Plan B Earth
 Plan B Earth       | |
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| Interest of | Tim Crosland |
Plan B Earth is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) that was established to support strategic legal action against climate change.
By ensuring those responsible for greenhouse gas emissions bear the costs of loss and damage, Plan B Earth will increase the incentives for investment in clean technologies, harnessing market forces towards a better future for everyone.
Strategic objectives
- (SO 1) Existing legal principles, which provide accountability and responsibility for climate change loss and damage, have been successfully applied and integrated into the market economy.
- (SO 2) Robust, science-based policy, legal and regulatory frameworks, in support of the climate temperature goal, have been implemented nationally and internationally.
- (SO 3) Victims of climate change have access to effective protections and remedies.
Fundamental safety mechanism
The law is society's fundamental safety mechanism. Wherever a duty of care exists, failing to take reasonable steps to prevent harm to others is illegal negligence (whether under private or public international law). Deliberate non-enforcement of that law is to be complicit in that negligence. Contrary to what many were implying in the run up to the 2016 Paris Agreement, a legally binding frame-work for the control of greenhouse gas emissions is already in existence.
The time is ripe for a determined and strategic application of the law.[1]
Legal action
Plan B Earth is taking legal action against the British Government for betraying its Paris Agreement commitments and violating the right to life.[2]
On 21 December 2021, in the High Court, Plan B argued that ministers had not taken “practical and effective” steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; that the climate crisis and human rights legislation had been breached, and claimed ministers had failed to take practical and effective measures to adapt and prepare for the current and projected impacts of the climate emergency. Mr Justice Bourne was asked to give the go-ahead for a Judicial Review but he refused to grant permission.
Tim Crosland, the director of Plan B, said:
“We are all witness to the devastating impacts of the current level of 1.2C warming (above pre-industrial levels): deadly famines in Madagascar, East Africa and Afghanistan; wildfires and floods devastating communities and ecosystems around the world, including in the UK.
“Meanwhile, the City of London continues to profiteer from financing a trajectory towards 3-4C warming, which is terrorism for the younger generation and terrorism for the global south.
“Yet, the High Court has ruled that we cannot use the 1.5C Paris limit as the benchmark for the UK government’s legal obligation to safeguard life, despite the scientific and political consensus that maintaining that limit is vital to safeguard life. Given the UK government’s grandstanding over 1.5C through COP26, the public will understand that for the legal sophistry that it is.
“If the courts are bound to ignore the scientific evidence of what is needed to safeguard life, then ‘the right to life’ is no more than an illusion in a political economy which privileges the safety of short-term corporate profit over the welfare of ordinary people.”
“We’ll appeal to the Court of Appeal and, from there, to the European court of human rights.”[3]
