And some of the realities

The fantasy about electric cars (eCars) is that we will replace virtually all gasoline-powered cars and trucks with cleaner electric vehicles charged largely by low-carbon power sources, such as solar and wind.  And live happily ever after.

It is a clear and compelling fantasy.  It does rest on the belief that if people just buy eCars, most of everything else will fall into place.

For years the government has offered the grand illusion that by 2030 Ireland will have almost 1 million electric cars on the road.  Yet as of August 2002 there are just 17,000 electric vehicles in Ireland, up from 11,700 in 2019, and 7,647 in 2018.  Not exactly a robust growth pattern.  And to add insult to injury, the government has only 25 eCars in a fleet of 6,000 vehicles.

Unfortunately there are a few blocks in place that will make it unlikely that we will see one million electric vehicles magically appear in 10 years.

Some blocks are obvious.  The upfront costs of eCars can still be up to 50% higher than the costs of gasoline cars.  Of course the costs of running an eCar can be lower but people still have to be able to afford the purchase price.

To power these eCars, we still need to decarbonise the electric grid, a long-term project that is quite complicated and very expensive.  And the public needs to be convinced that constructing more wind towers and solar installations, and electric grid towers, makes sense, is manageable, fairly placed, and does not disrupt their lives and living spaces.

Gasoline cars are not going to go away without a struggle.  Gas cars have been made with more advanced technology over the past 10 years and now have about a 14-year life span.  These gas guzzlers will be around for a while.  In addition, there are markets where end-of-life cars in developed countries are shipped to developing countries and rebuilt to extend the life of that car.  So it will take at least several generations to replace gas-powered cars.

It won’t be just any eCar that will satisfy the car-buying public.  In a recent UK Audit Office study, it is noted how the increased sales of power-hungry SUVs, as well as increased driving, have offset the carbon omissions achieved through the increase in sales of eCars.  See Reports below.

Are we to increase the costs of SUVs to discourage their commercial success.  Won’t people want power-hungry eSUVs even when they buy eCars and the grid has been decarbonized?  Is that a problem?

As for the continuing increase in driving distances, a recent study in Nature Climate Change found that if Americans keep driving more total miles each year, we will need 350 million electric vehicles by 2050, with an enormous drain on the electric grid and supplies of natural resources for batteries.

Of course, a significant counter force against more driving is more public transport.  When policymakers talk about ways to advance transport, shouldn’t we insist on talking not about “road maps” for plans and strategies but ‘busmaps” and “railmaps” and “cyclemaps” and “walking maps”?

And public planning is closely tied to public transport, or should be.  If we want to promote public transport, we need housing and work easily accessible to it.

And of course there is the 500 pound gorilla in the closet: taxes on carbon dioxide emissions, with some protection for low-income drivers.

Just encouraging lots of people to buy an eCar is not nearly enough.  Creating the supporting infrastructure and policy framework are prerequisites for adequate climate action.

As the Citizens Assembly stated:

It’s important to note that improvements in energy efficiency alone​, such as electrification of transport, will not be enough to reduce Ireland’s emissions. A shift to walking, cycling and public transport, as well as other measures such as pricing, are needed. A recent report for the European Environment Agency put it this way: “meeting decarbonisation goals for the sector requires not only incremental changes like the wider introduction of electric vehicles and improved fuel efficiency in planes and ships, but also more far reaching changes to lifestyles and habits which greatly influence the way we use transport.”

Now that the new climate bill has been published and there is a growing consensus to take concrete action on climate breakdown, time is of the essence for the government to deliver on these wider implications for a conversion to eCars.

Sources:

Ireland, Climate Action Plan 2019: To Tackle Climate Breakdown bit.ly/3rzlh4g

See More eCars Does Not Equate to Reduced Carbon Emissions:  Why Not? In the Reports section of the current April (2021) issue of www.irishenvironment.com

“Electric Cars in Ireland – Some Facts and Figures,” Money Guide Ireland (6 October 2020).  bit.ly/3u58XKM

Michael McAleer, “Climate plan: 1m electric cars by 2030 does not look realistic,” The Irish Times (18 June 2019).  bit.ly/3cusYoc

Brian Hutton, “Only 25 of State’s 6,000-strong fleet of vehicles electrically-powered,” The Irish Times (27 March 2021). bit.ly/3wfDzLo

Brad Plumer, Nadja Popovich and Blacki Migliozzi, “Electric Cars Are Coming, but How Long Before They Rule the Road,” The New York Times (10 March 2021).

