Climate Change Discrimination Case

A United Kingdom court has ruled that a man can take his employer to court on the grounds that he was discriminated against because of his views on climate change. The decision could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles such as providing recycling facilities or offering low carbon travel.

By ABC’s Europe correspondent Emma Alberici for AM (4 November 2009):

A United Kingdom court has ruled that a man can take his employer to court on the grounds that he was discriminated against because of his views on climate change.

Tim Nicholson was made redundant last year as head of sustainability for a property company Grainger Plc, the UK’s biggest residential landlord.

Mr Nicholson successfully argued that his moral values about the environment should be recognised under the same laws that protect religious beliefs.

In the landmark ruling, Justice Michael Burton said that a belief in man-made climate change is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the religion and belief regulations.

The decision could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles such as providing recycling facilities or offering low carbon travel.

“What the judge has said today is that a belief, a philosophical belief in climate change, is capable of being afforded that same protection,” Mr Nicholson said.

“Now my belief is underpinned by moral and ethical values which are comparable to those promoted by many of the religions around the world.”

Strong belief

Mr Nicholson does strongly believe that temperatures are rising and the environment is suffering for it.

“I believe passionately in the need to protect the environment and particularly from the catastrophe that runaway climate change will be, and to do that we need to cut carbon emissions urgently and on a massive scale,” he said.

But it is those beliefs that Mr Nicholson says lost him his job. He told the Employment Appeal Tribunal in London that he had tried to set up a carbon management system for the company but that he could not work out its carbon footprint because staff had refused to give him the necessary data.

Mr Nicholson also accused the company’s chief executive of showing contempt for his concerns and claimed he once flew a member of staff to Ireland – with all the carbon emissions that entails – to deliver his phone which he had left in London.

“I was employed as head of sustainability, I felt that I was frustrated from fulfilling that role properly and that my dismissal was a response to my philosophical belief in climate change,” Mr Nicholson said.

Green views

The 42-year-old was given permission to make his claim under the Employment Equality Regulations 2003; that covers any religion, religious belief, or philosophical belief.

The ruling was challenged by Grainger Plc on the grounds that green views were not the same as religious or philosophical beliefs.

It was a view supported by Andrea Williams – the director of the Christian Legal Centre.

“Every philosophy will have a place to compete in the public legal social square and that lends itself to then there being chaotic laws being created with no consistency in law-making,” she said.

The company maintains that Mr Nicholson’s redundancy was driven solely by the operational needs of the company during a period of extraordinary market turbulence which also required other structural changes to be made within the company.

Source: www.abc.net.au