By Lena Babaeva Coradini 

The courts may play a big role when it comes to climate change.  Three major lawsuits have been filed around the nation against big producers of heat-trapping gases, including one from the Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo village.

In recent months, two federal appeals courts reversed decisions by federal district courts to dismiss climate-change lawsuits, allowing the cases to go forward. In Connecticut, environmental lawyers joined forces with attorneys general of eight states and the City of New York seeking a court order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In Mississippi, Gulf Coast property owners claim that industry-produced emissions that contribute to climate change increased the potency of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

And although a federal judge in Oakland, Calif., dismissed the Kivalina suit in October, the village is appealing the decision.

Even if cases do not proceed very far, the impact is still felt in that it brings awareness to the issues, possibly changing the landscape of the future legislation as well.