Negligence in the Air: the Duty of Care in Climate Change Litigation

The past eighteen months have witnessed a remarkable surge of popular interest in climate change and its impact. Sensitized by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the heavy hurricane season through the Gulf states, the public has gained a newfound appreciation for the remote-sounding predictions that global warming may increase severe storm activity. Timing is everything, and the recent releases of the disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow and Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth have spurred widespread interest from the workplace to the blogosphere over a topic that long seemed the exclusive province of tree-huggers and policy wonks. Indeed, just six years ago, soon after his election in 2000, President Bush reversed his campaign position on climate change and suffered no political fallout. Since refusing to send the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification, the Bush administration has maintained a consistent policy of opposition to any “targets and timetables” or similar approach to climate change that would involve mandatory reduction or stabilization of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Instead, the administration has called for voluntary commitments by industry and