Britain could be sued over historic carbon emissions and climate change after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave a ‘legal opinion’ on climate change.

The opinion has two parts, the first would allow failures by countries to meet climate obligations to trigger legal action by affected states for compensation.

More controversially, a second part would allow for lawsuits over historic emissions, which place the UK, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, in the crosshairs.

Despite being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the UK is actually far from the biggest historical emitter. According to Carbon Brief, the UK ranks a distant eight, far being the US, China and Russia, who collectively compose a big three. This is based on data estimating emissions from 1850 to 2021.

Brazil and Indonesia follow both with higher land and forest related emissions than industrial. Germany and India then make up the top seven. It should be noted that the last four years are likely to made the top emitters ‘scores’ worse.

Climate Watch (1850-2022) excludes land use and forestry and changes the order a little, placing China top, but not the overall shape. In this the UK does not even make the top ten.

Anyway, back to the legal bit: The case was initially presented by a group of law students form the Pacific islands that are at the forefront of adverse climate change. Although the opinion is not legally binding, it will add weight to calls for redress and paves the way for future rulings. Should such cases arise, then the interesting thing to see is whether the larger but harder nuts to crack (China, Russia, US) will be targeted first, or the more likely to pay (Germany, UK)?

---