• ICJ opinion could influence global climate litigation
  • U.N. treaties should guide responsibilities, rich countries say
  • South, small island states seek firm measures to curb emissions

The United Nations' highest court on Wednesday underlined "the urgent and existential threat posed by climate change" as it started to read out an opinion on the legal obligations of states to take action.

The non-binding opinion by the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, is likely to determine the course of future climate action across the world.

"Greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally caused by human activities which are not territorially limited," judge Yuji Iwasawa said. The reading of the opinion was ongoing and the court had not yet announced its conclusions.

Although it is non-binding, the deliberation of the 15 judges of the ICJ in The Hague will nevertheless carry legal and political weight and future climate cases would be unable to ignore it, legal experts say.

The two questions the U.N. General Assembly asked the judges to consider were: what are countries’ obligations under international law to protect the climate from greenhouse gas emissions; and what are the legal consequences for countries that harm the climate system?

You can read a copy of the rest of the article here.

See also:

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/landmark-opinion-world-court-says-climate-change-is-an-existential-threat-2025-07-23/

Posted by Naurgul

4 comments

  1. You’ll never stop climate change and I have yet to see a study actually quantify specifically what amount of CO2 is man made and what is not.

    Not to mention we discovered a warming planet after presuming it was in stasis prior to that.,

    We immediately associated it with carbon dioxide because we knew the gases tendency to retain heat.

    before we even knew about milankovitch cycles and precession, we determined that we were the cause of the planet changing from a former stasis.

    (this despite a good fair belief that there was an ice age…_)

    Now we know the planets climate has always shifted and rapidly at times and the earths is still yet to reach glacial minimum naturally, or with our exaggerated effect.

    We do exaggerate natural variation without question. But by how much, and to what detriment.

    individual weather events cannot indicate a climate. and no one single event is a sign of anything except weather being weather. and atmosphere doing its thing.

    My biggest fear is absolutely not exaggeration of this warming phase from CO’2

    My fear is the destruction of habitat to the extent that the earths biosphere can’t sustain itself anymore because humans have strip minese the surface of the planet for lithium…

    Burning gas has effect’s, but the effects cause by the style of mining required to gather and process lithium is so fucking destructive and in the desert playa lakes where most desert life gathers to drink or acquire moisture however they do.

    I’m not a zealot for anything spoken of here. I chose not to have kids because emotions supersede logic anyways and someone is gonna read this and get pissed I already know.

  2. It’s incredibly sad that the biggest existential threat to our species, which has a hundred+ year history of documents, researches and studies is still denied by a huge percentage of the population. And the number of climate denialists and cospiracy theorists is actually growing – no need to say who supports these lies and to what end. One of the biggest failings of the Western education system.

  3. I refuse to change my lifestyle to fight climate change if the ultra rich in Davos refuse to change theirs. They can urge me to drive less, eat bugs, and own nothing all they want, but until they get rid of their Bentley’s and their private jets, they can fuck off.

  4. existential threat? We should make it an IDF case so they can bomb the hell out of the climate change

    “Greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally caused by human activities which are not territorially limited,” judge Yuji Iwasawa said. The reading of the opinion was ongoing and the court had not yet announced its conclusions.

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