A/HRC/41/39 poverty, protect economic well-being and address discrimination and inequality. 109 There is also an opportunity for developing countries to skip fossil fuel-driven growth and leapfrog into decentralized, renewable energy and more efficient agriculture and construction technologies. However, if the transition is managed poorly, it will mean job losses, disastrous impacts for poor people, entrenched labour discrimination and a breakdown of social and labour protections.110 60. Governments, and too many in the human rights community, have failed to seriously address climate change for decades. The size, scope, and brutality of the problem make it difficult to envision. Corporations have obscured the facts and opposed intervention in pursuit of short-term profits.111 The worst outcomes are too far away to draw our focus and those in power are unable to look past the next election. We have reached a point where the best-case outcome is widespread death and suffering by the end of this century and the worst case puts humanity on the brink of extinction. 112 61. There have, however, been some positive developments. Forty-nine countries have already seen their emissions begin to decline. More than 7,000 cities, 245 regions and 6,000 companies have committed to climate mitigation. Coal is no longer competitive and renewable energy is quickly becoming cheaper. 113 The case brought by the Urgenda Foundation against the Government of the Netherlands was the first in the world in which citizens established that their Government had a legal duty to prevent climate change. 114 In Australia, a court rejected an appeal seeking permission to develop a new coal mine, in part because the mine would contribute to global warming. 115 In the United States, legislators have introduced proposals for a Green New Deal to achieve net-zero emissions, while investing in green jobs and infrastructure 116 and 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg has spurred an international movement of climate strikes. 117 In addition, Extinction Rebellion protests took over the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland this year causing the Welsh, Scottish and United Kingdom parliaments to declare climate emergencies.118 D. Transforming the international human rights regime 62. An extraordinary challenge demands an extraordinary response. It cannot be dealt with solely through traditional approaches. Climate change is an emergency without precedent and requires bold and creative thinking from the human rights community. But that group is notoriously averse to innovation and assumes that the next major challenge, no matter how different or dramatic, can be dealt with on the basis of established means. 1. Acknowledge the urgency of transformational change 63. The first steps in overcoming inertia is to acknowledge not just that transformational action is urgent, but that human rights can and must be part of the solution. The delusion that climate change is really a technical issue, or solely a political matter, and that human rights law has only a minor role to play must be abandoned. 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 14 See ILO, “Guidelines for a just transition towards environmentally sustainable economies and societies for all”. See UN Environment and others, Green Industrial Policy: Concept, Policies, Country Experiences. See Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, “Turning up the heat: corporate legal accountability for climate change”. See David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, p. 29. See UNEP, Emissions Gap Report 2018, p. xx. Urgenda, “Climate case” (2019). See Marcos Orellana, “Australia court rules it is the ‘wrong time’ for coal”, Human Rights Watch, 10 February 2019; and Gloucester Resources Limited v. Minister for Planning [2019] NSWLEC 7. See H.Res.109 – Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal, available at www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/109/text. See Ilze Filks, “Swedish student Greta’s climate ‘school strike’ goes global”, Reuters, 11 March 2019. “‘Climate emergency’ declared by Welsh Government”, BBC, 29 April 2019.