If you have had a climate change-related extreme weather event or disaster involving property damage or destruction, this is the information pageyou will need for a full recovery.
Prologue
This is part three of the online Climate Change Disaster Preparation, Adaptation, Recovery and Migration Guidebook. This guidebook contains four parts, climate change preparation, climate change adaptation, climate change disaster recovery, and climate change migration information. To go to the area of your greatest need, select from the options below:
1. If you have just experienced a climate change-related extreme weather event involving any heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes ad cyclones, flooding, rain bombs, wind storms (Derechos), dust storms, wildfire smoke events, unseasonable cold spells, and abnormal unseasonal weather and, you need immediate recovery information by continuing to read this page.
2. If you are looking for the essential emergency backup plans and actions needed to ride out future climate-related extreme weather and disasters, please click here.
3. If you need information on the best actions for how to adapt to coming climate change consequences, please continue reading this page.
4. If you are looking for our extensive climate change migration evaluation and potential location information, please click here.
Introduction
If you have suffered any kind of climate change-related (extreme weather-related) damage or destruction to your home or business, caused by heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes ad cyclones, flooding, rain bombs, wind storms (Derechos), dust storms, wildfire smoke events, unseasonable cold spells, and abnormal unseasonal weather you have our deepest sympathy.
And, please use the following instructions to prevent any additional climate-related suffering and loss and to help recover financially from the climate change-related damages you have just experienced.
This recovery assistance document is divided into three main sections. The purpose of each part is to help you to:
- Understand the main causes of what you are suffering through and which you did not cause.
- Recover financially from ALL of the damages you have suffered as quickly as possible by using several different legal approaches.
- Prevent this level and kind of painful loss and suffering from ever happening to you again especially as global warming continues to escalate.
Step 1: If you are still in any kind of physical danger from the climate-related extreme weather disaster, call or contact your local emergency services for immediate help.
This recovery assistance document assumes you have already searched out and/or been in contact with your local, regional or national governmental emergency responders and local non-profit emergency support organizations to ask for the various support and assistance which you are legally entitled to and, which those organizations are legally or ethically required to provide to you in times of emergency. Contacting these organizations immediately after a global warming aggravated disaster will ensure you get the immediate post-crisis temporary financial and physical support you will need.
Once you have received this temporary support, you will be ready to seek out additional compensation and restitution for all of the global warming aggravated or caused damages that you did not cause! The following sections will also take you through the key steps you will need to follow so that those truly responsible for this problem pay for the damages and suffering they have created in your life, family or business.
Step 2. Learn more about how bad climate change and global warming are going to get and on what timeframes.
This will help you determine if it is wise to rebuild at your current location. To make this determination, review the following links:
Today's Key Climate Change Facts
The Seven Rules of Real Estate in a Climate-Changed World
The Primary and Secondary Consequences of Climate Change
The Four Major Climate Change Tipping Points
Step 3. How to prevent your family or business from ever suffering again the pain and loss of the subsequent climate change aggravated consequences coming to your area.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result." --Albert Einstein
Unfortunately, global warming is accelerating for many reasons as described in the links above. This means that if you are in a global warming unsafe zone, you will most certainly continue to experience either the same or greater losses and suffering if you remain in that hazardous zone and do not adapt!
Take the time to decide on your next step of repair or rebuilding or moving very carefully. As climate change accelerates, there will be many areas where rebuilding would be a recipe for repeated climate damage and destruction at even greater levels!
Step 4: Who should pay restitution and damages for what is happened to you?
It is near certain that the global warming aggravated damages you have suffered are directly or indirectly due to the intentional acts, negligence or gross negligence of companies, individuals or even government agencies who have knowingly either created global warming, or have withheld vital climate change risk information from you and the public relating to the currently known or coming severe and accelerating consequences of global warming for your local area. (Click here to see what these primary and secondary known climate change consequences are.)
It is probable that by bringing lawsuits individually or by bringing class action lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, various government agencies and the other types of fossil fuel pollution corporations described below, you may be able to collect all or part of the greatest part of the costs and damages that you have suffered as legal and proper restitution.
Step A. Find the right lawyer or law firm.
Now that you understand more about the causes and history of escalating global warming, you are ready to search for a law firm to help you bring your lawsuit(s) against the following parties:
the fossil fuel industry which caused this global warming problem. And/or
the relevant government agencies who should have protected you with the proper advanced information about your local global warming-related risks. This can mean city, county, state or national governments, especially local zoning and planning departments (who had a due diligence obligation to know the climate change risks of your area.) They all had the ethical and legal responsibility to update their zoning maps and regulations to create accurate assessments of all high-risk danger zones due to the many, long known about consequences of our escalating global warming condition. They also had the ethical and legal responsibility to inform you that you were in a high risk area by requiring real estate, insurance, and mortgage companies operating within their jurisdictions to disclose to you these high risk danger zones at the time of your property purchase, when you received your mortgage, when you purchased your home or mortgage insurance or when you sought a permit to remodel.
And/or, separately, any individual real estate, insurance, and mortgage company who also failed to execute their ethical, moral, and legal responsibility to inform you that your property was in an unsafe high-risk global warming area at the time of purchase or when they insure or reinsured it.
Many cities in California and in New York (see articles farther below) are currently filing lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry in state (not federal) courts only for the damages to their cities that global warming has already caused such as flooding from sea level rise and the extreme storms and storm surges aggravated by global warming. (Federal courts are harder to bring these kinds of lawsuits.)
