Climate battle moves to courts as political momentum stalls

The political machinery for fighting climate change is grinding to a halt. Across Europe and the United States, governments are quietly stepping back from their climate commitments. The upcoming international climate negotiations in November are expected to produce little of substance. Yet in courtrooms around the world, something different is happening. Judges are beginning to do what politicians have not: they are holding governments and corporations accountable for warming the planet.

Over the past decade, climate activists have taken national governments to court with striking success. The Netherlands, Pakistan, Switzerland, and South Korea have all been forced by their own courts to adopt stronger climate policies. This week, Australia's highest court blocked the expansion of a coal mine in New South Wales on climate grounds alone. These are not symbolic victories. They are orders that change what governments must do.

The legal momentum has been turbocharged by three major international courts—the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice—which have issued advisory opinions affirming that countries have legal obligations to address climate change. A fourth opinion is expected from the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. These opinions are not binding judgments, but they are something more useful: they are legal blueprints. When a Paris court ordered TotalEnergies last June to account for emissions from its products, it cited the International Court of Justice opinion. When a Dutch court ordered the Netherlands to strengthen its climate plan in January, it did the same. The legal principles established at the international level are now flowing back into national courts, where they are winning cases.

The pressure on corporations is intensifying. Years of litigation have overturned permits for oil, gas, and coal projects in the United Kingdom. Norway's Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on North Sea oil licenses. Most significantly, the Dutch Supreme Court will decide in 2027 whether to impose a specific emissions-reduction target on Shell—a ruling that could reshape how energy companies operate. The legal net is tightening, in the language of those tracking these cases, and oil companies know it.

A more radical possibility is emerging from the courts: the idea that major polluters should pay compensation to people harmed by climate change, proportional to their greenhouse gas emissions. German courts moved toward this principle last year when a Peruvian farmer, Saul Luciano Lliuya, sued the energy company RWE for damages from glacial melt affecting his community. The courts rejected his claim but left the door open to future liability. Now similar lawsuits are pending across multiple countries. Philippine victims of Typhoon Odette are suing Shell in the UK. Residents of Indonesia's Pari island are suing cement maker Holcim in Switzerland. Pakistani farmers affected by the 2022 floods are suing RWE and Heidelberg Materials in Germany. These cases represent a shift from asking courts to force policy change to asking them to assign financial responsibility for climate harm.

There have been setbacks. Climate groups have lost lawsuits against oil companies in the United States. In New Zealand, the government changed the law to block a lawsuit brought by Maori activist Mike Smith against six domestic companies, though he has pledged to continue. But the direction of travel is clear. As political will collapses, the courts are becoming the arena where climate accountability is being built, one ruling at a time. The question now is whether these legal victories can accumulate fast enough to matter.