Care of Duty: Modern Lawfare (feat. Lauren)
June 02, 2021 • Episode 74
We're joined by legal expert Lauren to discuss the government's new duty of care to protect young people from the climate crisis. We also chat about international law and exploding coal power plants.
Defamation watch
- Ben Roberts-Smith is just carrying flowers around?
- Five days ago, he wiped a laptop (after being told by his legal team not to).
- After burying evidence of alleged war crimes in a pink lunchbox.
- Scope the man’s very weird portrait at the Australian War Museum.
The kids save the day
- A class action case brought by 8 teenagers, along with an 86-year-old nun, have won a case recognising that the Australian Environment Minister has a duty of care to protect young people from the climate crisis.
- Environment Minister Susan Ley has signed off an a few bad things in her term since 2019: Approving the clearing of koala habitat, rubber stamping 850 gas wells, greenlighting the bulldozing of sacred birthing trees, and stopping scientists from publishing pro-conservation papers.
- Children are an “umbrella species” for the rest of us.
- Shoutout to Sister Brigid Arthur for her fantastic action.
International good news
- The Netherlands has ordered Shell to reduce it’s emissions by 45% by 2030.
- Shell sells “carbon neutral” LNG, which is just slapping some carbon credits on a barrel of gas.
- Shell produces 1% of global emissions, all by itself.
- Activist shareholders at Exxon have gotten four environmentally-minded board members elected.
- Chevron shareholder forced the board to watch a video calling them out for their climate inaction.
Exploding coal plants!
- The Callide C coal power plant exploded!
- People with solar power and batteries didn’t even notice.
- The power plant was overhauled in 2019 (for $60 million) and 2017 ($50 million).
- Matt Canavan, said “this is good actually”.