An Australian appeals court has overturned a ground-breaking ruling that the country’s environment minister had a duty to protect younger people against climate change.
Three Federal Court judges on Tuesday ruled for several reasons that the court should not impose on Environment Minister Sussan Ley a duty of care.
It will be recalled that eight Australian teenagers took Ley to court in 2020 in a bid to prevent her from approving the expansion of a coal mine.
Although they lost their attempt to stop the Vickery mine’s expansion in the state of New South Wales, their lawyers claimed victory from the judge’s ruling last year that Ley had a duty to prevent future climate harm.
In the ruling on Tuesday, Justice Mordy Bromberg noted that the expansion of the Whitehaven Coal-owned mine would lead to an additional 33 million metric tons (36 million U.S. tons) of coal being extracted over 25 years and 100 million metric tons (110 million U.S. tons) of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.
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In siding with Ley’s appeal, Chief Justice James Allsop and Justices Jonathan Beach and Michael Wheelahan ruled for a variety of reasons that the court should not impose on Ley a duty of care in considering the mine’s extension.
While noting that Ley argued that some of Bromberg’s findings were incorrect and reached beyond the evidence, the appeals judges said that the Court is unanimous of the view that these complaints are unfounded.
Responding, one of the activists, Anjali Sharma, said floods described as a one-in-500-year event that have devastated communities in northern New South Wales in recent weeks were proof that the government needed to act on climate change.
“The Federal Court today may have accepted the minister’s legal arguments over ours, but that does not change the minister’s moral obligation to take action on climate change and to protect young people from the harms that will bring,” Sharma said.
The lawyers for the plaintiffs are expected to appeal to the High Court.
Story was adapted from NBC News.
