Climate change litigation - a two-edged sword

Equally regrettable is Ms O'Shea's reference to the 2009 'Black Saturday' bushfires. Along with the 2010 Queensland floods the Black Saturday fires have been the two worst natural disasters Australia has had in recent times. Potential litigants of AGW have claimed these as evidence of damages.

This is wrong in both cases. The 2009 Black Saturday fires were comparable with the 1939 Black Friday fires with both events happening at similar times of the year with similar weather patterns and temperatures. Arguably, if the Urban Heat island effect is considered, Melbourne's record temperature in 2009 would be less than the 1939 temperature.

More people perished in the 2009 event due to more people living in the affected areas and manifest incompetence in the official response to the fires. But green-bans on reduction of undergrowth played a part as various experts argue. This is shown by the case of the Sheahans who were fined nearly $100,000 in 2003 by the Mitchell Shire council for unauthorised land clearing. Yet, after the 2009 fires the Sheahan's house was the only one in the district not burnt to the ground. Clearly, if AGW were to blame for increased fire risk due to increased fuel loads and low humidity, the proponents of green-bans would be even more liable in any class action because their policies prevented reasonable mitigation of those risks.

By including AGW as a basis for litigation and not concentrating on real pollution issues the Green groups are not only opening the floodgates for anti-AGW litigation but presenting themselves as a target for their role in making the effect of AGW worse on the basis that the policy responses to AGW have been inappropriate.