biggest wallet. It will in short go like this:
L: Did you in 2021 know that most of the hydrocarbons you were producing would ultimately be burned, converted to CO2 and released into the atmosphere?
W: Yes
L: Did you know that this CO2 would be a major cause for global warming with all the documented effects following this?
W: Yes
L: Did you regardless of this continue to produce hydrocarbons?
W: Yes
The jury will reach a verdict.
This will be The Greatest Tort.
