Young victims of the climate crisis will on Tuesday launch legal action at Europe’s top human rights court against an energy treaty that protects fossil fuel investors. Five people, aged between 17 and 31, who have experienced devastating floods, forest fires and hurricanes are bringing a case to the European court of human rights, where they will argue that their governments’ membership of the little-known energy charter treaty (ECT) is a dangerous obstacle to action on the climate crisis. It is the first time that the Strasbourg court will be asked to consider the treaty, a secretive investor court system that enables fossil fuel companies to sue governments for lost profits.
“It just can’t be that the fossil fuel industry is still more protected than our human rights,” said Julia, a 17-year-old high school student from Germany, who said she was joining the legal challenge after catastrophic lethal floods came to her home region, the Ahr valley, last July.
This obscure energy treaty is the greatest threat to the planet you’ve never heard of
‘Blah, blah, blah’: Greta Thunberg lambasts leaders over climate crisis
Vanessa Andreotti: If we lose the Amazon, our world will lose its future
Last year the oceans absorbed heat equivalent to 7 Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating each second
A green paradox: Deforesting the Amazon for wind energy
Honest Government Advertisement: Net Zero by 2050
Cristina Mittermeier: Photography and storytelling can turn apathy into climate action
Ghoramara island has been shrinking: living on the frontline of global heating
After the truth-shower 