A/HRC/41/39 latest scientific guidance and whether human rights law gives rise to a certain threshold of action below which a State is in violation of its obligations. 82. Human rights law requires a remedy for violations and climate change is no different.127 Given what is now known about the widespread harm and human rights impact of either 2°C or even 1.5°C of warming, it is also necessary to determine what measures States must take to provide the required remedies for the all-but-certain human rights violations that climate change will bring. Human rights actors have an important role in identifying what such remedies will require. 83. Each and every human rights body should consider what it can do to make use of its existing procedures to highlight the urgency of the obligation to combat climate change. It is true that this risks overlap or duplication, but such a risk seems almost inconsequential in light of the magnitude and urgency of the threat. 84. It is beyond the scope of the present report to provide detailed recommendations in that regard, but a few examples can suffice. The Human Rights Council can no longer afford to rely only on the time-honoured techniques of organizing expert panels, calling for reports that lead nowhere, urging others to do more but doing little itself and adopting wide-ranging but inconclusive and highly aspirational resolutions. It should commission an urgent expert study to identify the options available and organize a high-level working group to propose and monitor specific actions. 85. Treaty bodies should reconsider whether the general comments or general recommendations they have adopted on this issue are anywhere near sufficient, given the size and nature of the challenge. They should hold meetings to discuss what sort of recommendations might be included in their concluding observations in order to press States parties to take the type of measures that can no longer be delayed. They should also reflect on how best to promote in a truly meaningful way the measures they have already adopted in relation to climate change. 86. The Human Rights Committee recently asked the United States to directly address “significant threats to the right to life posed by impacts of climate change, such as flash floods, coastal flooding, wildfires, infectious disease, extreme heat and air pollution” (CCPR/C/USA/QPR/5, para. 15). In principle, this is a breakthrough but in practice, the terms are so open-ended and non-specific that it amounts to little more than ticking the climate change box. The challenge is to reflect on what the next level of recommendation might entail, in order to provide some sort of meaningful guidance as to the measures needed, or at least as to the procedures that might be adopted at the national level to pursue such questions. 87. Similarly, the Committee should build on its pioneering statements relating to climate change in its general comment No. 36. It has already been reported that a communication has been submitted to the Committee on this issue. 128 The Committee should explore innovative ways to respond constructively and not opt for an approach that sidesteps responsibility. Civil society groups need to inform and encourage the Committee in terms of these options and can take the opportunity provided by rule 96 of the Committee’s new rules of procedure to submit “information and documentation … which may be relevant for the proper determination of the case” (see CCPR/C/3/Rev.11). VI. Conclusion 88. The human rights community, with a few notable exceptions, has been every bit as complacent as most Governments in the face of the ultimate challenge to mankind represented by climate change. The steps taken by most United Nations human rights bodies have been patently inadequate and premised on forms of incremental 127 128 18 Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment”, p. 9. “Islanders complain to U.N. over Australia’s climate change inaction”, Reuters, 13 May 2019.