By Jo Nova
It’s a great day for lawyers
A court at the top of the UN Faraway Tree has proclaimed that rich countries have an obligation to “protect the climate system”.
In full Blob-propaganda mode, the BBC rushed to tell us how this was a win for the people, in “the worlds highest court”. The BBC-Blob doesn’t mention that the poor people of Britain (and the free world) will pay, and most of the poor islanders cheering in the South Pacific will get nothing. As the BBC says, dripping with Marxist-medicine: ““This is a victory not just for us but for every frontline community fighting to be heard.” When they say “us” they mean “the Blob”. When they say “frontline community” they mean the Blob rent-a-crowd protestors. They don’t mean frontline farmers, or small business owners or Christians.
The ruling is “non-binding” which means any sensible government will ignore it, just like the USA, France, Israel and India have in the past, and even Australia did in 2002. China pretty much ignores it every year. But this ruling is very useful for patsy governments who want to do something anyway (like give back the Chagos Islands for no good reason). It will suit sell-out Prime Ministers who want to score a UN job “après politics”. It will suit China because no one will sue them for fear of sparking a trade war, even though it’s the worst “climate troll” on Earth, instead, it will just sell more useless wind turbines, batteries and solar panels to patsy nations that use this symbolic ruling to pretend they must do more “weather-changing” on their national grid (or what’s left of it).
Top UN court says countries can sue each other over climate change
“Tonight I’ll sleep easier. The ICJ has recognised what we have lived through – our suffering, our resilience and our right to our future,” said Flora Vano, from the Pacific Island Vanuatu, which is considered the country most vulnerable to extreme weather globally.
The ICJ is considered the world’s highest court and it has global jurisdiction. Lawyers have told BBC News that the opinion could be used as early as next week.
The UK put in a tepid effort to defend its own citizens from the latest UN phishing scam:
But developed countries, including the UK, argued that existing climate agreements, including the landmark UN Paris deal of 2015, are sufficient and no further legal obligations should be imposed. On Wednesday the court rejected that argument.
Judge Iwasawa Yuji also said that if countries do not develop the most ambitious possible plans to tackle climate change this would constitute a breach of their promises in the Paris Agreement.
It is all about the money — ka-ching times a trillion:
Previous analysis published in Nature, estimated that between 2000 and 2019 there were $2.8 trillion losses from climate change – or $16 million per hour.
The only solution to the perpetual money funnel is to leave these unelected, unaudited, power hungry black hole institutions who serve no one but themselves and their Blob compatriots. It’s time to exit the UN. Turn off the taps. Axe the funding stream. This starts by embarrassing patsy governments who don’t serve their citizens and the schmuck journalists who serve the Blob and not their country.
The whole world could potentially sue everyone else
It’s a game of ideological roulette with unlimited plaintiffs.
The Pacific Islanders can apparently sue us for warming the world, even if their islands are not sinking (and the sun probably caused the warming). But what if Russia, Poland or the ‘akistans decide to sue The West for trying to cool the climate which could harm their farmers and reduce their crops? What if France sued everyone else for not building nuclear plants. Or Africa sued the West for not giving them nuclear plants? Or Indonesia sued us for cutting back CO2 and reducing their rice yields. The list only ends when Donald Trump puts a tariff on nations that still feed the UN.
We can feel the One World Government breathing in our ears. The ICJ threatens sovereignty — the unelected masters are making up their own rules. The money they eke out will be quietly siphoned through electricity bills and taxes in such a way that no one will be quite sure who paid what and when.
Who decides what “Protecting the Climate” means? Whoever that is, they are the Kings that want to rule over us.
The theatre of the absurd
As the BBC says, without so much as two minutes of analysis, “Campaigners and climate lawyers hope the landmark decision will now pave the way for compensation from countries that have historically burned the most fossil fuel”. As if.
The country that has generated the most carbon dioxide, bar none, is the US, and it withdrew from compulsory jurisdiction from the International Court of Justice 40 years ago, and the ICJ can’t hear a case against the US unless the US consents. (That was Nicaragua v. United States of 1986). In 2005, the US just ignored the ICJ ruling that the US violated the Vienna Convention. (Even Australia withdrew from ICJ jurisdiction over maritime boundary disputes in 2002 — just before East Timor was about to sue it over the Timor Gap oil field.)
The number two country on the global emitters list, — that has historically burned the most coal on Earth — is China, but good luck getting them to pay. They will, however, offer a Belt and Road climate loan, paid back in harbors, airports and railway lines or just pro-China votes in the UN.
