Former Monmouth University Professor Randall Abate returned to campus Oct. 11 to deliver a presentation titled “Climate Washing, Corporate Accountability & Human Rights.” The event was sponsored by the Department of Political Science and Sociology and the Urban Coast Institute.
Abate, now the assistant dean for environmental law studies at the George Washington University Law School, discussed “climate washing” litigation that seeks to hold fossil fuel companies and other private sector entities accountable for misleading the public about their compliance with climate change mandates or goals. Climate washing tactics can threaten human rights to health, property, food and water, and life, especially in vulnerable communities, by postponing effective climate regulation and thereby amplifying the risks from climate change-related events such as severe storms, flooding, heat and droughts. The presentation proposed mechanisms to help ensure that companies’ characterizations of climate change compliance are transparent and truthful to limit human rights impacts from their efforts to comply with climate change mandates and goals.