The government’s plan to change the law to bar claims for harms from greenhouse gas emissions shuts down New Zealand’s most important climate tort case, meaning it will never be decided on its merits.

The move overrides a unanimous Supreme Court decision that Smith v Fonterra, a case against some of New Zealand’s major corporate emitters, should go to trial.

It also guts the future capacity of tort law – a branch of civil law allowing people to seek damages for harm caused by wrongful actions by others – to curb climate harms.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith justified it by saying climate change is best managed by the government at a national level, not through torts claims, and that shutting down these cases will “provide businesses with certainty around their obligations”.

As we explain, this argument is questionable on a number of fronts.

What the courts do that politics can’t

In New Zealand and elsewhere, tort law is being used to hold greenhouse gas emitters to account.

Tort claimants are also targeting governments for not doing enough to protect current and future generations. Leaving climate change regulation entirely to the government, then, is a little like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

The minister is right to say the fight against climate........

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