The $192 trillion question
I’m not entirely sure how I found myself debating a 192 trillion-dollar legal question over dinner.
Harj Narulla, who grew up in Tasmania (which he compared to both Scotland and Antarctica), is now an internationally recognised lawyer specialising in climate litigation. He walked us through the recent advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and why it matters.
The ICJ was asked two questions:
- What are states legally obliged to do on climate mitigation and adaptation?
- What are the consequences if they fail?
The answers were stronger (and better!) than many expected. The 1.5°C target is no longer merely aspirational; it is grounded in binding international law. Fossil fuel production, new licences and subsidies may constitute breaches of international obligations.
International law recognises three forms of reparation:
- Restitution – restoring what was damaged
- Compensation – paying for losses
- Satisfaction – apologies and acknowledgement
The largest compensation ever awarded by the ICJ is 375 million USD. Which sounds huge, until you place it beside 192 trillion USD in climate damages and realise we are talking about entirely different scales.
Then came the tricky part. Who pays?
At our table, the conversation turned to attribution. On a much smaller scale, I wrestle with this in agriculture. How much deforestation from a decade ago belongs to beef produced today? There are methodologies. They are debated and imperfect.
Now scale that up to centuries of industrialisation.
We asked:
- When does responsibility begin?
- Are we responsible for our grandparents’ emissions?
- Should liability sit with individuals, states and/or companies?
- What happens when those harmed are forced to migrate?
There are no climate police. Enforcement is slow and political. But legal norms matter. Someone at my table drew a parallel with a fatwa in Islamic jurisprudence: a formal legal opinion that does not enforce punishment but clarifies obligations and shapes behaviour. The ICJ advisory opinion works similarly. It cannot compel payment, but it can shift the legal frame.
Rather than waiting for one nation to sue another, we briefly entertained a more radical idea: everyone versus everyone(!). A global reckoning in one sweep.
Humour me while I do some very rough maths
If global damages are 192 trillion USD and the UK accounts for roughly 3% of historic emissions, that is 5.76 trillion USD. Divide that by 67 million people and it is about 86,000 USD each. Eek. Over 30 years, roughly 2,866 USD per person per year – still eek.
Redirect fossil fuel subsidies, add a modest wealth tax, introduce a serious carbon price. Still daunting, but perhaps not impossible. At that point, we stepped back and left the $5.76 trillion settlement to people who actually know what they are doing.
The question is no longer whether there is responsibility. It is how we respond to it. And that was the hopeful part. It doesn’t have to be viewed as punishment; it could be possibility - not a reckoning meant to drag anyone backward, but a deliberate step toward a better world.
