> The court ordered Friends of the Earth Norway and Nature and Youth, the two environmental organisations who brought the case, to pay legal costs of about £110,000. They could still take the case to the court of appeal, but say their resources are currently too diminished to continue the fight, though they are hoping for external support.
We are all equal in the eyes of the law but only some can afford the law.
Especially frustrating, since, as the article points out, Norway is party to the Aarhus convention which specifically requires that environmental cases should not be "prohibitively expensive" ("uoverkommelig dyre"), but the government excluded "side costs" such as lawyers' fees and expert witnesses from their estimated cost of a trial [1]
The government consulted the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research to run a study and they did and concluded it was a bad idea. The government and court in turn decided to ignore their consultants... I expected better from a judge at least.
I found it strange that one of the stated reasons behind the verdict was that the court believed that Nature and Youth's alternate proposal [1] of storing the waste in underground depots would not be any more environmentally friendly than the alternative [2]:
> "Viktigst er likevel at tingretten ikke finner mest sannsynlig at et driftsalternativ med lagring av avgangsmasser i dedikerte bergrom vil være miljømessig vesentlig bedre enn sjødeponi – alle miljøvirkninger tatt i betraktning." ("The most important fact is that the court does not find it likely that mining operations with storage of mining waste in dedicated subterranean depots would be a substantial improvement environmentally on storing it at sea - with all environmental consequences factored in.")
That's a sad state of affairs, but I'm not exactly sure what the alternative is supposed to be. Have the state handle this? They're the ones that the environmentalists are fighting against.
This is laughably incorrect!! The net-worth of an average millionaire is closer to that of an average minimum wage worker than that of an average billionaire.
People really don't grok generational weath and scale of money.
"Friends of the Earth Norway" and "Nature and Youth" weren't personally affected by "mining waste being dumped in fjords" (if this is what really is happening). This is not a case of people who can't afford to have the law solve an injustice they are suffering. This is a case of people who wanted to spend some money on some principled stand... well, having principles costs money. Why should every Norwegian person pay for all of this?
We are all equal in the eyes of the law but only some can afford the law.