A legal tipping point on climate

Not only does this provide powerful support to the case for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty which seeks to draw a line under new exploration and production by the industry, it is a very small step from this to similar implications for sectors that are co-dependent on fossil fuels such as aviation and car makers. 

If, for example, an industry like aviation, which has no meaningful alternative fuel that works at scale, has expansion plans that mean its aggregate emissions increase, sooner or later it will surely face similar liabilities. 

Fossil fuels represent a complex of co-dependent polluting industries whose growth plans are hard-wired to each other. It is made up of suppliers, users, promoters, financiers and a range of other enablers. 

This ruling rings the bell of liability for all of them. It has created a new norm of reckoning that will touch not just all these players – but those who interact with them – from the cultural and sporting organisations who take their sponsorship to the councils and transport networks whose advertising boards are used for their marketing.

Uninhabitable

A vivid example of these multiple connections was reported in the television coverage of elite cycling race, the 2025 Tour de France. 

Giant oil company TotalEnergies is the Tour’s ‘energy partner’ and sponsors a team of riders, while at the same time it is being sued for greenwash, has had several rulings made against it for making false green claims, and is subject to allegations of being complicit in harming indigenous communities in South America. 

The ICJ ruling means that matters like this can become much more than a public image problem, it raises the likelihood of legal consequences of those connected to the oil company, from advertising agencies to sports bodies and banks. 

Another part of the ICJ ruling that was of great personal interest to me was the conclusion that nations who find themselves inundated due to climate change, where flooding and sea level rise make them effectively uninhabitable, will have their statehood and maritime boundaries protected even if populations get displaced.

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I went to the highly vulnerable, small island atoll nation of Tuvalu in 2001 for the World Disasters Report, published by the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies. 

Enablers

The island’s future was under question, negotiations were already under way for the relocation of its population with regional neighbours Australia and New Zealand and I raised questions over what would be their status and the future of its economic interests. 

Prefiguring the ICJ’s recent decision by over two decades, in 2002, Koloa Talake, Tuvalu’s prime minister, told the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Australia that his nation planned to sue the world’s worst climate polluters at the ICJ. 

The climate threats long warned of for Tuvalu are now becoming a grimmer reality. But the new ICJ ruling will now underpin any such actions taken by similarly endangered states. 

It also stands to strengthen other moves to hold fossil fuel polluters and their enablers to account. 

Narulla is also acting on bringing a complaint against the world’s biggest ad agency, WPP, for its work for fossil fuel companies. 

Bans

The complaint uses the mechanism of the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Companies and makes that case that WPP is contravening them. 

Narulla said when filing the complaint: “This complaint to the OECD NCP marks a step-change in legal risk for advertisers working to facilitate fossil fuel companies and other major polluters. 

“Our complaint clearly shows that by representing high emitting clients, WPP is in breach of its human rights, climate and environmental duties under the OECD Guidelines. WPP must disengage from these clients and start meeting its due diligence and disclosure obligations.”

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Everywhere, it seems, legal risk and difficulty is growing for those embedded in the fossil fuel complex. The Hague itself, home to the ICJ, recently passed a law banning fossil fuel advertising that included co-dependent industries like aviation, and courts rejected a legal challenge to it made by the travel industry. 

In the UK legal opinions emphasise the right of local government to implement similar bans, as well as big advertising estates like the London public transport system.

Promising

In a first UK parliamentary debate of its kind, MPs from the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green parties all spoke in favour of a UK ban on fossil fuel adverts. The only contrary voices were the official government spokesperson and his Conservative shadow. 

But now that the ICJ’s ruling has clearly articulated a new norm, it will be much harder for governments to pretend that the room is not full of the fossil fuel industry’s toxic promotional smoke and more, that ignoring it could create new liabilities. 

Shifts codified by the ICJ don’t happen without countless actions over years establishing the grounds for change. That involves science; activism, reporting and the tireless work of innumerable people who refuse to submit to a lethal status quo or be intimidated by the difficulty of achieving change. 

Not everyone will have noticed yet, but we are in a new landscape with a more promising view. 

This Author

Andrew Simms is co-director of the New Weather Institute, co-founder of the Badvertising campaign, coordinator of the Rapid Transition Alliance, and co-author of the original Green New Deal. Follow on BlueSky @andrewsimms.bsky.social. Find out more about the case against WPP, here.

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