A Supreme Court Ruling May Save Louisiana’s Coast. But It Wasn’t Our Supreme Court.
Milieudefensie director Donald Pols celebrate the outcome in the court case of Milieudefensie against Shell in The Hague, Netherlands (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
What would you say if I told you Louisiana has new hope to survive surging seas caused by fossil fuel emissions because the Supreme Court ordered an oil giant to reduce its emissions by 45% over the next eight years?
OK, you’d say that wasn’t the United States Supreme Court. And you’d be right.
That ruling was made May 25 by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands against Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s second-largest oil and gas company, and a major economic force in that country.
But environmental law experts in the United States said it could have a major impact on the climate struggle here by setting a model for our courts to follow.
“I think this is a big deal,” said Rob Verchick, the Loyola environmental law professor who worked on the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan and is president of the Center for Progressive Reform. “I see it as a turning point in the way courts and governments are going to be looking at oil and gas companies in the future.”
Some background. In 2019 Shell embarked on the industry’s most aggressive emissions reduction effort, pledging to cut its totals from 2016 levels 45% by 2035 and 100% by 2050. But Dutch environmentalists said that pace endangered the nation because it was far too slow to reach emissions targets set in the Paris Climate Agreement needed to avoid the worst impacts of warming this century.
The court agreed, giving Shell just eight years “to reduce its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 with respect to the level of 2019 for the Shell group and the suppliers and customers of the group.”
Read the rest of the article at The Times-Picayune.
