Trump’s EPA Is Now Flouting the World’s Highest Court

Consider the United States’ testimony in the ICJ case, submitted in 2024 by then-State Department legal advisor Richard Visek. After several pages touting the United States’ supposedly sterling record of fighting climate change, commitment to international law, and progress in corralling other countries to stem their emissions, the U.S. announced its opposition to the stance the Court eventually adopted. “A recognition that anthropogenic climate change can adversely affect the enjoyment of human rights,” Visek wrote, “does not mean that States have international human rights obligations to mitigate” greenhouse gas emissions. In perfect legalese, Visek added that, while the U.S. “looks forward to working with other States to exchange views toward the development of a right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment…any such right remains a matter of lex ferenda,” or future law, “rather than lex lata,” current law.

News of the ICJ ruling may or may not have crossed the desk of Lee Zeldin, the head of the EPA. His—and MAGA’s—take on climate is rather blunter than Visek’s, but the positions are not misaligned. “The Trump Administration will not sacrifice national prosperity, energy security, and the freedom of our people for an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas,” Zeldin said when announcing his plans for the greenhouse gas finding back in March. The “endangerment finding” in his crosshairs—which, in 2009, found that greenhouse gasses are harmful pollutants—has been a longtime target for MAGA world and its donors. The proposal to overturn that finding hasn’t been made public, and is almost certain to face court challenges. But the administration’s specific argument in this case rests on the idea that excess greenhouse gas emissions are not harmful because rising temperatures present no danger to public health and welfare.

Much of the outrage among climate advocates has historically centered on many Republicans’ refusal to recognize the reality that climate-fueled disasters are killing people in the U.S. and abroad. Ultimately, though, whether Zeldin and the rest of the Trump administration actually believe in the harms posed by greenhouse gasses matters a lot less than the White House’s very real plans to make them worse. And at the end of the day, belief isn’t worth much in the other direction, either. When it comes to international affairs, especially, Democrats have asked the public to take their beliefs—in the rules-based international order, human rights, and climate action—at face value, even as they work to undermine all of the above when it suits their own interests and those of their allies.