With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we’re spending five episodes this series looking at pressing climate issues. In this episode we’re talking about taking the fossil fuel industry to court.

Last week, a government spokesperson said that we should freeze leftover bread and stop rinsing dishes before we put them in the dishwasher to tackle the climate crisis. Meanwhile, the government has approved a new oil field in the North Sea that we’d need to reforest the whole of England in order to offset.

Greenpeace has threatened the government with legal action over the new oil field, and they’re not the only ones trying to fight the climate crisis in the courts. So what legal challenges should we be paying attention to? How do they work? And what do they have to do with the climate movement at large?

Ayeisha is joined by Tessa Khan, international climate change and human rights lawyer, and founder and director of Uplift.

-Support the Stop Cambo (https://twitter.com/StopCambo) and Paid to Pollute (https://twitter.com/paidtopollute) campaigns

-Read up on the successful lawsuit against Shell in the Hague https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/26/court-orders-royal-dutch-shell-to-cut-carbon-emissions-by-45-by-2030

-Find out more about the ongoing case against RWE https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/04/global-heating-to-blame-for-threat-of-deadly-flood-in-peru-study-says

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Music by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

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The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org