From The stupid, it burns! department, comes this FUBAR press release from Bill McKibben’s 350.org. Of course, these idiots don’t think to check history for flooding there, because, well, that would be inconvenient.
Paris explores climate lawsuit against fossil fuel companies
Paris, France — The City of Paris decided today to explore possibilities to sue the fossil fuel industry for causing climate damages, following the example of New York and other US cities.
The city council also decided to lobby other major cities such as London to ban fossil fuels from their investments through the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, of which the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo is president. The council also announced that it will release an update on the progress that has been made since it pledged to divest from fossil fuels in 2015.
“It’s fantastic news that cities like New York and Paris are stepping up to protect their citizens and hold fossil fuel corporations accountable for the harm they cause. This is a major breakthrough for divestment campaigners around the world that have been pushing cities to take a stand against the polluters wrecking our climate,” comments 350.org France Campaigner Clémence Dubois. Fossil fuel companies like Total, Shell, BP, and Exxon are the driving forces behind more and more severe flooding and summer heat waves in Paris, as well as droughts, wildfires, unpredictable seasons and rising sea levels hitting people across the globe.”
This winter, Paris has been hit once more by severe flooding, which the mayor said was, alongside recent summer heat waves ‘clearly a question of the town adapting to climate change’. Studies found that the flooding that submerged Paris in May 2016 was made almost twice as likely by human-made climate change.
On 10th January, the mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio announced that the city will divest its $191 billion pension funds from fossil fuels and that it has filed a lawsuit against BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips for climate damages.
The moves by New York and Paris, paired with mayor Hidalgo’s pledge to increase efforts to persuade other major cities to divest, raises the pressure on the London where mayor Sadiq Khan has so far disappointed campaigners to take a strong stand against the fossil fuel industry and deliver on his election pledge to divest London City Hall.
Major cities such as Sydney and Cape Town as well as numerous European capitals including Berlin, Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm have already pledged to ban fossil fuels from their investments.
The divestment campaign to get public institutions to cut their financial ties to the fossil fuel industry started in 2012 with the aim to erode public acceptance for the companies most responsible for causing the climate crisis. To date, over 800 institutions including universities, faith and medical groups, the heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune have taken steps to divest.
Building on these achievements, the Fossil Free campaign is gearing up to launch a new wave of local action around the world to keep fossil fuels in the ground and accelerate the shift to community-controlled renewable energy.
“The Fossil Free movement is taking things to the next level in 2018,” said May Boeve, 350.org Executive Director. “Building off the global fossil fuel divestment movement, which successfully led over 800 institutions to divest over $6 trillion in assets from fossil fuel companies, we’re kicking into high-gear supporting local campaigns around the world working towards a world free from fossil fuels and enacting a swift and fair transition towards renewable energies for all. It is high time for governments worldwide to follow the people’s demand for a fossil free world.”
###
We covered this insanity of blaming climate change before on WUWT, and really, one picture IS worth a thousand words:
On a previous thread, WUWT regular TonyB contributed this comment:
Here is a google translate of the weather in Paris in Paris during January 1910
It shows the Metro flooded and numerous other interesting pictures of the city under water.
However what is most interesting is that it says it was only the second worst flooding in the records. That of 1658 was worse!!
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So are all these cities still using fossil fuels?
Sounds to me like a good fight back tactic would be to eliminate the sales of Gasoline, Oil, Heating Oil, Natural Gas and Fossil Fuel produced Electricity within any city limit that wishes to divest from fossil fuels thereby helping them to divest 100%. All those NY Cabbies would need to leave the island daily to refuel.
Wholeheartedly agree. Cut off the taps and let them try to function on renewables, they keep saying they can do it so let them go ahead and try – its a win, win for ‘deniers’ like myself.
I think a price increase to cover the anticipated legal expenses would be more appropriate; and they shouldn’t be coy about, maybe run a newspaper ad explaining why fuel in Paris went up 1/2 a Euro/L !
As long as people vote Big Brother progressives into power nothing can be done. You nearly wish we would have an other Carrington Event.
Paul Jackson
1/2 a euro a liter might, just might cover legal costs in Hicksville, but eagle legals in Paris, New York etc, NO! a 12 euro a liter increase? Mmmmm
This absolutely needs to happen. The virtue-signalling, latte sipping chattering classes of the metropolises who have no clue as to where there food or power come from will never stop voting in these lunatics until they have their stupid noses rubbed in some consequences. Make the consequences so and it stops.
Of course. So they aided and abetted the “crime” of which they claim to be victims.
And continue to do so, they haven’t banned the use of the alleged problem in the city.
Didn’t a push for increased lawsuits come out of COP21, 2015?
Sometimes the UN meetings side-events are as important as the main events?
