The ICJ Has Spoken: Fossil Fuels Have No Future

History will remember July 23, 2025, as the day international law caught up with climate reality. The International Court of Justice has issued a groundbreaking Advisory Opinion: States that continue to approve fossil fuel projects, subsidize oil and gas, or fail to regulate the climate impacts of corporations may now be in breach of international law.

The message is crystal clear: climate inaction is no longer a political choice, it is a legal violation. The Court reaffirmed that historical emitters bear greater responsibility to reduce emissions and limit warming to 1.5°C, that States must regulate businesses' climate impacts, and that climate-vulnerable nations may seek reparations for the harm they endure.

This opinion shatters the last excuse of complacent leaders and fossil fuel lobbyists. For decades, they have treated the Paris Agreement as optional, allowing oil and gas expansion to undermine every climate target. Now the highest court in the world has made it clear: governments have a binding duty to end fossil fuel dependence.

The timing of this ruling could not be more significant. Across the Amazon Basin, lawmakers from Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia are advancing coordinated bills to ban oil extraction in one of the planet’s most vital carbon sinks. These legislative efforts embody the type of action the Court’s opinion now legally compels: ending fossil fuel expansion, protecting ecosystems, and upholding intergenerational justice.

For frontline communities, small island states, and climate-vulnerable nations, this Opinion opens a legal path to demand reparations for the devastating impacts they endure: rising seas, extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and cultural erasure. It is a long-overdue recognition of the moral and legal debt owed by the world’s biggest polluters.

Our generation faces a stark choice: comply with international law and secure a livable planet, or defy it and condemn millions to climate chaos. There is no middle ground.

We, as Parliamentarians for a Fossil Free Future, reaffirm our commitment to push for fossil fuel phase-out laws, hold polluters accountable, and secure the finance needed for a fair and equitable transition to renewable energy.

The era of impunity for fossil fuel expansion is over. The Court has spoken. Now leaders must act with ambition, justice, and urgency.

Parliamentarians For a Fossil-Free Future