Regulating Anthropogenic climate change with tort law

Last month, an Australian court published a decision that provides a detailed insight into the role of tort-based claims in climate change litigation following the 2011 Queensland floods that caused over $2bn worth of damage and affected over 20,000 homes. It is a decision that has significant international application to areas located in the vicinity of coasts and dams as well as floodplains. In short, the types of issues that the court considered have the potential to affect millions around the world in the future. 

This paper considers the Queensland Floods case, ongoing legal questions (on issues of causation and liability generally) by reference to other international cases and discusses other recent uses of tort-based legal arguments to address the problem of climate change.

See the full publication: TL4 FIRE International Magazine Issue 9