UNEP
‘Environmental Courts & Tribunals’
‘A Guide for Policy Makers’, Sept.2016, 142 pages
Includes:
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA
Some history dating back to 1992
Ontario’s Envinomental Review Tribunals
http://wedoc.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/10001/environmental-courts-tribunals.pdf?sequence=1
Correction: UNEP
http://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/10001/environmental-courts-tribunals.pdf?sequence=1
How can BIG oil be blamed in the age of Trump? Anything that happens anywhere is Trump’s fault. Or worse, what Melania is wearing today! Light reflected from Melania’s dress causes climate change in Paris.
I thought it must be Brexit.
They wouldn’t be if I was running the fuel companies.
Of course, and probably more now than then.
Of course they are. Be funny as heck if all the fossil fuels companies refused to sell fuels to all these Warmist cities, saying “good luck operating without them, folks!”
Agree even for a stunt it would be worth it, see how fast the normal people move to remove the idiots from office.
Maybe the fuel companies could just add one Euro/liter to the fuel price and call it a ‘legal defense surcharge’.
Well you can’t have any trucks using evil fossil fuels delivering or picking up either. Three days with no truck traffic and NYC would be on it’s knees with it’s many deranged citizens evacuating. Be interesting to see the city devolve back to the state where they had tremendous problems with horse manure in the streets.
Time for some counter suits against these cities who would deny their citizens cheap reliable energy. Value of the suits = incremental costs of the citizens. Enough playing defense, time to go on the offense
Jeff L : +1
People need to start suing the city and/or government for crimes committed by illegals, bogus refugees, economic migrants and so forth.
It’ either the fault of US corporation or the effect of poor planning by French politicians.
What do you think the French will blame?
Who would any politician blame?
I will go with the money.
The first principle of jurisprudence… follow the money.
Russia supplies a large portion of the natural gas and petroleum used in Europe, so if the French want to be logical, they should add Russian fuel suppliers to the suit. See, it’s Putin’s fault.
Then watch the EU scream when Russia closes the gas and oil pipelines and diverts their gas and oil to China, Korea, Japan, etc.
And they should add Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Nigeria, Norway, the UK, the USA, etc. as defendants. Might as well get every fuel supplier in the World to cut them off. A triumph for the Green advocates.
Over the last four centuries or so, Paris has been flooded in 1649, 1651, 1658, 1690, 1711, 1732, 1740, 1779, 1795, 1802, 1830, 1836, 1879-80, 1882-83, 1886, 1910, 1924, 1955, 1982, 1999–2000, June 2016, and now January 2018.
Looks to me like flooding occurs 5 or 6 times per century and can repeat in successive years. Kind of like Normal
I can just imagine the case for the defence.
Complete silence. The overlaid photographs projected onto a screen for the judge & jury to see and defence counsel simply saying:-
“Women and men of the jury, Your Honour,
this was a completely natural occurrence,
Quid Est Demonstrandum.
The defence rests”.
Too succinct for a lawyer, probably but compelling on the TV News (if you could get it on that is)
In the eastern town of Ornans, home to 4,000 people, the high street was flooded and the ground floor of the town hall underwater.
“We haven’t seen a flood like this since 2002,” mayor Sylvain Ducret told AFP.
Komrade, I always thought it was “quod erat”, but I guess either works.
Yes:
quod erat demonstrandum
“what was to be demonstrated”
QED
Yep. Normal. Downstream from the confluence of three major river. What do you expect to happen. Of course those rivers are the very reason why the city is there in the first place.
No, Kuma. You have to account for the very real possibility of improved flood controls. That’s something that I don’t like about this very post. For example, remember that during Hurricane Harvey, Central Houston had significantly less flooding than several non-hurricanes in the early 1900s. This was due to huge reservoirs and drainage systems that we built to combat these very sort of situations.
Secondly, don’t forget that the judge and jury are already biased against them due to the situation, so the defense will actively have to prove a negative. What a defendant would have to do in this case is reverse the accusation and show that the French Flood Control board (or whatever it’s called) inappropriately controlled the river. In short, accuse them of using “climate change” as a cloak to hide their own negligence. This is what we’ve done in prior posts on this very site.
But, but, but THIS flood was twice as likely so it’s not the same as all of the others: (my bold)
https://wwa.climatecentral.org/analyses/european-rainstorms-may-2016/
I’m surprised they didn’t confirm all of the models with Wanda the Witch’s chicken entrails.
They tried but the end results were so fowl that they decided to roll the bones instead.
You also need to factor in that France, in general, and Paris in particular, has been governed by increasingly progressive ideologues, and subsequently expenditures on real things, like infrastructure, have suffered. Many of the canals are clogged with garbage. A couple years ago one of the canals was finally cleaned only because it ran through an upscale neighborhood, and the natives were restless. They took 40 tons of garbage out, everything from motorcycles to mattresses, and a lot of just plain litter.
