What if the polar bears were sick of drowning in melting ice and decided it was time to do something about global warming? How could they best confront the bosses of multinationals whose power plants pollute the atmosphere? By hiring a damn good lawyer to fight in the courts for the law to be changed or enforced and for the emissions to be stopped, that’s how. And that man would be James Thornton.
This quiet American’s work usually involves lobbying and legal argument, but Thornton, the founding chief executive of a new legal charity called ClientEarth, has already scored dramatic victories over polluters and despoilers in the United States and now wants to do the same in Europe. The aim is to help write new laws – but also, crucially, to ensure that governments keep to the ones they have already agreed, often in a blaze of green glory, and then forgotten about or found too hard to implement.
Content from our partners
