La responsabilità civile come tecnica di compensazione assiologica degli interessi climatici nell’inerzia delle politiche legislative. Un’analisi comparatistica di controversie private per pubblici interessi

Abstract

Civil liability as an axiological compensation technique for climatic interests in the inertia of legislative policies. A comparative analysis of private litigation for public interests – The growing awareness of the human impact on the environment, which has often led in the constitutionalization of its protection even vis-à-vis future generations, has not been matched by the provision of adequate publicist safeguards functional to the pursuit of the proclaimed goals. This being the case, communities have spontaneously organized themselves to channel climate demands within new forms of “political” expression. Such is to be seen in the growing spread of so-called climate tort-related justice, that is, to the use of the civil process as a useful device for pursuing useful objectives in order to obtain relief, not only compensatory, but also in a specific form, in climate matters (as in the well-known Dutch cases Urgenda and Shell). This paper aims, with the aid of legal comparison, to conduct an analysis about the potential, and the limitations, inherent in the use of civil liability and litigation to address climate issues. To this end, this paper employs legal comparison to ascertain how in different legal experiences these claims are finding new avenues for asserting themselves in the presence of the, more or less, manifest hostility of national Parliaments to their recognition.