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Civilian Farmer Sues Energy Company For Flood Costs Related To Climate Change - YouTube
Channel: The Ring of Fire
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A Peruvian farmer traveled across the globe
to file a lawsuit against the German energy
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company, RWE, over greenhouse emissions.
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He says the company should have to pay for
the toll climate change is taking on his community.
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Legal journalist Mollye Barrows with the national
Trial Lawyer Magazine has more.
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Why should the community have to pay for it?
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Shouldn't the company who caused it pay for
it?
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Yes.
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Isn't that kind of the, the question we ask
all the time?
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About why is it that we're letting these companies
externalize all the costs and all the problems
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and then they're taking all the profits and
leaving us with this disaster.
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And saying it's a political problem.
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Yeah.
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What's your take on this?
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Well, I think it's fascinating.
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I think this could very well set a good precedent.
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One that's needed.
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You have a lot of organizations like cities
and counties which are suing these individual
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energy companies, but this is the first guy
who's brought an individual lawsuit and he's
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from the Andes Mountains in Peru, surrounded
by glaciers and you can see that they're visibly
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starting to deteriorate.
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And, and he's basing his suit on a study that
was done by an organization that found that
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this particular company, so he filed against
RWE in Germany.
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He traveled all the way to Germany in 2015
to file this lawsuit.
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And at first it was dismissed and then it
was revived three years later, basically a
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higher court in Germany ruled that he did
have legal ground to bring this suit.
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And so it is being pursued in that regard.
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But basically he's saying, you know, your
company, this study that was done found that
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your company is 0.5% responsible for the greenhouse
gases that are being admitted.
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So I want to hold you 0.5% responsible for
paying for the, the risks to prevent flooding
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or paying to prevent, you know, whatever it
takes to shore up a town in his community.
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In other words, he can quantify the damage.
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Just like, just like we did on tobacco.
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Right.
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You know, our Law Firm handled the tobacco
litigation.
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We looked at each company said, you have this
much of the market.
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This is what you should have to pay for this
particular bill.
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We could, it's easy to quantify.
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What I like about this is it's, it's taking
place in Germany.
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I liked that we have a better, can you imagine
that, that we've become, our judicial system
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has become so cranked.
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It's become so peculiar that we have to go
to Germany to handle something as significant
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as this.
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And as I look at it, as I compare notes on
what his possibilities are over there, he's
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got a better possibility in Germany than he
has in the United States.
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Right, and the reason he even went to Germany,
is his lawsuit's being supported by a nonprofit
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called Germanwatch group.
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And basically he gave tours in his little
town in the Andes and he met a tourist there
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who said, you're right, your town is at risk.
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You know, they've had problems with flooding
from a lake that was fed by glaciers before
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as the glaciers started to deteriorate.
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So they've see, feel like this is their real
danger of this particular lake being impacted
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by this glacier.
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So when you talked to this tourist, this tourist
said, why don't you look into this organization?
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So they are supporting him and his efforts
to bring this because they recognize that
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again, you have, whether it's this man's community
or communities all across the country, all
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across the world, they're facing flooding
issues from this.
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And if they open this door, it could help.
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Here's what I really like about this.
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The trial that takes place, if he can get
that far, it won't be a jury trial.
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It'll be, it'll really be kind of, it'll be
what we call it, a bench trial, a judge trial.
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This will be a list.
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This will be several administrative judges
probably, that will decide.
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They'll listen to the science, they'll listen
to the case in a different kind of way that
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a, that a jury would, and they'll make decisions
that will have a huge impact on any subsequent
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cases that are brought around the world.
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It's going to be admissible, for example,
in Germany, if there's particular findings
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where he says, yes, I told you I could quantify
the amount of damage that was caused by this
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company.
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Here it is.
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We can break it down.
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There's no guesswork here.
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It's, it's, it's very specific.
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When he can get to that point, then we can
then borrow that in the United States and
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say, here's the formula.
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And that's what they're hoping for.
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And in fact, the court has appointed two hydrology
experts who are going to go to this guy's
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community.
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Take a look at the measure of the risk essentially
from the glacier.
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Then determine what role climate change is
playing in that risk.
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And then again, boiling down to if it, if
it's not, if it's not universally rooted,
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in, in, well that's the argument.
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I'm sorry I jumped ahead.
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But basically they're going to take a look
at these hydrology experts are going to take
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a look at a situation and evaluate if this
particular company, you know, if climate change
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was involved, did this particular company
play a role on it.
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And so there's, that's where some folks are
saying the suit may not have much of a chance
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and that you can't prove that a specific company
is specifically responsible for this specific
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climate change.
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Let me talk about that just a second.
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It's always, we can't, we can't, don't do
it.
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Usually the people that are feeding that line
is corporate America.
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You're right.
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You can't prove, we heard the same thing on
tobacco.
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We've heard it on pharmaceutical case after
pharmaceutical case.
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I heard it in the environmental case I tried
up in, up in the Ohio River valley.
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You can't prove this.
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No, you can prove it.
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There are experts that can take it down to,
look, we can put, we can put a man on the
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moon.
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We can send a rocket to Mars.
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You don't think experts can figure out how
much damage was done by this company?
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What impact that had.
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Quantify the impact and say, you know what,
the bill is $80 billion and you know what,
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you're responsible for 0.5% of this.
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Easily done.
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This is not, you know, this idea, it's just
beyond us, is such a ridiculous argument.
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Right, and he's only asking for $20,000.
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That's 0.5% of the bill.
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If you're 0.5% the contributor of this problem,
then he's saying, we're gonna need $20,000
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to shore up this town from flooding that can
be potentially catastrophic.
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Well, I don't care if it's twenty thousand,
ten thousand, eighty billion, what's going
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to come out of it hopefully if it goes right
is some precedent that we can't use directly,
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but we can use a lot of the information that
comes out of it.
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Well, I'm excited for him.
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I hope it moves forward.
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Me too, thanks for joining me, okay.
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Thanks Pap.
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