Lawyers Make Insurance Claim in Bid to Prove Damages From Climate Change

In the face of courts hostile to the idea of awarding damages against major greenhouse gas emitters over the impacts of climate change, creative plaintiffs lawyers are placing their faith in the driest of subjects: insurance. Courts -- including the Supreme Court -- have been reluctant to recognize common law public nuisance claims against utilities and oil companies due to the difficulty of attributing blame among thousands of emitters and the sense that it is a global issue that should be tackled at the international level.