Climbing a snowy mountain in the light of predawn, Saúl Luciano Lliuya says he could feel some change. During his life, pristine glaciers nestled among the peaks is about his hometown in the region Cordillera Blanca in the Peruvian Andes, water, work and beauty. “Now you can see it,” he says. “They are disappearing.” The glaciers in the region are quick getaway; increase as temperatures, thanks to heat the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere capture, ice has accumulated in thousands of years, melted in a single generation. Between 30% and 50% of the glaciers in the tropical Andes disappeared since 1976 as a fusion of them, which will provide water to the lake Pallqaqucha, a few thousand meters upstream from the city of Huaraz dumping a worrisome risk of flooding. From the year 1941, when a large piece of ice broke and fell into Pallqaqucha, he has created a wave that swept 1,800 people to their deaths. The lake level is higher than it was then, and 50,000 hours live directly in the projected path of the water. Angry about the risks of his congregation over in 2015, Lliuya took a drastic step. He has traveled 6600 miles in Essen, Germany, and filed a lawsuit against the energy company RWE, the largest carbon emitter in Europe. “We do not pay anything for the cause,” he says, sitting in his attorney bright and airy offices in Hamburg. Lliuya statements, as research by the Carbon Disclosure Project and the responsibility Climate Institute says RWE is responsible for 0.5% of global emissions of greenhouse gases, it would pay for the 0.5% of the cost of protection against floods Huaraz: over $20,000. The case was initially rejected Essen. But in November a higher court in Germany decided on a sound legal basis was and decided to hear the case. The lawsuit Lliuya, a mountain guide and farmers in which reluctant public face of a movement for climate justice in growth. were for years, municipalities and NGOs sued the government for failing to regulate carbon emissions. But over the past two years legal challengers have started to take the fight directly to the energy companies, arguing that an industry that has created some of their income to help should use great wealth of natural resources for the human consequences of their activities using soften. “Global warming is happening, and we see the effects more and more every day,” said Mojib Latif, a meteorologist and author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. represent “At some point you have to question: Who is responsible? Who will pay” just filed in the United States have 13 cases since 2017. The plaintiffs are usually common or larger organizations?; California, two counties and one city sued Chevron. In the Netherlands, dear friends of the earth, says the lawsuit against Shell will take place. So far Lliuya is the only alone. Before he flew to Hamburg in 2015, he had never set foot outside Lliuya Peru. Three years later, he and his wife Lydia seemed a bit ‘out of place because in a bright room yellow at a high school in the German city of Kassel on a mild September Saturday afternoon-it in a hiking jacket sitting on his chin zip them in thick tights and high-melon women in the Peruvian Andes worn. They had to take the glass of reason, in the city, an award from residents about where “people who think outside the box, to change the world,” said the chairman of the commission Bernd Leifeld. Only a few months after the reunification of Germany, the former receivers founded in 1990, include NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. The awards celebrate Lliuya donors as “a modern David” for RWE Goliath. But as he addressed a crowd of curious young Germans in a Youth Symposium on the eve of the ceremony, offered little in the way of inspiring speeches. “Some people said I was crazy,” he said. “But the mountain is everything to us. If you had seen what happened to him, then you should do the same.” Lliuya the cause follows a surprisingly simple logic. It is used as a rule in disputes between neighbors on a nuisance law in the BGB is based. He says that if you do something, the damage caused to the property, even if it is legal, it is necessary every stop, something you do or take responsibility for preventing damage. Usually this means, for example, so someone cut down a tree that are of an accident on the basis of their neighbors of the danger. The court ruled could be applied to carbon emissions RWE could damage Lliuya home. In 2017, researchers at the responsibility Air Institute and the Carbon Disclosure project found that 71% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide produced 100 energy companies since 1988, including RWE. Lliuya law is supported by the German non-profit organization that is driven by a tourist around Cordillera Blanca it. “Twenty-three years on climate change negotiations have taught us that the firm political process is too slow for cutting emissions forever, to save the planet,” says President Klaus Milke Ong. “In order to speed, we need to leverage.” But many doubts have enough evidence to link a specific instance of climate change for a company like RWE. “Science is that it is not that a particular glacial melt caused by climate change due to carbon emissions is to say capable of us,” says Douglas Crawford-Brown, former director of the ‘University of Cambridge Center for mitigating changes quite clear climate Research. “And we’re not saying much in a position that the loss is due to a glacier on a particular source of emissions.” Roda Verheyen, the leading case Lliuya lawyer, says it is not their intention. “We’re not saying RWE individual issues have led the glaciers to melt,” he says. Based on evidence from Latif Verheyen and other scientists have argued that carbon dioxide is released by RWE to increase the likelihood contributed by extraordinary events, such as glaciers melt or fracture Lliuya threatened at home. “This is not just, and my job is to see what we can do about it.” In September, the court appointed two experts in hydrology, the science of water flowing. In the coming months will be the risk of Lliuya home, assess the role of climate change and the extent to which RWE is responsible. The result is largely based on its conclusion says Verheyen. Guido Steffen, a spokesman for RWE says Lliuya claims have no legal basis and that under German law “single emitters are not rooted in charge of universal and effective global processes such as climate change.” He added that RWE which lasts from German and European targets for reducing emissions and action to reduce their emissions by 40% to 50% by 2030. “We think that climate change as a global social and political problem,” he says. “It ‘s like at the UN climate conference to develop the tools must reduce carbon dioxide national governments and international agreements.” It ‘was a judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States in one of the most action of the climate justice so far. expected to be in 2009 Kivalina, an Alaskan village under water within a decade, suing Exxon-Mobil and relocate 23 other oil and gas companies of the costs for its 400 residents. A US District Court dismissed their application on the ground that climate change is one, is not a political matter of law. If Lliuya wins his case, it could set an important precedent in Europe. But the lower court ruling was a valuable asset, says Verheyen. “[E] found that individual responsibility for climate change in German law exists, and I think that could be applied in other countries,” he says. “If we lose now, it is in the details.” Climate justice as supporters of their movement has brought the initial wave of lawsuits against tobacco companies in the mid-20th century, for comparison with medical journals connect cigarette smoking began to increase lung cancer rates Register . To finally reach the big withdrawals and restrictions on tobacco advertising more than four decades of complaints registered about 800 people and 40 US states. “These cases have gone before and for years there have been Thumbs,” says Noah Walker Crawford, a militant atmosphere, the acts Lliuya translator. “But in the end the tobacco companies had to admit that smoking does cause cancer. They had to take responsibility.” For Lliuya, a victory that he and his family would be a measure of justice. But it would not do to calm their concerns about the day in their domestic risks. “We are facing a disaster,” says Lliuya. Even if they manage to protect against flooding Huaraz, maybe one day leave the glacier loss and the draining of the lakes of the city without a water source. “To do something The people who caused these effects, but it is not over,” he says. “Someone has had.” Picture copyright by Tomas Equipped -The New York Times / Redux
Climate change could destroy this Peruvian farmhouse. Now Suing has a European energy company for damages
