How Litigation Works to Fight Climate Obstruction
Drilled
Pushkin Industries
4.6 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's bleak out there and while climate obstruction can feel overwhelming, there are efforts being made to fight back against it. One of them is litigation and holding corporations legally accountable. Joana Setzer (London School of Economics) speaks to how climate litigation is being used to challenge companies, enforce climate commitments, and push for climate action globally.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerwell. |
| 0:05.3 | This is Season 14 Obstruction. |
| 0:09.2 | We have been talking each week to the authors who have edited and contributed to a big, new, giant collection of peer-reviewed research on climate obstruction. |
| 0:22.0 | It's from the Climate Social Science Network at Brown University, and it's called Climate Obstruction, a Global Assessment. |
| 0:28.3 | For the past 11 episodes, we've looked at what climate obstruction actually looks like in |
| 0:34.3 | different parts of the world, all the different tactics that are being used, |
| 0:38.3 | the different people and industries that are using them, why it works so well, all of those things. |
| 0:44.3 | In these next two and last two episodes of the season, we're looking at what efforts have |
| 0:50.1 | been made to push back on obstruction and what has actually worked. So this is really |
| 0:56.2 | interesting and exciting because we're now looking at peer-reviewed research on what actually |
| 1:01.9 | works to stop obstruction, which is new research. And frankly, I'm kind of surprised that there's |
| 1:08.6 | even enough of it to make for two whole chapters. |
| 1:13.3 | Those chapters are focused on two key types of efforts, litigation and activism. |
| 1:20.5 | Today, we are starting with litigation. |
| 1:23.3 | So there are hundreds of court cases all over the world targeting polluting companies and industries from a bunch of different angles. |
| 1:31.6 | And today I'm joined by Joanna Setzer from the London School of Economics to walk through what those strategies are and what is working. |
| 1:39.3 | That conversation is coming up after this quick break. |
| 1:57.9 | Thank you. My name is Joanna Setser. I'm an associate professor at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics. |
| 2:04.8 | What was the idea for doing this work in the first place? Why are we talking about litigation? |
| 2:09.8 | Great. So, well, if you think about this book, it's such a broad set of angles that are covered. And that's why I think it's a really important |
| 2:20.6 | contribution. So what I see our chapter and the law more broadly is able to do, it's able to do |
| 2:28.4 | a quiet revolution. So I think I see law and the state as countering this organized obstruction. |
... |
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