Submission in Support of Petitioners Case No. CHR-NI-2016-0001 impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships.  The Carbon Majors have breached these obligations by conducting and profiting from business activities that generate a huge quantity of GHG emissions and by intentionally obstructing efforts to control GHG emissions.  States have a positive obligation to ensure that private actors within their jurisdiction do not violate human rights and to provide adequate remedies where such violations do occur. This submission is intended to provide the Commission with a more detailed analysis of precisely how the impacts of climate change interfere with the enjoyment of fundamental human rights, and why non-state actors may be held accountable for this interference under international human rights law. Impacts of Climate Change 1. Temperature Increase Global temperatures are already increasing significantly. Each of the past three decades has been successively warmer, and 15 of the 16 hottest years have occurred during the 21st century.3 2015 was the hottest year on record, with global average surface temperatures 0.90°C above the 20th century average.4 This is well beyond the historical range of variability in annual temperatures (0.24°C).5 Notably, temperatures over land have increased even more dramatically than the global average surface temperatures (which include ocean surfaces). Land surface 3 NASA Press Release: NASA, NOAA Analyses Reveal Record-Shattering Global Warm Temperatures in 2015 (Jan. 20, 2016), http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-noaa-analyses-reveal-record-shatteringglobal-warm-temperatures-in-2015. 4 NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, State of the Climate: Global Analysis for Annual 2015 (Jan. 2016), https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201513. 5 The standard deviation of annual average global temperatures from 1950 through 2005 was 0.24°C. IPCC, Temporal Variability of Global Temperatures and Recent Warming, https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-2-2-6.html. Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School 4