Only 40 tons? What is that supposed to do? Are you sure it wasn’t 40,000 tons?
40 tons? To be frank, in a waterway of any length, that’s trivial. I’ve never dredged a river or creek, but when I dredged my ponds, we got over a million pound per acre of mud, dirt, and debris. That’s the level of cleanout you need, as it’s the mud that clogs your drainage, not the refuse.
Coincidence.
Spot on Bob. There are very good geological and topographical reasons why the Seine basin, centred on Paris, floods regularly, particularly with regard to the impact arising from the confluence of other major rivers joining the Seine further upstream. As you have demonstrated, before the basin got increasingly concreted over as the city expanded, major flooding occurred regularly. That it does now, is not a surprise to anyone with even a smidgeon of historical knowledge. It is, perhaps, a greater surprise that the flooding isn’t even worse because of modern land use changes. I’d be interested to know how the citizens of Paris could possibly survive today without the assiatance of ‘Big Oil’ energy and products in dealing with the consequences of a flood. Probably not quite as well as the citizens of 1649, 1651, 1658,1690…… etc, etc
When will it come to suing everyone who uses fossil fuels as they being the real culprits.
It’s just the usual dog and pony show by the urban useful idiot cheerleaders. No one with a functioning bran cell pays them any attention but seemingly the voter inertia in urban centres is always with them nevertheless.
Yup, that 1910 picture completely destroys the Paris case.
To be fair, this is far from the only stupid thing they’ve done.
“The Fossil Free movement is taking things to the next level in 2018”
Does that mean they will lead by example, or just turn up the anti-oil money?
Well, here in Oregon – after the gas tax and the bail-out healthcare tax – NOW Kate Brown is ram-rodding through a California style cap-and-trade.
And I have no doubt the progressive idiots in this state will pass it without a blink.
These pockets of eco-idiocy are like cancers, just waiting to metastasize once the second they regain national power.
Of course, in the meantime, you just have a consolidation of the coastal port states.
Just following the good example of Oakland, CA !!
What if the oil companies say “see you in court, and by the way we have been advised by our counsel not to sell any more product to areas involved in the suit”?
I totally support not selling anymore of the product that is “causing all this” especially for the inner city idiots who would deny the rest of us sensibly priced power.
Precisely. Having been placed on notice that there is a claim of damages, said damages being compounded by the continued sale of the offending product, it would only be prudent for the defendant to cease the claimed pernicious activity, so as to limit actual and punitive damages in the event the case is settled/adjudicated in the plaintiff’s favor…10 years or so from now.
Trouble is some Big or Little oil Co. would always break the embargo for profit and promises of immunity. Cannot see how it would work in practice.
If France gets a cold or snowy winter, they’ll be glad to have some natural gas to heat their homes. If the Russians turn off their spigot, how about a little LNG “made in USA”?
France, to its credit, does not rely on fossil fuels for electric power. They get 80% of their electric power from nuclear fission, and most of the rest from hydro, which works very well in a heavy rain.
Remember, it was the French who coined the expression “apres nous, le deluge” (after us, the deluge).
I attempted to leave the following at their web site but keep getting an HTTP ERROR 405:
“Apologies, first, that my comment must be in English, as I have no facility with the French language. If the people of Paris wish to sue fossil fuel producers for damages, it will clearly be prudent for said producers to immediately cease delivery of their product so as to limit any potential civil damages, since such cases can take many years to adjudicate and they will surely not wish to compound their losses in case the plaintiffs prevail. I wish the people of Paris good luck in heating their homes in the winter and cooking their meals.”
I guess soon we will not be able to fly to Paris anymore. There goes their tourist industry………
Right, we’ll go there by oar and sail, ilke in the Viking age! Lots of loot and fun to be had and behead.
Wait, are you saying there was water in French (Gallic) rivers a thousand years ago? Was it because of FF-driven longships? 😉
Parisian politicians always go for the easy target, can’t ban wood burning in the city so when pollution gets bad blame diesel cars
https://www.thelocal.fr/20141230/paris-log-fire-ban-goes-up-in-smoke
All that has happened is that Northern France has got some of the winter rain that normally falls in Southern England, giving floods in the relatively flat former region, and relative “drought” in the latter.
The French should be thanking the fossil fuel companies for a relatively mild winter, and a re-filling of their water reservoirs.
“The
FossilBrain Free movement is taking things to the next level in 2018…”There, fixed.
It’s not stupid. It’s a proven method to deprive people of money they earned. We use it daily in the USA with lawsuits over drugs and side effects, mesothelioma and anything else one can come up with to sue for. America has used this method for 40 years or more. Easier than raising taxes. Higher probability of success. France is just catching up.
With any luck, they’ll bankrupt the REAL power companies and have endless riots on their hands. For all I know, that may even be the goal. Or maybe it’s just greed. Never underestimate greed.