“Ireland’s plan for electric vehicles will reduce emissions, but may come at a cost,” MaREI, the SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine.  bit.ly/2O1EyxC

‘The Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change: 7 Questions To Raise on Climate Action in the Transport Sector,’ Stop Climate Chaos bit.ly/3m5uzEi

Manchester, France, and Nigeria

Last month we discussed how new litigation with coroners, deportation proceedings, and the Amazon has broadened the reach of environmental litigation.  In earlier issues we covered two critical, successful climate cases by the Friends of the Irish Environment and by Urgenda in the Dutch courts.

Here we add three more lawsuits in which ordinary citizens, often with the help of environmental organisations, overcome powerful vested interests to shape the protection of the environment.

Manchester UK

In Manchester UK, a group of women sued the local council to block the building of a 440-space car park next to the city center’s only primary school.  As part of a large retail “park,” the City gave itself planning permission to build a car park that was to be temporary until the land could be developed for offices.

The women proposed instead that the space be used for a “people’s park“ as Manchester has very little open, green space.  They held protests, and sit-ins, filed petitions, to no avail.  So they brought an action for a judicial review against the council arguing that the fumes from the concentration of cars would put the kids at risk from air pollution.  The council was also charged with the hypocrisy of having declared a “climate emergency” and then proposed to build a polluting car park next to a school.

A High Court has recently ruled in favor of the community. The Council has indicated that it has appealed the decision.

France

The French government endorsed the Paris Accord on climate change, with its commitment to limit the rise in global average temperature to below 2°C, and, if possible, to below 1.5°C.  France also enacted a law with a commitment to achieve a net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.  This legal commitment included pledges to cut greenhouse gases (GHGs) by 1.5% each year, and by 3% annually beginning in 2025.

When the government failed to reach it targets and instead CO2 emissions rose by 4%, over 2 million people signed a petition complaining of the government’s failures.  Then in 2018, four non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — Greenpeace France, It’s Everyone’s Business, Oxfam France, and the Foundation for Nature and Mankind — filed a lawsuit against the French government for its failures to fulfill its climate obligations.

In early February, the Administrative Tribunal in Paris ruled that France had failed to fulfill its promise to reduce greenhouse gases under commitments made in the 2015 Paris Agreement, and was “responsible for ecological damage.”  The court awarded each of the four NGOs a symbolic one euro in damages, but ruled that it would decide in several months the extent to which any climate action measures would be required by the government to resolve its failure to meet its commitments.

The French government noted the decision and indicated that it was preparing further legislation to accelerate “France’s ecological transition.”   It is not clear if the government is appealing the decision.

Nigeria 

In a more traditional environmental lawsuit, in January 2021 a Dutch Court of Appeal held that a Nigerian subsidiary of the British-Dutch multinational Royal Dutch Shell company was responsible for oil spills in Nigeria in 2006 and 2007.  The lawsuit was filed by four farmers and Friends of the Earth.

The lawsuit was filed in 2008 and the Shell subsidiary argued for years that the spills resulted from sabotage where pipes were intentionally opened to discharge oil.  The court found that while many spills were the result of unauthorized opening of valves, Shell was legally obliged to protect its activities from sabotage, including to build better warning systems to detect and prevent leaks.

The subsidiary company was ordered to pay damages to the four farmers, for the destruction of farming land and ponds.  Unfortunately, as the lawsuit has been going on for over a decade, two of the four farmers have died.  But as a result of the decision, it is likely that there will be more lawsuits from other farmers against the Shell subsidiary.

Besides the money damages that will be awarded, Shell was ordered to clean up the area that had been contaminated by the oil spills.  In such cases, cleanup costs are often far more expensive than personal damages of individual farmers.

The case is still not done.  Shell can appeal the case to a higher Dutch court, and it can try to ignore the order to clean up the site as it has done in other cases.  But at the very least the case offers hope and opportunity for others to bring cases against a Nigerian subsidiary of a Dutch company, Royal Dutch Shell, in the country where they are headquartered for damages done in overseas countries which may have weak environmental laws, or corrupt institutions.

Conclusion

In the Urgenda lawsuit in the Netherlands, the government was ordered to increase the level of climate action to comply with its legal obligations.  In the Friends of the Irish Environment lawsuit in Ireland, the government was obliged to develop and issue a new National Mitigation Plan to proactively deal with climate change.  In France, the government was given a slap on the wrist, with the one Euro award of damages but it remains to be seen what the court will do with the “ecological damages” for which the government is responsible.  And the government is under sharp pressure to increase its climate actions.  In Manchester, the local council will have to actually take account of the “climate emergency” it declared when it makes planning and land use decisions.  Farmers from Nigeria found that they could sue the responsible party in Netherlands for damages from oil spills at home.

