A United Nations expert is calling for an urgent shift away from fossil fuels by the global economy, including a ban on advertisements or promotions, and the criminalization of misinformation from the industry.
Elisa Morgera, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and climate change, who presented her 23-page report at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, reminded states of their human rights obligations, and businesses of their responsibility to phase out fossil fuel within the current decade.
“The interlinked, intergenerational, severe and widespread human rights impacts of the fossil fuel life cycle, coupled with six decades of climate obstruction, compel urgent defossilization of our whole economies, for a just transition that is effective, human rights-based and transformative,” Morgera wrote in the report. She added there’s “no scientific doubt” that fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change, and the main driver of planetary crises including biodiversity loss and mass human rights violations.
Morgera said at the Human Rights Council’s 59th session that current efforts to mitigate climate change “fall significantly short” of greenhouse gas reductions needed to limit global temperature rise to 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.
But she added that “securing a liveable and sustainable future for humanity is still possible” through effective climate action within the decade.
This includes countering the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to “keep the public uninformed about the severity of climate change and about the role of fossil fuels in causing it,” Morgera wrote in the report.
She added the formation of public opinion and democratic debate should be protected from “undue commercial influence,” and urged states to ensure the availability of science-based information, ban fossil fuel advertisements and promotions, prohibit lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, criminalize misinformation and misrepresentation such as greenwashing, and criminalize attacks against environmental human rights defenders, including judicial harassment.
Morgera said phasing out fossil fuel production and use should be interpreted as part of states’ duty to fulfill the right to life. To prioritize the phaseout, she recommended that states prohibit new licenses and revoke exist ones for fossil fuel operations.
Morgera wrote of the need to “tackle historical responsibilities and current injustices” to prevent mass human rights violations due to climate change. Remedies to address the harms of fossil fuel activities should be given to, and developed with, affected communities, she said.
The Guardian reported that while the report lays the human rights case for decisive political action for a world in which the basic rights of people are prioritized above profits by a few, it “will probably be dismissed by some as radical and untenable.”
But Morgera told The Guardian that the seemingly radical transition to renewable energy “is now cheaper and safer for our economics and a healthier option for our societies.”
Banner image of a flare stack by Yerevan Malarerva via Pexels.
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