What is so stupid about some politicians finding someone to blame for their failures? That is their entire modus operandi. All of them. Find good things to take credit for ( Al Gore/ internet), and find others to blame for your screw-ups. Call me a cynic but then show me a single instance where they did otherwise.
Telling the truth gets you nowhere in politics or climate “science”! Or religion. AGW is a mixture of three kinds of lie-based human mindsets. Probably multiplicative rather than additive. One derangement excites the others.
I don’t understand why they want to sue the energy providers. The providers don’t burn the stuff they sell, they provide a service to individuals and entities that burn the energy. They should be suing the people who purchase it and drive their cars, or the people who burn it to heat their houses.
As Willie Sutton said, “That’s where the money is”.
As Marie Antoinette would say: Let them wear gum boots.
If we change the context of your premise just a little bit…
drug dealers….drug users…
It’s simple, Paris
Stop using fossil fuels entirely.
Don’t blame everybody else
US Treasury and SEC should look into the deBlasio-NYC threats as attempted blackmail and extortion against the companies in the suit since those companies likely have billions tide-up in NYC bonds!
Funny that big deBlasio did not go after the numerous “small” oil-gas companies with offices in NYC!
Ha ha
The entire ‘sue big oil’ idea is just more insanity. What will big oil do if they win?
1. Pay less tax due to increased expenses. YOU get less in government handouts & support.
2. Charge YOU more because of increased expenses and the need to appease shareholders.
Who wins? Nobody.
Who loses? YOU
Of course I’m assuming that the ‘YOU’ in this equation benefits from government handouts or support, and uses fossil fuels or the products of them (food using fertilizer, plastic clothes, plastic anything, any electricity (try making some without using oil somehow), roads, anything transported (try transporting without oil), etc etc etc).
When the precursors of 350.org statrted to attack the resource companies back in the 80s and 90s, most companies simply went with the flow, didnt fight back, and several became “green”. It is now recognised by those same companies that response was a major mistake, reduced their rights under law, and lead to regulatory overreach which has been difficult to reverse. The current push is simply from the same songsheet. The lesson is to fight now.
Exactly. To simply argue that Paris has flooded before is certainly true, but ignores the basic insanity lying at the root of the claim.
That territory must never be ceded to the crazies, because they aren’t going to go away any time soon. The green ratchet works because so many people and corporations too often take the lazy approach and merely kick the can down the road. But the crazies come back with even more outrageous claims and demands because nobody put their foot down with the earlier claims.
The most effective fight would involve not just lobbying of governments, but educating the public about the REAL state of climate science. The fossil fuel companies have been climate cowards. Both Tim Ball and Mark Steyn have had to deal with expensive lawsuits, and I’m surprised Anthony Watts hasn’t been targeted (yet).
Did any of the oil majors even bother to supply any amicus briefs regarding what they know about the true state of climate change? It’s pretty obvious they haven’t spent anything useful for education of the public.
I have no sympathy for them, whatsoever. I’m GLAD they’re getting sued.
Some of the climate loons want to put us in jail. I wonder: if Anthony Watts found himself in jail over his sins against the climate change religion, would Exxon Mobil, e.g., have made a peep? I think not…..
Hodgkins et al. report that “there was no compelling evidence for consistent changes over time in major-flood occurrence during the 80 years through 2010,” adding that “the number of significant trends in major-flood occurrence across North America and Europe was approximately [equal to] the number expected due to chance alone.” Consequently, they conclude that “compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking.”
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V21/feb/a3.php
Fair enough. So long “City of Lights!” You are cut off. -Big Oil
There are dams upstream from Paris. Flood control is a big part of their supposed value. Sue the entities controlling the dams. Of course that’s probably as useful as suing yourself.
Unfortunately the Dams were nearly full at the time of the rains and, as such, needed to open the flood gates to remove the possibility of damage to the dam structures. Just one of those lack of proper prior planning cases.
I remember reading a previous post about CA’s Oroville dam and the failure of the reservoir operators to keep the reservoir from topping over and not having any margin for when more water arrives. As I recall one commenter mentioned that if you had to use your spillway it meant you hadn’t been doing your job and usually lead to dismissal.
Parisian politicians cannot sue nature for raining. They can’t recover any damages from themselves for not operating their safeguards.So….it must be somebody else’s fault.
Rocketscientist …It was the emergency Spillway that should never have to be used. The main Spillway is used regularly but had not been maintained well and failed.
There was a time when they would just look in Germany’s direction for that. At least that was understandable for a period of time.
True, in Oroville it was the emergency spill way that failed as well as the primary, but the commentor mentioned that long before you are using the primary spill way you should be running more outflow through the pen stocks. Failure to watch upstream flows and anticipate the obvious is what caused the issue.
Stay ahead of the curve so to speak.
Additionally, they’re as likely as not on strike and as such, unreachable.