World Court Vs. Trump Admin on Climate Change

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest judicial body that is also known as the World Court, has become an utter embarrassment by violating the fundamental principles of a fair and impartial judiciary.

In 2024, the ICJ took the side of the Palestinian terrorists and their supporters by outrageously allowing a bogus complaint filed by South Africa against Israel to proceed rather than dismissing it outright. The complaint falsely accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza. In deciding that South Africa’s case against Israel could move forward, the ICJ gave credence to the blood libel claiming that Israel’s legitimate defense of its own people to prevent another October 7th-style Palestinian terrorist rampage constituted genocide by Israel.

Now the ICJ has taken the side of leftwing, progressive climate activists by issuing its “Advisory Opinion relating to the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change.” The United Nations General Assembly had requested the opinion.

ICJ’s President, Justice Yuji Iwasawa, described the climate change case as “unlike any that have previously come before the court.”

The case was not simply about a “legal problem,” Justice Iwasawa said, but “concerned an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet.”

The ICJ had no business hearing and deciding this case in the first place. Courts are supposed to confine themselves to adjudicating concrete legal controversies between parties, not acting as a quasi-legislature. Justice Iwasawa sounds more like a progressive politician pushing the radical Green New Deal agenda than a judge who is supposed to interpret the law as written. The ICJ opinion might as well have been written by a climate advocacy organization.

“A complete solution” to what the ICJ described as the “daunting and self-inflicted problem” of climate change requires, according to its opinion, “human will and wisdom at the individual social and political levels to change our habits, comforts, and current way of life to secure a future for ourselves and those who are yet to come.”

It is up to each sovereign nation, not an international court, to balance the potential gravity of any environmental concerns with the economic welfare and wellbeing of its people. Such tradeoffs are the responsibility of each nation’s duly authorized policymakers, whose decisions are supposed to be made in the best interests of their own people.

This is the essence of President Trump’s America First doctrine. It is why he wisely withdrew the United States from the disastrous Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which China – the world’s number one emitter of greenhouse gas – has gamed for its own national economic advantage to America’s detriment.

Where multilateral cooperation is warranted and does no harm to the American people, so be it. But President Trump will not tolerate any globalist institution, including the United Nations and its World Court, telling the United States to change the “current way of life” of the American people to achieve the dream of a green energy utopia.

But that is precisely what the ICJ has attempted to do. Making up law out of thin air as it went along, the ICJ concluded that government support of fossil fuel production is a potential violation of international human rights law.

The ICJ declared that “Failure of a State to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from GHG [Greenhouse Gas] emissions — including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licenses or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies — may constitute an internationally wrongful act which is attributable to that State.” The ICJ further decided that States injured by such a wrongful act may be entitled to “full reparation.”

Never mind that the use of fossil fuels, the world’s largest and most reliable source of energy, has saved countless lives. Fossil fuels enable increased production of such necessities as food, medications and other healthcare products, and basic infrastructure materials. Never mind that the use of fossil fuels has propelled global economic growth and standard of living to historic levels. The ICJ has decided nevertheless that human rights and improvement of the human condition are somehow undermined by fossil fuels.

The ICJ’s advisory opinion is not legally binding. Nevertheless, the globalist justices are counting on like-minded progressive national judges and politicians to adhere to the “legal” standards arbitrarily set by the ICJ for defining each country’s obligations to combat climate change.

The ICJ provided several rationales on which it based its climate change decision, each more fallacious than the last.

To begin with, the opinion cites the UN Charter which, according to the ICJ, “forms part of the most directly relevant applicable law.” Wrong!

The UN Charter says nothing about the environment – nada. Neither does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, which is the United Nations’ fundamental statement of international human rights principles. It was not until 2022 that the UN General Assembly passed a resolution that formally proclaimed a healthy environment to be an essential element in the full enjoyment of human rights. But this resolution, like virtually all General Assembly resolutions, is not legally binding. The member states are free to ignore it.

The ICJ opinion also relies on what it calls the “climate change treaty framework,” including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, to support its so-called “legal” conclusions. The opinion refers to a theme running through all these multilateral agreements – “common but differentiated responsibilities.” This is a fancy euphemism for yet another scheme to redistribute wealth from more prosperous countries to developing countries. The UN still considers China, which has the second largest economy in the world, to be one of the developing countries!

The Paris Agreement requires its parties to set emission-reduction targets, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), with the goal of limiting global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. These targets are only aspirational, not legally binding commitments. While the Paris Agreement requires its parties to have an NDC and to take steps towards achieving it, the parties are not legally required to actually fulfill the targets they have set out in their respective NDCs.

In short, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change is little more than a virtue-signaling document that bad actors like the Chinese regime can easily manipulate. No wonder President Trump decided to withdraw the United States from this travesty.

Finally, the International Court of Justice claimed that so-called “customary international law” requires countries “to use all means at their disposal” to prevent activities within their jurisdiction or control from harming the climate system due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Customary international law is an ambiguous, opaque concept, subject to being misused to justify what its proponents think the law should be. Presumably, as far as the ICJ is concerned, “to use all means at their disposal” would include ending new production of fossil fuels and no more granting of licenses for exploration or fossil fuel subsidies.

President Trump’s America First policies include lowering the barriers to more fossil fuel exploration, drilling, production, use, and sales. He has little regard for what he calls the Green New Scam that the ICJ has bought into.

The ICJ is an unelected, unaccountable, globalist institution that is unabashedly progressive. The Trump administration will surely ignore its advisory opinion in pursuing energy policies that are in the best interests of the American people.

However, the ICJ opinion will give climate activists valuable ammunition in their lawfare campaign against the Trump administration and fossil fuel companies with lawsuits filed in progressive U.S. courts. Moreover, some undeveloped countries will likely use the ICJ’s advisory opinion as the basis for lawsuits they file at that same international court against the United States, seeking “full reparation”for alleged damages caused by U.S. fossil fuel activities.

The International Court of Justice, like the United Nations itself, exemplifies the risks that globalist institutions pose to national sovereignty. President Trump should continue to pull back from these institutions whenever they conflict with his America First policies.