Fifteen Eighty Four

In the advisory opinion of July 25, 2025,  Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) took a bold step to declare that human rights law is the most relevant law with regard to climate change and to affirm that states’ failure to take action to deal with climate change has legal consequences. This decision was met with a sigh of relief by many specifically because the court established that the rights to life, health, housing, food and a clean and healthy environment can be adversely impacted by climate change and, thus, states have to combat climate change in accordance with a stringent due diligence standard informed by the scientific consensus affirmed by Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Based on this standard of due diligence, states must phase out the consumption and production of fossil fuels. This phase-out must include eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and the granting of new exploration licenses. The court explicitly stated that states’ failure to deal with climate change may constitute an internationally wrongful act triggering several legal consequences including: cessation and non-repetition; reparation and restitution; compensation (for damages caused by climate change); and satisfaction (e.g., issuing an apology). Furthermore, these obligations are owed to the entire international community (erga omnes), not just to the state injured by the wrongful act.

The 2025 opinion of the ICJ on climate would have been unthinkable in 1992, when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted. At that point, many speculated that states would be unlikely to venture beyond a framework convention to deal with climate change, given the many interests at stake and industry’s deep dependence on fossil fuels. An energy transition to phase out fossil fuels was expected to be costly, while renewable energy sources (solar and wind) were not that reliable. 

Most states, furthermore, were not keen on nuclear energy, which further stalled progress on taking action to mitigate climate change. The reluctance of states to embrace nuclear energy became particularly pronounced after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Germany, for example, concluded that the public angst surrounding the use of nuclear energy and final disposal of nuclear wastes, and the high costs of clean-up after a nuclear accident, made this alternative energy source unenviable. This is a far cry from today’s world, where climate activists promote nuclear energy as a clean source of energy because it does not contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The ICJ decision was received with a sigh of relief because of genuine fear that the road forged ahead by the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement could potentially be reversed. Such a reversal is not unthinkable given that the United States, the second-largest emitter of GHGs, has, for a second time, exited the Paris Agreement. To make matters worse, the U.S. administration produced, on July 23, 2025, a report entitled “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate” that downplays the detrimental impacts of climate change on humans and the environment.

Furthermore, the United States-China trade war illustrates the widespread retreat from multilateralism which originated after the Second World War under an understanding that global interdependence necessitated cooperation among nations. The United States is presently pursuing the path of energy independence, even though it is certain to increase its GHG emissions and to pave the way for extensive mining and processing of rare earths and minerals — both of which are highly polluting activities. China is similarly obsessed with energy independence to the point that it is willing to look for oil in the “sea of death,” the Tarim Basin. By May 2025, China National Petroleum Corporation had drilled 193 wells, reaching depths of 5 miles in the Tarim Basin. In February 2025, China completed a 7-mile deep well that has been considered an engineering feat.

Given the US-China trade war and the conflicts raging around the globe, one might have expected the World Court to hedge its bets by concluding that states are obliged to take measures to deal with climate change unless they have serious concerns that such measures may threaten their energy security, thus jeopardising their survival.  In a prior opinion, the Court deferred to the need of individual states to secure their survival despite potentially disastrous outcomes for the future of humanity. In its 1996 advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons,  the ICJ concluded that  it could not reach “a definitive conclusion as to the legality or illegality of the use of nuclear weapons by a State in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which its very survival would be at stake.”  If the ICJ had applied the rationale of its nuclear weapons opinion for its climate change verdict, it would have effectively undermined the precedents established by human rights courts, such as the European Court of Human Rights (e.g., Case of Verein Klimaseniorinnen v. Switzerland) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights  (e.g., Climate Emergency and Human Rights),  and by many national courts (e.g., Urgenda, Massachusetts v. EPA ), which have emphasized that states are obligated to take decisive action to address climate change.

While the World Court’s opinion has cemented an understanding that states will not be allowed to backtrack on their obligations to tackle climate change, we must not be oblivious to the geopolitical reality. Trade wars, protectionist measures and the repatriation of supply chains may endanger a Darwinian competition that will separate winning from losing states rather than yield positive outcomes for the environment. These developments are at odds with ideas of linear progress and can place us in a regressive, if not apocalyptic, climate future in which inequality grows, creating a world where only the elites are destined to survive.

Elli Louka’s book “International Environmental Law: Fairness, Effectiveness and World Order” , Second Edition, is forthcoming in September 2025.