Effect of climate change decision might not be what Green activists expect - John McLellan

The continent was burning when the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was conceived 80 years ago, but it was shaped by the fires of war, totalitarianism and the Holocaust, not unpredictable weather or poor government.

Members of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that government have a duty to protect people from climate change (Photo by Frederick Florin/Getty Images)

Article 2, Right to Life, is its most fundamental principle, that “everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law”. It couldn’t be simpler.

When it was signed in 1950 most countries still imposed the death penalty, so it had limitations, adding: “No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally, save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.”

Quite obviously it could not stop people having miserable, short lives, although there is strong argument that the Scottish Government is in breach of Article 2 for its repeated failure to address Scotland’s appalling drug death rate, by some way Europe’s worst.

Indeed, the court’s explanatory notes are clear healthcare is covered – “when the circumstances potentially engaged the responsibility of the state”. The Scottish Conservatives could therefore argue the SNP’s failure to support its Right to Recovery bill is a breach.

Although drug deaths were nothing to do with this week’s ruling on a complaint brought by four Swiss women that their government wasn’t doing enough to tackle climate change, the result has vast implications for any government action, or inaction, which complainers argue has life-limiting implications.

The Strasbourg judges ruled that although the women were not victims themselves, the convention included a right to protection from “serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, well-being and quality of life”. In other words, the Swiss Government is in breach for not doing more to tackle climate change, and as this sets a legal precedent for all members, it puts every government on notice to up their environmental game.

I don’t have the fine detail of Swiss domestic policy at my fingertips, but the ruling goes far beyond the right of liberty the convention was originally designed to protect.

While Green activists will no doubt be celebrating like there is no tomorrow, which many seem to believe there won’t be, the effect of the decision might not the one they expect.

At a stroke the judges have attempted to force the hands of governments across Europe to enact policies which will make not a blind bit of difference to the danger against which they think the convention should offer protection. It validates every extreme measure, like the Scottish Government’s Heat in Buildings Bill, allowing supporters to claim opponents are intent on breaking European law.

You must rip out your gas boiler or you’re interfering with someone’s human rights. Spark up the patio heater as the sun goes down? Tantamount to murder. Fit a wood burning stove in your new home? Might as well run a swastika up your chimney stack. Ironically, the fall in cold-related deaths is outstripping the rise in heat-related fatalities, and while that might not remain the case, it still questions the ruling’s basis, certainly in the cold North.

Until now, the case for leaving the ECHR has focussed on Strasbourg’s opposition to the UK Government plan to extradite illegal immigrants to Rwanda, but this decision could affect thousands. Maybe it’s not Patrick Harvie who should be raising a glass, but every nation’s Nigel Farage.