“The failure of a state to take appropriate action to protect the climate system” from greenhouse gas emissions, wrote Yuji Iwasawa, the president of the ICJ, “may constitute an internationally wrongful act which is attributable to that state.” While the unanimous, first-of-its-kind ruling is not legally binding, it lays the groundwork for countries to sue one another for failing to reduce emissions and regulate polluters, and establishes a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” as a human right. Legal consequences for violating that right, the court wrote, could include “full reparation to injured states.”
Whether on Palestine or climate, the U.S. is consistently happy to flout international law to further its own interests and those of its allies. Like its proposal to annex Gaza, the Trump administration’s war on climate policy is obviously heinous. On the latter front, at least, the Biden administration should get some credit for attempting to strengthen greenhouse gas regulations Republicans have now put on the chopping block. But it would be a mistake to pretend that the United States is indifferent to suffering—and willing to exacerbate it—only when Republicans are in charge.
Consider the United States’ testimony in the ICJ case, submitted in 2024 by then-State Department legal advisor Richard Visek. After several pages touting the United States’ supposedly sterling record of fighting climate change, commitment to international law, and progress in corralling other countries to stem their emissions, the U.S. announced its opposition to the stance the Court eventually adopted. “A recognition that anthropogenic climate change can adversely affect the enjoyment of human rights,” Visek wrote, “does not mean that States have international human rights obligations to mitigate” greenhouse gas emissions. In perfect legalese, Visek added that, while the U.S. “looks forward to working with other States to exchange views toward the development of a right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment…any such right remains a matter of lex ferenda,” or future law, “rather than lex lata,” current law.
Much of the outrage among climate advocates has historically centered on many Republicans’ refusal to recognize the reality that climate-fueled disasters are killing people in the U.S. and abroad. Ultimately, though, whether Zeldin and the rest of the Trump administration actually believe in the harms posed by greenhouse gasses matters a lot less than the White House’s very real plans to make them worse. And at the end of the day, belief isn’t worth much in the other direction, either. When it comes to international affairs, especially, Democrats have asked the public to take their beliefs—in the rules-based international order, human rights, and climate action—at face value, even as they work to undermine all of the above when it suits their own interests and those of their allies.
The trouble with so much climate discourse orbiting around questions of belief and denial is that it can leave actions out of the equation. Whether it makes its case in high-minded legalese or MAGA bluster, a country that stands by while Israeli soldiers bomb hospitals and gun down civilians standing in bread lines—and furnishes them with ammunition for both—is a country that will keep expanding fossil fuels as millions at home and abroad are displaced and killed by climate-fueled disasters. Whatever the people in charge believe while that happens is irrelevant. With any hope, the ICJ ruling can open the door to holding Zeldin, the Trump administration, and whoever takes their place accountable for what they’ve done.
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