Sources:

“Extending the reach of environmental litigation: in ieBLOG section of irish environment magazine (1 February 2021).
bit.ly/3r0tz5V

“Irish Supreme Court Decision in a Climate Case: When Vagueness Became Illegal” in ieBLOG section of irish environment magazine (1 October 2020).  bit.ly/3r2enVZ

“Dutch Court Orders Dutch Government to Increase Its Climate Change Targets” in ieBLOG section of irish environment magazine (1 July 2015).  bit.ly/3r5CW4g

Helen Pidd, “Manchester council loses legal fight to build car park next to school,” The Guardian (20 Feb 2020).  bit.ly/2NJtyES

Jariel Arvin, “A court has convicted the French government of failing to meet its climate goals,” Vox  (4 February 2021).  bit.ly/3aUhjwL

Elaine Cobb, “Paris court finds France guilty of failing to meet its own Paris climate accord commitments,” CBS News (4 February 2021).  cbsn.ws/3aZ8PpI

Elian Peltier and Claire Moses, “A Victory Over Big Oil For 4 Nigerian Farmers,” The New York Times (31 January 2021).

Jean Shaoul, “Nigerian farmers win hollow legal victory against Shell for oil spillages,” World Socialist Web Site (7 February 2021).  bit.ly/3qUmyn4

Coroners, deportation, and the Amazon

In the classic paradigm for environmental litigation that has been developing over the past several decades, the claim is that the government is not doing enough to protect its citizens from the clear and increasingly dangerous impacts from climate breakdown.  Well known examples include the Dutch case where the environmental group Urgenda, on behalf of 900 Dutch citizens, sued the Dutch government.  In 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court ordered the Netherlands to slash greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 percent from 1990 levels by the end of 2020.

In Ireland, the Friends of the Irish Environment filed a lawsuit claiming that the government failed, as a matter of law, to fulfill its obligations to address actions necessary to mitigate climate breakdown in its National Mitigation Plan.  In July 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the Plan was so vague as to be illegal.  The Court quashed the Plan and ordered that a new plan be drawn up by the new government.

These and a growing number of environmental law cases focus on climate change and most are filed by citizens, including children, young people, and indigenous communities.  The defendants are usually governments but also corporations.  A recent UN report (2020) indicates that the number of climate change litigation cases has surged in the last four years and now stands at 1,550 in 38 countries (39 including the courts of the European Union).  As of 1 July 2020, some 1,200 of these cases were filed in the United States, and 350 in all other countries combined.

Now we have three even more adventurous forays into how law can protect citizens from environmental impacts.

Coroner Inquest

In the UK an inquest into the death of a 9-year old girl, Ella Kissi-Debrah, found that she had suffered from numerous seizures; was hospitalized over 30 times in three years; had been placed in a medically-induced coma for three days, to stabilize her condition; and, by 2012 had to be carried by piggyback to get around.  She died in 2013.  Her family lived 25 metres from the heavily-trafficked South Circular Road.

An initial inquest in 2014 found that she died from respiratory failure.  Her mother fought for a second inquest where expert evidence was presented about the prevalent, elevated and dangerous air pollution in her neighborhood, primarily from traffic.

In December 2020, the coroner in that second inquest held that Ella died from asthma, and that exposure to excessive air pollution had contributed to her death.   This was the first time in the UK where air pollution was listed as a cause of death.

It also can be noted that communities of color in many large urban areas disproportionately suffer from heavily polluted air and asthma. See Hernan, Stop Smoking Diesel Trucks, below.

Ella Kissi-Debrah

Extradition

An Appeals Court in Bordeaux, France overturned an expulsion order against a 40-year old Bangladeshi man with asthma.  The man’s lawyer argued that he risked severe deterioration in his asthma, and possibly premature death, because of the dangerous levels of pollution in his homeland.  Bangladesh ranks 179th in the world for air quality and has concentrations of fine particles six times the World Health Organization’s standards.

The Appeals Court held that the man could not be extradited from France because he would face “a worsening of his respiratory pathology due to air pollution” in his country of origin.