So who is this legislative theatre aimed at? The only suckers left — Europe, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The U.N. doesn’t represent the people, they represent the government’s own interests.
There will be a day of reckoning when the people of the world grow weary of governments and revert back to the tribal level leadership when the nearing new Glaciation phase comes on.
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Hence TRUMP!….And the blob is trying every dirty trick in the book to stop him.
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So can I use this new ruling to sue John Kerry for making Montana to hot with his excessive emissions?
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Oh please do.
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Good idea; but the ICJ ruling does not allow individuals to sue other individuals.
The ICJ has no standing so this judgment is persuasive not binding. Grifter nations like Vanuatu which brought the complaint will try out Australia. A sensible government would use Jo’s post about the expansion of the South pacific islands and the BoM’s Pacific Sea Level and Geodetic Monitoring Project which shows no sea level rise since 1993:
http://www.bom.gov.au/pacific/projects/pslm/index.shtml
But Australia has not had a sensible government for years.
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I recently drove from Novocastria to Nelson Bay.
The sea water level was often apparent on either side of the road with recent rains just bringing it up a few millimetres so it was visible. The point is that geologists have known for over 50 years that sea levels had fallen by four feet, 1.2 metres, in the previous 2000 years. Apart from 1 or 2 millimetres the sea level has not risen in 2000 years.
This was known before CAGW was invented to enslave us.
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Loooooooooooooooooooong past time the UN got shut down.
For Evaaaaaaaaaa.
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During his first term as President DJT addressed the UN in New York and demanded that they get back to the basics set down when established after WW2, he said they must stop interfering in the affairs of member nations and cut back employee numbers and related costs.
Few today realise that when established the UN was infiltrated by left side politicians, for example Australian Labor Attorney General Evatt (a Communist) who provided the plan to have member nations sign treaties and agreements that could be used to get around constitutions – for Australia legislated by the Federal Government followed by State Governments and them then regulations created with compliance costs and enforcement fines.
The list is long, one well known is National Parks & Wildlife registered with the UN but funded by taxpayers in the country of origin and restrictions on activities including mining, logging, and so on.
Climate change politics is another.
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The UN should be renamed the Dis-United Nations.
Same as Australia should be renamed the DUSA – The Dis-United States of Australia.
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Woke Leftist Governments like Australia’s use pronouncements such as the above to govern in a manner against the will of the people, falsely claiming they have a requirement to conform with “international obligations”.
There is no obligation. Tell them bye bye, just like TRUMP did.
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Didn’t our government support this BS all the way thru the court. We have fools in charge of the hen house and Australia will be first to be sued by all the “sinking” islands! Our governments just continue to give away our sovereignty without a second thought.
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Actually if the current clownfest did agree to pay some island nation (note the euphemism!) a poultice, I think that would be the best chance to get every taxpayer really annoyed and finally awake to the fiscal Fabian fools to whom we’ve given the keys to the petty cash tin.
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Prime Minister John Howard answered a question from a journalist about Australia and “international laws”. He explained that sovereign nations cannot be forced to do anything and if international laws were to be imposed it would require permissioin from the government.
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How about permission from us; the people who pay the government and all of its hangers-on?
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With Britain Having introduced the industrial revolution which raised global prosperity to previously undreamt of heights, I think the world actually owes us money in thanks for our efforts.
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Albanese has just dumped our Bio Security requirements so the US can export beef to Australia. Albo is crawling to Trump. It is no challenge for Albo to crawl to the UN.
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Just so long as ‘country of origin’ on labelling is enforced, we should be alright.
But when you see what NZ does with frozen veg, I somehow have doubts.
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Jo, I suspect this means more credence should be given to claims like the recent Torres Strait Islanders’ climate compensation claim. Could this be a UN lead charge to re-educate Australian Federal Court Judges? Too right it’s time to exit the UN.
Truth is a UN exit is long overdue. Almost fifty years ago we heard about the illuminati Club of Rome’s Agenda 21 for a new world order and the UN has only gotten stronger since then. Proud members of the Club of Rome strut around the Net Zero mob with winning smirks.
The new world order has almost arrived and it’s up to us “suckers” to stop it. Rise up Europe, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand before it’s too bloody late.
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To paraphrase America’s 7th President Andrew Jackson, on a particular Supreme Court ruling he strongly opposed:
Therein lies the rub. A judicial ruling is meaningless without an enforcement mechanism, and the UN court has no teeth. The proper response to any ruling by this court that a particular nation doesn’t like is ‘get bent’.
