This episode explores how a local campaign in a small corner of rural England helped reshape climate law far beyond it. The Weald Action Group began as a grassroots response to oil drilling proposals at Horse Hill in Surrey. What followed was a determined, citizen-led challenge to the idea that new fossil fuel projects could be approved without accounting for the climate damage caused when the oil is eventually burned.
Against long odds, campaigners took on local authorities, developers and the planning system itself, pushing the question of responsibility for carbon emissions all the way to the UK Supreme Court.
At the centre of the campaign was Sarah Finch, a community organiser and one of the claimants in the landmark legal case that now bears her name. Her work with Weald Action Group helped establish a crucial legal principle: that the climate impacts of fossil fuel extraction cannot simply be ignored. Sarah joins us to reflect on how a local campaign grew into a legal precedent, what it took to sustain the fight, and what this case means for future climate campaigns in the UK and beyond.
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