MELBOURNE: Australia Enters Legal Fight Against Indian-Origin Teen’s Climate Dare

MELBOURNE: The Australian government on
Monday began its legal challenge to a Federal Court’s landmark decision that it
has a duty of care to protect children from future personal injury caused by
climate change, according to media reports.

In May,
Anjali Sharma, a 17-year-old high-school student of Indian origin from
Melbourne and seven other teenage environmentalists, led the legal battle
against the Australian government.

Ms Sharma
and the group had argued the continued emission of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere would drive intense bushfires, floods, storms and cyclones and leave
them vulnerable to injury, sickness, economic loss and even death towards the
end of this century, news.com.au reported.

They
urged the court to prevent Environment Minister Sussan Ley from approving a
proposal to expand the Vickery coal mine in northern New South Wales.

In his
ruling, Justice Mordecai Bromberg approved the extension of the coal mine
project.

However,
he did find that the minister had “a duty to take reasonable care to avoid
causing personal injury” to children when she decided on the project
extension under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC
Act), a report in news.com.au said.

The
ruling was heralded as a significant win for the teenagers and the group of
climate activists around the world.

Ley has
since given the nod for the mine’s expansion.

For Ms
Sharma, it was the concern for the environment, her family and future
generations, which fuelled her legal charge against the Australian government,
a Sydney Morning Herald report said. Born in India, Sharma and her family moved
to Australia when she was barely 10-months-old. Her relatives are farmers, who
hail from Lucknow.

Growing
up, she had heard about global warming and decided to seek more information by
watching Youtube videos, the report said.

“Growing
up in Australia I consider myself really fortunate,” she said. “I got
an education that helped me make sense of what was happening,” Ms Sharma
was quoted as saying in the report.

On
Monday, Ley’s lawyers told the Federal Court that the EPBC Act was not an
appropriate vehicle for the “novel duty of care” as identified by
Justice Bromberg.

They
argued that Justice Bromberg had committed a mistake when he expanded the
object of the act to not just be about protecting parts of the environment, but
about protecting the interests of human beings living in the environment.

Her
lawyers also contended that the duty of care is “incoherent” with the
EPBC Act and distorts her capacity as minister.

They also
claimed that there was no evidence that the additional coal from the expanded
mine would increase the risk of the global temperature increasing beyond 2
degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, according to the Associated
Press.

“We
will proudly defend the historic ruling that all Australian children are owed a
duty of care by our government, and fight to protect my generation from the
increasing risks of climate change,” Ms Sharma was quoted as saying in a
statement by the Associated Press.

The eight
young environmentalists were congratulated over the May ruling by Greta
Thunberg, who rose to the forefront of the youth climate movement after she
protested inaction by going on strike from school.

“This
is a huge win for the whole climate movement. A big congratulations to the
brave Australian teenagers who have achieved this,” the 18-year-old
Swedish environmentalist tweeted.

“Of
course the action needed is still nowhere in sight, but these court cases are
symbolic breaking points that could have huge snowball effects,” Ms
Thunberg had said then.

Australia
has come under growing international criticism for failing to set more
ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions.

 Last week, Australia Prime
Minister Scott Morrison had agreed to attend next month’s climate conference in
Glasgow, but his government colleagues are yet to approve a commitment to net
zero.