Dec 24, 2024
Nov 30,2024
Presented by Louise Williams, the programme is a compendium of thoughts and stories on climate activism and the living planet.
Producer Kevin Brew gives an eco-friendly tour of the first instalment...
In 2020, German television broadcast the film Ökozid (Ecocide). It depicted a fictitious court case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In this scenario, 31 of the countries worst affected by climate change sued Germany for €60 billion. Set in 2034, the film tracked the testimonies of an older Angela Merkel, aged 80, remembering her years as a scientist and acknowledging the carbon theft of the affluent West.*
That TV scenario has played out in the real world as we face a flickering news feed of fires and floods. There are thousands of legal actions in progress. These include a recent victory by Swiss women at the European Court of Human Rights and a new case at the International Court of Justice, taken by South Pacific Ocean nation Vanuatu and 131 countries. There are domestic examples as well, including the 2020 victory of Friends of the Irish Environment at the Supreme Court, compelling the Irish government to revamp its climate plans.
Our new Drama On One strand, The Burning Question, looks for hope in a time of frightening harm to the planet - in the fiery eloquence of young activists, new thinking, court challenges, and immersive recordings of the natural world.
In this first episode, we'll hear Lauren McDonald, who spoke recently at the AGM of the Norwegian energy company, Equinor. She is the lead campaigner working to block the Rosebank oil and gas exploration project in the North Sea. Her powerful speeches cut through the equivocal fog surrounding inaction on climate change. Her words echo the consensus that further fossil fuel extraction will derail all efforts to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The future of Rosebank hinges on next year’s verdict at Edinburgh’s Court of Session, after a court challenge taken by Greenpeace and Uplift.
Barrister and author Philippe Sands spoke to us during his visit to International Literature Festival Dublin. He described a legal concept - ecocide - which could in the future be added to the list of major international crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity. This would add environmental protection to the legal concepts developed at the time of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals - as so memorably described in Philippe’s book, East West Street.
If ecocide is enshrined in international law, this would theoretically put lead decision-makers at risk of criminal responsibility when an energy company decides to drill in a new oil field, or when a government minister grants a license to do so.
Our main story is the Youth4JusticeClimate case.
As part of their work for Global Legal Action Network, Irish lawyers Gerry Liston and Gearóid Ó’Cuinn teamed up with six young Portuguese people to bring 32 European governments to the European Court of Human Rights.
The six litigants - Mariana, Cláudia, Catarina, André, Martim and Sofia - accused the defendant states of violating their human rights as a result of their failure to act on climate change. Their striking testimonies can be heard in an online press conference given in 2020, including these words, by Cláudia:
In 2017, I witnessed in horror the deadly forest fires, that destroyed several areas of the country, including the region of Leiria. Fortunately neither myself, nor my family and friends were directly affected. But it was overwhelming for me, to see how the forests, where I usually like to be, suddenly became extremely dangerous places. At that moment, I clearly understood that climate change is making the world an increasingly dangerous place and that my generation is increasingly vulnerable and without future prospects, (Cláudia Duarte Agostinho, 2020)
TheYouth4JusticeClimate case sought to extend the liability of European states for their climate emissions, linking them to catastrophic impacts beyond their borders, such as the deadly wildfires in Portugal. Our programme tracks the case up to the day of the final verdict.
In making The Burning Question we’ve been lucky to work with talented actors like Imogen Allen, Hannah Brady, and Percy Chamburuka. They perform the words of the Portuguese activists, to a vibrant score by Daragh Dukes, with immersive soundscapes by Chris Watson and Ruth Kennington. Louise Williams’ eloquent and considered writings on the Living Planet, and the role of law, permeate the series.
That flickering news feed makes us shudder. And yes, this is the kind of material that people don’t always want to think about. And yes, The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg is unlikely to be required reading at the Oval Office in 2025. But for all those reasons, it seems even more important to foreground the ideas of climate activists of all ages, whose actions can and will make a difference.
As Lauren McDonald put it last week:
Every single fraction of a degree of warming,
every single fossil fuel project that we stop,
is countless lives saved.
(* Angela Merkel put on trial in German climate change drama set in 2034, Derek Scally, Irish Times 19 Nov 2020)
