Climate Science Is Now the Law

New York Times

2 days ago

The science on climate change has long been settled. Now the law is, too. On Wednesday, the International Court of Justice, the judicial branch of the United Nations, recognized for the first time that there is no way to solve the climate crisis or atone for its devastating consequences without confronting its root cause: the burning of fossil fuels.
Back in 2023, the South Pacific archipelago nation of Vanuatu and other climate-vulnerable countries, with the help of Pacific Island students, secured a United Nations resolution asking the International Court of Justice to clarify what existing international law requires governments to do about climate change and what legal consequences they face if their failure to uphold the law causes serious harm. The court's conclusion comes on the heels of two other international advisory opinions on climate change and a growing number of national judgments.
Earlier this month, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared that the climate crisis is a human rights emergency, triggering human rights obligations for nations and businesses. Its sweeping opinion acknowledged the outsize role the oil and gas sector plays in generating planet-warming emissions, and emphasized the duty of governments to regulate and control these polluters. A 2024 climate opinion from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea likewise affirmed that greenhouse gas emissions pollute the marine environment and that countries have a duty to prevent environmental harm that affects other countries, whether it comes from public actors or private companies.
The I.C.J.'s unanimous opinion reinforced these conclusions and broadened their reach, stating that countries must protect citizens from the 'urgent and existential threat' of climate change. When a country fails to curb greenhouse gas emissions — whether by producing or consuming fossil fuels, approving new exploration to find them or subsidizing the industry — it may be held liable for 'an internationally wrongful act,' the court's 15 judges said.
This makes it much harder for any government or company to say that rules don't apply to them or they don't have to act. Read together, these three landmark legal rulings leave no doubt that continuing fossil fuel production and use, let alone expanding it, violates the law. It is a cease-and-desist notice to fossil fuel producers.
Governments, industry and scientists have known for decades that fossil fuels are the principal cause of climate change. Oil, gas and coal account for nearly 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, and science shows that it is impossible to prevent a rise in global temperatures unless new fossil fuel projects are stopped and existing ones shut down. But fossil fuel companies have systematically delayed climate action, first by denying the science, then by derailing the most aggressive regulations and goals with intense lobbying.
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