It is suggested that this is the first time the environment was cited by a court in an extradition hearing.  The implications are significant in light of the fact that environmental degradation, including climate breakdown, is expected to lead to mass migration in the future, with possibly millions of environmental refugees.

Amazon Rainforest

On a different note, with an international dimension, indigenous leaders in Brazil and human rights groups have petitioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, to investigate the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro for crimes against humanity.  They claim that Bolsonaro has dismantled environmental policies and has violated the indigenous rights, which it is claimed constitute ecocide.

Since Bolsonaro became president deforestation has risen by 50% in two years, invasions of indigenous territories has increased 135% and at least eighteen people have been murdered in land conflicts just last year.

While the ICC has focused on cases of genocide and war crimes, in 2016 it decided to examine crimes in other areas, including environmental and cultural cases.  It remains to be seen if the ICC will exercise jurisdiction over the claims.

Sources:

John Schwartz, “In ‘Strongest’ Climate Ruling Yet, Dutch Court Orders Leaders to Take Action,” The New York Times (20 Dec 2019). bit.ly/3iWD2YP

Robert Emmet Hernan, “Irish Supreme Court Decision in a Climate Case: When Vagueness Became Illegal,” ieBLOG (October 2020) in irish environment magazine at bit.ly/3iQ3XoR

“In battle against climate change, courts become a new frontier,” UN Environment Programme (26 January 2021).   https://bit.ly/2MgCOQ7

Harry Cockburn, “Ella Kissi-Debrah inquest: Coroner says air pollution contributed to death of nine-year-old in landmark ruling,” UK Independent (16 December 2020). bit.ly/3cjaNCl

Robert Emmet Hernan, “Stop Smoking Diesel Trucks,” ieBLOG section of irish environment magazine (May 2017).  www.irishenvironment.com/blog/stop-smoking-diesel-trucks/

Diane Taylor, “Air pollution will lead to mass migration, say experts after landmark ruling,”  The Guardian (15 Jan 2021). bit.ly/3pmiSKa

Robert Emmet Hernan, “Climate change -> drought => armed conflict + political instability = mass migration, as in Syria,” ieBLOG section of irish environment magazine (October 2015). bit.ly/2NO785e

Flávia Milhorance, “Jair Bolsonaro could face charges in The Hague over Amazon rainforest,” The Guardian (23 Jan 2021).  bit.ly/3iN6m3G

Editor’s Update: 3 February 2021:  Kim Willsher, “Court convicts French state for failure to address climate crisis,” The Guardian (3 February 2021). bit.ly/2LlWYb1

Zombie Energy

Sometimes a phrase just jumps out at you and your head snaps back in admiration.  That happened while reading an article about a new UN report on Production Gap. The report focuses on the discrepancy between countries’ planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.  In short, the world needs to decrease fossil fuel production by about 6% per year between 2020 and 2030 in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C.  Yet countries are instead planning on an average annual increase of 2% in fossil fuel production

Here’s the rub, and the origin for “zombie energy.”

The Covid-19 pandemic, with its protective lockdowns and restrictions, has led to a reduction in economic activity, which has in the past relied heavily on fossil fuels to power the economy.  With less to produce, fewer places to go to, and fewer people to share with, there has been a reduction in this reliance.  It is estimated that there will be a global 7% decline in production of fossil fuels for 2020.

Of course we saw a similar decline in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to economic downturn in the 2008 recession, and a return to rising GHGs as the economy recovered.  We can likely expect the same turn of events once the pandemic is controlled.

So the challenge is how to hold steady on the pandemic-induced fossil fuel decline as the economy recovers.  The key is how the government stimulus funds and recovery measures are spent and deployed.  Unfortunately, it has been estimated that the G20 governments have already committed almost twice as much money for recovery to fossil fuel production than to renewable energy.

As Ivetta Gerasimchuk of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a lead author of the Production Gap report, argued:  “Alas, in 2020 we saw many governments doubling down on fossil fuels.  Instead of governments letting these fossil fuel projects die, they resurrect them from death – it’s kind of zombie energy.”  The Guardian, below.

Indeed it is.  And we know that zombies are not easy to keep in the ground but that’s where they belong with all other stranded assets.

