I have been waiting for that most entrepreneurial (some would cruelly say ambulance chasing) of law firms, Slater & Gordon to cash in on global warming. Slaters is always looking for new causes of actions and that’s particularly the case now that it has shareholders to think about. And there are plenty of corporates with deep pockets who might be said to be contributing to global wamring in this part of the world.

Unfortuantely, suing the global warming culprits might be a little harder than litigating against tobacco manufacturers. On Tuesday this week Californian US Federal judge Martin Jenkins threw out a lawsuit brought by the State of California which sought to hold a number of auto manufacturers responsible for the damage caused by global warming in that state.

The Californina government argued that the car makers like Toyota, Ford and General Motors are responsible “for creating, and contributing to, an alleged public nuisance – global warming”. Emissions of carbon dioxide from cars account for over thirty percent of such emissions in California and these human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide, such as those from motor vehicles, are causing global warming, said the California government.

In other words car makers ought to contribute billions of dollars to compensate for adverse impacts of climate change on California, such as rising sea levels, less water and a hotter climate.

But Judge Jenkins wasn’t buying into this argument. To do so would require him to undertake a task best left to politicans and policy-makers. He accepted the car makers argument that “any meaningful reduction in carbon dioxide emissions can be achieved only if a broad array of domestic and international activities are regulated in coordination” and that’s not something a court in California or anywhere else can do.

It is hard to see how an Australian court would see things any differently. So maybe the coal companies and other contributors to global warming in this part of the world can rest easy for the moment and not expect Slaters to come knocking on their door any time soon.