Climate emergency? Call the older women
FREE: A group of Swiss female pensioners made legal history at the European Court of Human Rights today. Their secret weapon? A disregard for the power of a furious older woman…
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There’s a phrase my dear friend Sam often uses about people underestimating women of a certain age. “Never pick a fight with an older woman,” it cautions. “She’s full of rage and sick of everyone’s shit.”
Having written a whole book (and podcast, and newsletter), The Shift, about women’s ageing and raging, Sam knows what she’s talking about. But her motto has never felt more astonishingly accurate to me than it did today, as I sat, wowed, in the digital company of a much older woman with a similarly no-bullshit attitude.
Pia Hollenstein really is, frankly, sick of everyone’s shit. And if you think she’s going to let the small matter of retirement or an approaching 74th birthday stop her hitting back with serious heft, you’ve another think coming.
Because today, she and 2,000 fellow members of the KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz – or, in English, Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland – successfully made history by bringing the first climate lawsuit ever to be heard in the European Court of Human Rights.
It wasn’t a position Pia expected to find herself in, she explained to me, laughing incredulously over a crackly Zoom link as I interviewed her for radio earlier today. But Swiss officials kind of left the KlimaSeniorinnen with no other choice.
Formed in 2016 by Pia and a then much smaller group of women aged over 64, the collective initially set out to convince the Swiss government to introduce additional measures to slash pollution and carbon emissions. Older women are worst affected by rising temperatures, they reasoned. It’s a scientifically proven fact (to be clear, we’re talking heatwaves, not hot flushes here). Surely then, they should have a voice in the climate debate?
In a series of events that will shock precisely no woman, anywhere, they weren’t listened to.
The group formulated a legal argument. Switzerland’s government bodies, they said, were violating their human rights by failing to ensure the country was on track to comply with Paris Climate Agreement goals to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius. Their case was rejected. They ploughed on.
Over the last seven years, the group systematically exhausted every legal action available to them in the Swiss courts. Undeterred, they grew in size and volume, raising the stakes all the way to Strasbourg. Today, 2,000 members with an average age of 74 became the first campaigners in the world to make the legal case that human rights and climate inaction are inextricably linked.
“We didn’t found an NGO only for women over 64 because we hate men, or young people,” Pia told me with a grin. “We did it because we were more likely to win, because women over 64 are much more affected by climate change than others.
“To get to over 2,000 members is quite something in a country as small as Switzerland. But now the court – not just any court but the ECHR – has to clarify if human rights are violated when governments don’t take the necessary action against climate change. It’s the first time anyone has made that case so it’s very important.”
That the case has been made in Switzerland, Pia clarified, is key. The Swiss constitution contains a number of articles legally mandating the government to care for both the lives and health of its citizens. It is a rich country, she pointed out. If it doesn’t take action or hold itself correctly to account, we can’t realistically compel other less fortunate countries to act.
Impressed yet? There’s more.
In a case statement published by Greenpeace today, Pia’s colleague Elisabeth Stern explained that the west’s somewhat insulting disregard for older women has potentially aided rather than hindered their march to legal notoriety. “Are we simply being selfish by suing for our human right to life and health? We old women who, of all people, statistically will be gone from this planet in ten years anyway?
“As senior women, we are ‘vulnerable’ in a double sense. On one hand, we are suffering from the direct effects of our changing climate such as heatwaves. On the other hand, we are suffering from our public visibility because of this climate complaint. We take the rap, so to speak, and allow ourselves to be insulted and denigrated, knowing active old women trigger both great admiration and contempt.
“We hold our heads up for everyone currently affected by the climate emergency. Because to sue one’s own government is no ‘Sunday picnic’ and can only be done by those who can prove that they are particularly affected. And in this process, we have come a long way.”
As Pia explained to me matter-of-factly over Zoom, the group aren’t daft. They know their grandchildren will be more deeply affected by climate change than she and her compatriots will ever be. The group’s members are, in all honesty, unlikely to suffer the ill effects they’re warning about. “But children can’t take their governments to court,” she shrugged. “Not yet.”
Which means it’s up to the older women. Because they were already full of rage. They were already sick of everyone’s shit. Now you want to make them, their grandkids and their grandkids’ grandkids too bloody hot as well? Forget it.
“Should we win in the court in Strasbourg, a better climate policy will help less the lives of senior people than those of our children and grandchildren,” Elisabeth concludes.
“It was always important to us to do something that would also have a positive effect on our younger generations. They are the future, not us. If, because of our particular vulnerability, we can now still contribute to the conditions needed for an environment in which our children and grandchildren can thrive, that simply makes me happy.”
The Swiss government might be about to find out just how unwise it is to pick a fight with an older woman…
Inspired? Awed? Slightly terrified by the power of foresight of the KlimaSeniorinnen? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
OMG, how bloody amazing are they?!?! This should be major news. Will be following their progress. Oh why aren't we more like this in the UK...
Absolutely love this!