No doubt the European Court of Human Rights is congratulating itself on striking an important judicial blow against Climate Change.

In reality, its decision that Switzerland is violating the human rights of older women because the state is not taking the necessary steps to combat global warming amounts to little more than a highfalutin example of virtue signalling.

Clearly, the ECHR judges have fallen victim to the same moral fixation that has already undone so many academics, public servants, journalists and politicians: that people in high places can compel people in low places to save the world.

A great deal of the emotional and intellectual impetus for this sort of reasoning is generated by the elite notion that wisdom is too poorly armed, at least politically, to make a difference. Once this idea takes hold, people who should know better – judges, professors, bureaucrats and journalists – start rejecting the professional codes-of-conduct through which the public’s trust and confidence in their interventions is maintained and set about making new rules by which the failure of the lower orders can be made good.

The Swiss women who charged that the Swiss Government had failed to act with sufficient speed, force and rigor to protect them from the effects of Climate Change (heatwaves) were doubtless delighted to have their claims upheld by the body that calls itself “the conscience of Europe”. Delighted, but also, it must be suspected, a little bit surprised. Because, in logic – if not in law – their charges were absurd.

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Swiss Government had done everything it signed up for, and promised its citizens, in relation to climate change. Indeed, let us present Switzerland as the model European nation. All its targets met. Fossil fuel consumption plummeting – along with its CO2 emissions. Truly, when it comes to fighting anthropogenic global warming, the Swiss are Number One.

Now, let us pose the $64,000 question: Would the actions of this exemplary Swiss Government have prevented the heat waves that caused such discomfort to those Swiss grandmothers? No, they would not.

The heatwaves that have plagued Europe for the past few years were not generated in the Swiss Alps, but in the continent of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. Vast and stationary masses of hot air, under clear skies, set temperatures across Europe soaring to levels that killed thousands.

There is no reasonable way, however, in which those deadly rises in temperature can be sheeted home to the Government of Switzerland.

An argument can certainly be made that the weather systems that gave rise to the heatwave in Switzerland may have been a manifestation of the steady rise in global temperatures since the coal-powered Industrial Revolution got under way in the late-18th century.

But attributing blame for global warming – especially the sort of specific liability that courts are charged with assessing – is an altogether tougher proposition. Blame implies intent and capacity. But, seriously, who, or what, can summon up a heatwave?

Complicating this whole strange story is that the Swiss grandmothers claim their government had violated their human rights – specifically, their right to the full and unimpeded enjoyment of family life. The ECHR found that, to secure the plaintiffs’ right, their political leaders were obligated to do all within their power to arrest the progress of climate change.

In this regard, however, the court found that the Swiss Government had been delinquent. Hence, the grandmothers’ remarkable legal victory.

But, whoa Nelly! Where is the justice in convicting a government for failing to uphold a right it could not possibly defend? If the grandmothers had been subjected to repeated harassment at the hands of a gang of local thugs, and the local and/or federal Swiss authorities had done nothing to defend their right to a full and happy family life, then the ECHR would be fully justified in throwing an entire legal library at them.

Except, in those circumstances, it would be the authorities’ failure to do something they were perfectly capable of doing that constituted the offence. They may, for example, have failed to ensure an effective police force was available in the grandmothers’ neighbourhood, so, when the thugs came marauding, there was no one to stop them.

Or, stretching the analogy to breaking point: the authorities may have failed to enforce a strict building code, leading to the grandmothers’ homes collapsing in an earthquake. Hard to enjoy family life when your house is a pile of rubble! The point is, the authorities could have done something to prevent such rights violations, but they didn’t. Guilty as charged!

But, as we have already established, there was no possibility of the Swiss Government doing anything to effectively defend the rights of these elderly matriarchs against a heatwave. Not in relation to halting the rise in greenhouse gasses, anyway.

One might argue that the Swiss Government could have installed state-of-the-art air-conditioners in the homes of family-oriented grandmothers – to keep them safe when climate change-induced heatwaves came a-calling. Ah, but that would be adapting to climate change, not preventing it. And that’s a different story altogether.

It is easy to laugh at the Europeans and their highfalutin courts, but New Zealanders may soon be facing something very similar in their own back yard. It was only relatively recently that our Supreme Court gave leave for Mike Smith, the climate change spokesman for the Iwi Chairs Forum, to bring his claim against some of New Zealand’s biggest companies – Fonterra, Genesis Energy, Z Energy, NZ Steel, BT Mining, Channel Infrastructure NZ and Dairy Holdings.

Smith’s charge is that these companies have all contributed, in a material way, to the climate crisis and have damaged, and will continue to damage, his whenua and moana, including places of customary, historical and spiritual significance to him and his whanau.

Now, it’s important to emphasise that all the Supreme Court has done is affirm Smith’s right to his day in court. But, given the propensity of some of the Supreme Court’s justices to imbue Te Tiriti o Waitangi with quasi-constitutional powers, it is by no means impossible that when Smith goes to court he may find that the New Zealand judiciary – no less than the European – is more than willing to perform the climate change mahi that it sees the people’s elected representatives as neglecting.

What’s more, it is entirely possible they will cite the ECHR’s judgement in favour of the Swiss grandmothers as they do it. Arrogating unto themselves powers they do not – and should not – possess.