Mitigation's paradox

This chapter analyses how conflicting legal aims obstruct effective climate action, through the lens of fossil fuel extraction decisions in England. Legal frameworks embed competing aims – economic growth, emission reduction, and sustainable development – that authorities must balance. This regulatory design, coupled with neoliberalism’s influence, lessens the weight of environmental imperatives and privileges economic interests. Institutional incoherence in aims leads to counterproductive outcomes. The chapter uses a dual approach, integrating this systemic textual analysis of aims with a selective overview of UK climate litigation. It examines how public law principles, like judicial review, are used to challenge climate-related decisions. The analysis explores the tension between judicial deference and increasingly justiciable climate duties under relevant legislation. While courts review procedure, not policy substance, strategic litigation is naturally focussed on potential procedural flaws and governmental irrationality. The chapter highlights key cases where courts enforced duties, compelling stronger decarbonisation plans. Ultimately, litigation serves as a powerful tool for accountability, exposing gaps, and recalibrating climate governance, rather than for rewriting policy. Greater coherence in the structure of legal aims is needed to properly address climate mitigation and the ability to hold government to account must not be lost.