Shell oil sued about global warming

This 5 April 2018 video from the USA says about itself:

Confidential Shell Oil Report Prompts Lawsuit: They Knew About Climate Change Decades Ago

What Royal Dutch Shell knew about fossil fuel driving climate change and when they knew it is confirmed in confidential report published by Dutch source, prompting legal case against oil giant by environmental group Friends of the Earth.

Translated from Frank Straver, in Dutch daily Trouw, 13:47, 12 February 2019:

Seven Dutch environmental organizations are now demanding this from Shell: The energy giant must stop its extraction and sale of oil and gas, is their commitment. As a result, the CO2 emissions for which Shell is responsible must be brought to zero by 2050, in line with the Paris climate agreement.

Shell now does nothing about “Paris”, according to the environmental organisations. Existing and new oil and gas projects frustrate the climate goals. Behind the scenes, Dutch Friends of the Earth has sharpened the knives for almost a year to force Shell into a lawsuit for change. Greenpeace and five other civil society organizations have been participating since Tuesday. …

“Raise your hands if you think that we have the right to a safe climate through our Constitution”, said lawyer Jan van de Venis. In the room were mainly law students. Approximately a third raised a hand. Wrong, said Van de Venis, who specializes in human rights. The Constitution does not offer climate rights in the Netherlands. “This is in contrast to a hundred countries worldwide, including Belgium and Norway.”

But there is also the European Convention on Human Rights, in which rights to safe and healthy living are laid down. And these rights are under pressure because of the rising climate danger. Not surprising, says Van de Venis, that the Urgenda sustainability organization also won the climate case against the government thanks to human rights. …

In support of this, the lawyer also uses internal Shell documents, unveiled by ‘De Correspondent’, a journalistic platform on the internet. These showed that Shell has known about dangers of fossil energy for decades. The corporation reported on this internally in ‘confidential’ documents. “We’ll be emphasizing this in the summons”, says Cox. “Shell knew about all the climate risks, but did not do anything.” The corporation made a warning information video, but in the meantime kept lobbying effectively for their fossil fuel interests. …

There, too, lawyer Cox sees a resemblance to the Urgenda case. Just like with the government, Shell‘s role in CO2 emissions is ‘horrendously big’. Of all world historical CO2 emissions, 2 percent is said to have entered into the air by burning Shell oil and gas. Citizens can pursue their own sustainability as much as they want; but as long as the supply changes little, to live and travel massively in a ‘green’ way will continue to be hard.