Sources:

SEI, IISD, ODI, E3G, and UNEP. (2020). The Production Gap Report: 2020 Special Report. productiongap.org/2020report

Damian Carrington, “World is ‘doubling down’ on fossil fuels despite climate crisis – UN report,” The Guardian (2 Dec 2020).  https://bit.ly/38KbalI

New Water Bill is strong on verbiage, weak on commitment

The words “drought” and “Ireland” are rarely uttered in the same sentence, but in the coming decades climate change may turn the Emerald Isle yellow. The summer of 2018 was one of the hottest and driest on record in Ireland, and a drought last spring caused annual output from the grain sector to drop from 2.3 million tons to under 1.9 million. These problems will intensify as the population grows and the planet warms. Climate change is projected to aggravate the precipitation disparity between the humid north and west and the drier south and east, jeopardizing the water supply of Dublin and other municipalities on the east coast. Water volume in lakes, rivers and streams will decline, and groundwater subsidence may deplete residential wells.

Forestalling this crisis will require two key measures: acquiring data on water usage across the Republic and using this information to improve regulation of abstraction (the removal and transportation of surface water and groundwater). Two weeks ago, the Government took a small step toward accomplishing these goals. The Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage conducted its first round of pre-legislative scrutiny on the proposed Water Environment Bill. One of the aims of the Bill is to facilitate the Eastern and Midlands Region Water Supply Project, which would pipe water from the River Shannon to Dublin and other parts of the East and the Midlands. This would forestall the water shortage in the east but imperil agriculture and ecosystem health on Lough Derg and the Shannon.

Derg Doom: proposed water abstractions threaten Lough Derg and the River Shannon

The Bill proposes a three-tiered system: a set of rules issued by the EPA for all abstractors, registration for those who withdraw over 25 cubic meters per day, and licenses for those who take over 2000 or operate in “areas of significance.” The Bill defines a “significant” abstraction as one that puts a water body at risk of “failing to achieve its environmental objectives.” It cites an EPA estimate that only 6% of Irish water bodies are vulnerable to abstraction but does not mention that only 53% of rivers and 50.5% of lakes are in “good” condition according to EPA standards. Not all of these compromised water bodies are necessarily vulnerable to abstraction, but the lack of data makes potential impacts hard to ascertain. Given the documented repercussions of abstraction on water quality and biodiversity, more than 6% of water bodies may be at risk and should be monitored for adverse effects.

Unfortunately, the Bill’s thresholds are so high that the vast majority of abstractions would escape scrutiny. None of the 21 water bottling plants in Ireland meet the threshold for licensing, and only five clear the bar for registration. High thresholds will prevent regulators from getting an accurate picture of water usage, endangering both the environment and the long-term water supply. They may also place Ireland in breach of the EU Habitats Directive and the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive. This is because the dearth of information on abstractors will prevent the Government from fulfilling its legal obligation to conclude “beyond reasonable doubt” that abstractions will not harm EU protected sites.

Ireland can look to its neighbors to improve its abstraction regulations. Scotland and Northern Ireland have aligned their regulations with the recommendations of the EU Water Framework Directive. They have also ensured public accessibility to licensing information and brought abstraction under the control of a single enforcement agency. In Northern Ireland abstractions above 10 cubic meters must be registered, while those over 20 cubic meters require a license–one one-hundredth of the figure proposed in the Water Environment Bill.

In addition to strengthening its abstraction regulations, the Irish government should work to increase drought resiliency by creating a publicly accessible drought monitor and hydrological outlook, which are both available in many other countries. It should also improve infrastructure. Much of Ireland’s hydraulic system is underfunded and decrepit. Irish Water, the public water utility, has begun revamping it, but the government should allocate additional funds for refurbishment.

Fixing the chronic leakages in the Dublin pipe system would likely obviate the need to divert water from the River Shannon. Indeed, the Dublin hydraulic system is in such bad repair that about half of this diverted water would be lost before it arrived.

Irish Water should also begin stress testing its systems against the extreme droughts Ireland may face in the future. This push to overhaul water policy will face resistance from the industries and citizens who have long held nearly unchecked abstraction rights. It will likewise inflame tensions between the urbanized east and the monetarily poor but water-rich west. However, these complications demonstrate the need for action, not reticence. Conflict over water rights will escalate as demand increases and precipitation declines, but Ireland can meet the challenge if it acts immediately.

UPDATE (6 Dec 2020): See Harry McGee, “Legislation diverting Shannon water to Dublin flawed, Government told:  Plans breach EU rules in six major areas independent legal advisers warn,” The Irish Times (2 Dec 2020). bit.ly/36LFQDu

James FitzGerald is Senior Intern at irish environment magazine and a student at Williams College, Massachusetts, where he majors in history and Chinese. He is currently writing a thesis on the history of environmental policy in the Brazilian Amazon.