"The summer of 2026 showed what inaction costs; the courts, for their part, have begun to say who must be held responsible for it," emphasize François de Cambiaire and Lydia Méziani, lawyers at de Cambiaire & Méziani Associates.
A high, even very high, forest fire danger across almost all of Switzerland. Cantonal bans on lighting fires. More than a third of the measuring stations north of the Alps showing flows that are seen only once every thirty years. The lakes of Zurich, Constance and Walenstadt at record seasonal levels. And the Reuss, in Lucerne, reaching 26.36 °C on June 27. The Swiss summer of 2026 was as hot as that of 2003.
A few hundred kilometers away, more than 42,000 hectares went up in smoke in Gironde, under a pyrocumulonimbus — that "fire thunderstorm" born of the fire's own heat — until the activation of the European Civil Protection Mechanism and the mobilization of the armed forces. The idea of a world still merely observing climate risk did not survive such a summer.
This shift is not only meteorological: it is also legal. The main obstacle to climate litigation has long been the argument of future damage, hypothetical and therefore not actionable. A summer like this robs that argument of its force.
That is already what the Cantonal Court of Zug held last December in finding admissible — subject to the appeal announced by Holcim — the complaint of the fishermen of Pari Island and in rejecting the fatalism of the "drop in the ocean." It is also what the "KlimaSeniorinnen" ruling says on the side of state obligations. The question posed to companies has therefore changed in nature: it is no longer a question of whether a judge will agree to hear them, but of determining what a judge will require of them.
And it is precisely on that point that case law has progressed in eighteen months. In the "Milieudefensie v. Shell" case of November 12, 2024, the Court of Appeal of The Hague confirmed that the group was subject to a climate duty of care based on human rights, while refusing to set a percentage reduction in its oil and gas production. The principle was established, but the content of the obligation remained undetermined. It was a victory in principle while remaining a practical dead end.
A mechanism accompanied by injunction powers would give Switzerland the tool that, in France, has allowed the law to bite.
The judgment handed down in Paris on June 25, 2026 in the "TotalEnergies" case, which is under appeal, charts a new path. Applying the French duty of vigilance (art. L. 225-102-1 of the Commercial Code), the court rules that the notion of environment includes the climate and that "scope 3" emissions, notably those related to the use of a company's products and services by its customers, fall within the scope of the framework — that is the bulk of an oil company's carbon footprint. The standard that can be required is no longer a number: it is a documented method. And it thus becomes perfectly justiciable.
This solution is of direct interest to Switzerland, because the text that will decide this is on the table. The consultation on the draft federal law on sustainable corporate governance, an indirect counter-proposal to the new initiative for responsible multinationals, ended on July 9. It includes strengthened due diligence duties for about thirty very large companies, transparency obligations for around a hundred companies, and a claimed alignment with European standards.
Added to this is the ordinance on the report on climate issues, in force since January 1, 2024, which already requires a transition plan compatible with the net-zero-by-2050 objective. The real question is therefore no longer that of scope, but of sanction. A framework limited to transparency would leave the civil judge alone on the front line: this is the path that Zug has just begun to open. A framework accompanied by injunction powers would give Switzerland the tool that, in France, allowed the law to bite.
We must measure what this choice entails. When the Bundesverfassungsgericht in 2021, the French Constitutional Council in 2023, and then the International Court of Justice, in its advisory opinion of July 23, 2025, invoke future generations, they are not creating a right in favor of people who are not yet born: they forbid today's debtor from consuming tomorrow's room to maneuver.
Translated into corporate language, this has a name familiar to energy actors: the lifetime of assets. An investment decision made in 2026 will be judged against a standard of diligence that will incorporate a perspective extending over the decades to come.
If the Swiss lakes regain their levels, the question raised this summer will not withdraw. Certainly, the law will not lower temperatures. But it can identify those responsible. Summer 2026 showed the cost of inaction; the courts, for their part, have begun to say who must answer for it.
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