OSLO, Norway – A 2007 U.N. report with stronger evidence that humans are causing global warming is likely to spur more lawsuits around the world such as a case to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, a legal expert said. Lawsuits from Australia to California are already testing how far courts agree with most scientists’ view that human activities - led by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and vehicles - are warming the planet. ‘We’re going to get more and more of these cases,’ Peter Roderick, director of the Climate Justice Program, which is linked to environmental group Friends of the Earth, told Reuters on Tuesday. ‘The stronger the evidence of human influence gets, the more relevant the question will be for courts,’ he said. Some lawyers, he said, viewed climate as the next billion-dollar source of litigation after tobacco or asbestos. Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the panel of climate scientists that advises the United Nations, has said a report due in early 2007 will have ‘far more robust’ evidence that human activities are warming the planet. In one of the most important U.S. environmental cases in decades, the […]