Global warming damages to set precedent?

The highest court in Virginia has handed down a ruling on company liability for global warming damages that experts say could set a precedent for energy companies and environmental plaintiffs. The decision, the first of its kind in the US, concerns the Alaskan island town of Kivalina. It accused a group of US energy companies of contributing to global warming, which it says has rendered the town uninhabitable. The ruling suggests that global warming can no longer be dismissed as accidental and that companies responsible for it are now liable. Laura Foggan, a lawyer that helped file the original suit, said that “decades of releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere just doesn’t qualify as an accident”.