In a sweeping and unprecedented legal opinion, the United Nations’ highest court has decreed that “The consequences of climate change are severe and far-reaching” and constitute an “urgent and existential threat.” What’s more, it stated that action must be taken to not only ameliorate that threat but also to determine the legal consequences for those states whose actions harm others.
The opinion comes down as tech companies race to build big new datacenters to power the AI revolution. Those datacenters are going to require a lot of energy, most of which will likely be generated by burning fossil fuels, thereby belching more CO2 into the atmosphere.
While Wednesday’s opinion has no immediate and binding jurisdictional power, its international authority and legal arguments may well have the power to sway more specific international litigation in the areas of damage compensation, regulations, insurance availability, mitigation funding, and the like. Possibly … Maybe …
This blockbuster finding was released by the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ), known more colloquially as the World Court, in a 133-page Advisory Opinion [PDF] entitled Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change — or, in proper ICJese, Obligations des États en Matière de Changement Climatique.
The ICJ opinion was requested by the United Nations General Assembly to answer two closely related questions: First, what laws, treaties, protocols, and the like currently exist “in respect of activities that adversely affect the climate system”? And second, what are the legal consequences that arise from violations of those obligations?
These questions did not merely materialize out of the ether — they were the result of a long lobbying campaign by UN member states that face severe consequences from a climate crisis they had little hand in creating, states such as the Maldives and Vanuatu that face essential elimination from rising sea levels and climate change–exacerbated storms.
When introducing its unanimous opinion in The Hague, as reported by Reuters, ICJ President and judge Yuji Iwasawa [PDF] agreed with the vast majority of working climate scientists and scientific organizations, saying, “Greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally caused by human activities.”
His statement, and the Advisory Opinion itself, echoed the conclusions reached by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), released in 2023. The ICJ’s Opinion relied heavily upon the research and conclusions outlined in the AR6, which noted that “approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people are highly vulnerable to climate change.”
It should be noted that this Advisory Opinion is not a mere “opinion” in Webster’s quotidian definition as “a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter,” but rather in its legal meaning — again, from Webster, “the formal expression (as by a judge, court, or referee) of the legal reasons and principles upon which a legal decision is based.” That said, an Advisory Opinion is not a binding judgment in specific case law, but instead a non-binding statement of guidance or principle.
Also, this Advisory Opinion can be used as guidance in legal proceedings only if, when, and where the opinions of the ICJ — and international law in general — hold sway. Unfortunately for the states, organizations, or individuals seeking damages for climate change–related injuries, compliance with ICJ opinions is not binding upon the Court’s member states except under certain conditions — and those conditions largely require consent from all parties involved in the legal proceeding.
Simply put, although the ICJ may wield consensus, moral, normative, intellectual, and advisory authority, it can’t force compliance with its opinions — even those more binding than merely advisory — on its member states. Think of Josef Stalin’s famous response to French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval in 1935 when Uncle Joe was told that the Pope would prefer he take his boot off the neck of Russian Catholics: “The Pope? How many divisions has he got?” ®