Many lawyers and major law firms are already keenly aware of the deep financial pockets of the fossil fuel industry, insurance companies, mortgage companies, real estate companies, and government or city or state agencies. Many of them are also aware of the current climate of more lawsuits being filed against those directly or indirectly responsible for our global warming emergency. Consequently, they will be more willing to take on new cases like yours.
As a general rule of thumb, try to get the largest law firm you can find to take your case. The reason for this is that larger law firms have the financial resources to go against wealthy corporations, and they are also more aware of the successes or difficulties of similar lawsuits around the world. This enables them to quickly adjust their legal strategies and evidence on-the-fly for maximum success. Larger law firms are also more likely to monitor new lawsuit filings from city, county and state governments who are now filing lawsuits against fossil fuel companies for the global warming aggravated damages they are causing in their respective areas.
When searching out a lawyer or law firm, we strongly recommend you only go with those firms that will take your case on contingency. Contingency means you do not have to pay for any legal costs unless they win the case. If they do win, they take a fixed pre-agreed percentage of the final judgment and you get the balance.
Do not hire any attorney or law firm who either cites a high upfront cost to take your case, doesn't believe in its merits of your case, or doesn't understand global warming aggravated or caused damages. Avoid any attorney or firm strongly unsure of their ability to win your case, as well as those who feel they are too small and under-resourced to go up against powerful fossil fuel companies, insurance companies, real estate companies, mortgage companies or governmental or city or state agencies.
It may take you a while to find the right lawyer or law firm willing to either take on your case or create a class action lawsuit for all individuals in your area who have also suffered similar damages. Be patient and persistent. When you do find the right lawyer or law firm, your lawsuit will have a good likelihood of paying off in the end not only for you but also for society as well.
Every time the fossil fuel industry is penalized financially for its wrongdoing, it becomes less profitable for them to continue to cause damage. Until all profit is removed from such wrongdoing, it will continue and more people will continue to be harmed.
Keep in mind you may receive financial restitution much sooner than you might expect. In many cases, the organizations being sued would rather agree to a settlement instead of going to court where a jury may award a much larger restitution, as well as punitive damages far in excess of what you ask for.
When you do find your lawyer or a law firm, remember you are in it for the long haul to get both restitution and justice! These fossil fuel companies have been profiting at extreme levels for years on the pain, suffering and harmed the health of others. They have known for decades that their products would cause every one of the 20 worst global warming consequences described in the recommended reading materials above.
Maintain the attitude that because of their intentional acts, negligence or lack of due diligence, these organizations will inevitably pay for all the damage that they have done to you and to everyone else they have damaged and harmed.
If you're also bringing a lawsuit against various government agencies, they too must be held responsible for failing to properly inform the public of all known consequences and risks that would affect either the safety or future value of your property. Unfortunately, in some countries of the world, the real risks and consequences of global warming have been intentionally hidden from the public because of cash campaign “donations” by the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists. These “donations” have acted in an unfair way to unduly influence your politicians. That alone may become partial evidence and grounds for proof of intentionality against the fossil fuel companies in a carefully crafted lawsuit.
It bears repeating that wherever possible, also bring lawsuits against the government agencies, real estate agents, mortgage companies, zoning departments, and insurance companies which also failed to adequately inform you of the real global warming threats to your home or business location. Most of these other organizations have known or should have long known (if they were doing the proper level of legal due diligence,) about the real risks and consequences of global warming, yet still failed to fully disclose those risks to you when you purchased your home or business.
Because of their failures to properly inform you of the real global warming risks in your area, they also carry responsibility for the avoidable damage and suffering you have experienced. As a general policy and wherever allowable, your lawyers and law firms should always include these organizations in your lawsuit. Government agencies will often also seek an out-of-court settlement to protect their reputations and cut their losses.
There's one other piece of good news when you find the right law firm. In general, they are the ones doing ALL of the work and research necessary to win the case. It will not take up much of your valuable recovery time other than finding the right law firm. At most, you may be called to testify if it goes to trial. This means you can move on with rebuilding your life while your lawyer or law firm pushes forward the lawsuit and subsequent collection in the background.
Step 5: You also now may be able to get your local, state, or national government to purchase your property at fair market value under the growing principles and allocations of climate change Managed Retreat.
Check with the appropriate agencies to see if you and your climate-related losses qualify for the Managed Retreat payments.
Step 6: If you do decide to remain in your current location, you will need to begin the future climate consequence protection preparation and adaption actions described on this page and then this page.
Your Success
If you follow the above recovery advice and you are persistent, you will once again be made financially whole and may even get additional restitution for your pain and suffering or even punitive damages. Additionally, you will be executing justice by legally and ethically punishing those who created the harm that you have suffered and, you will be protecting others from having to suffer as you are suffering now. Finally, you will be protecting the environment as well as the future for yourself, your children, and generations to come.
Please share your results with us at [email protected] . This is a critical situation where when you win and recover, the future wins and the environment wins as well!
Other References:
Here are just a few encouraging articles about cities and counties filing lawsuits in their respective state courts against the fossil fuel industry to recover the damaged caused to them by escalating global warming:
LOS ANGELES CONTEMPLATES ITS OWN CLIMATE SUIT, TOO...
NEW YORK CITY SUES OIL COMPANIES OVER CLIMATE CHANGE, SAYS IT PLANS TO DIVEST…
CALIFORNIA JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF SUING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION...
THE GLOBAL CO2 RISE: THE FACTS, EXXON, AND THE FAVORITE DENIAL TRICKS...
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