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Hi Steve,
“The judge has made his decision. Now let him enforce it”.
Reminds me of this old saying.
““What you cannot enforce, do not command!”- Sophocles
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Not… quite.
The UN’s lackey, the WEF, threatened Morrison with increased interest rates on Australian loans if he didn’t invest more in renewables and less in coal. Suddenly the LNP are all over solar and wind like white on rice.
The UN itself doesn’t have much power, but its underlings do.
Australia, under Albo, is going to become an example of what NOT to do as a government if you want to remain a sovereign nation.
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Do you mean the IMF?
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Vanuatu – formerly known as New Hebrides, co-governed by France & the UK – is the most vulnerable to extreme weather globally. Say what!?
Despite being positioned in the middle of cyclone alley, on top of the Pacific Ring of Fire with volcanoes continuously belching fire and lava, along with the odd earthquake thrown in for good measure, for most of the year the island chain enjoys one of the most benign climates there is on Earth… if you don’t mind humidity and rain showers every afternoon about 3pm, perfect for a round of G&T on the verandah with dear friends ol’ Dicky boy chum what oh!
No mention of Iceland, the Falklands, Tristan da Cunha, Svalbard, South Georgia or Baffin Island? Those places are extreme, where one wrong move could be your last: however palm trees and a bath-warm ocean is not my idea of a ‘dangerous’ place. Mind you, Beijing has been making in-roads beyond Port Vila & Espiritu Santo… perhaps Ch!nese lawyers will sue Ch!nese lawyers and the money circus will go round & round & round…
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May we live in interesting times…
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More Marxist bulldust…move on and don’t waste your time getting wound into the circles of deceit and lies.
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The UN is busily pushing its world-Govt agenda on several fronts, the idea of a country being sovereign is being pushed into the background as we must all act the same, even if the rules from The Top are not enforceable.
“The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism was adopted in 2016 as an educational and data-collection tool. It is deliberately non-legally binding and begins with a clear, universal sentence: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” Thirty-plus democratic governments, the European Parliament, the UN secretary-general, and tech giants such as Meta, have endorsed or incorporated the definition. Australia’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, grounded her national plan released this month in the same wording, citing a 316 per cent surge in antisemitic incidents.”
Just because something from The Top is unenforceable by them, doesn’t mean you wont get jailed for it in Australia!
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/defining-antisemitism-is-no-threat-to-free-speech-without-a-definition-we-are-adrift-20250722-p5mgwb.html
Meanwhile the private money is leaving..
“Woodside, the largest Australian oil and gas company, has abandoned plans to build a lower-carbon fuels plant in the United States as energy users and producers reel from Donald Trump’s decision to slash tax breaks for green technologies.”
Another green hydrogen rort bites the dust!
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Hydrogen plants or schemes are dropping like flies. Car maker Stellantis has lost its gamble on fuel cells after burning through piles of cash. Trump is a successful business man and no business man would invest in anything green as it is worse than what it seeks to replace and more expensive were it not for taxpayers cash.
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They have no authority. Everyone knows it. But the Paris accord, signed by 160 countries, mostly alleged Climate victims, gives lawyers a reason to argue that we have agreed obligations. And as Trump has shown, there is no shortage of activist Imperious judges, even on the Supreme Court and certainly in the Federal Courts.
What has always surprised me is that the biggest losers are unwilling to challenge our Australian Climate laws, such as the Safeguard Mechanism. The very idea of stealing from people through credits, not taxes is reason enough to contest these laws in the High Court. Even Keatings law giving Australia away to Torres Strait Islanders and nomadic stone Age aborigines is just legal nonsense. There is no legal basis in the Constitution for either Climate laws or Race based laws. And carbon credits are a way to bypass the taxation system and beyond the right of any government since Magna Carta.
But company directors lack courage and lawyers are main chancers, so the money is in Climate and Aborigines, enough cash for all. Who needs laws and precedent when you have mortgages to pay and rich careers to create. In Australia, no one tackles the government. In a realistic replay of the Castle, Dad would be bankrupted for failing to surrender his property. Just like Prof Peter Ridd, head of Physics at James Cook University. The judges found a way to allow the University to win on a single technicality, that he had been disloyal in saying researchers lied about the health of the reef. Of course he was proven right, but no one cares. And Malcolm has his $444Million in cash.
The glory and cash is in supporting an oppressive dictatorial and criminal government, so Climate and Aborigines and mining and CO2 are the causes activist judges love most. And Dr Forrest says China is a great friend and not an enemy of Australia. Presumably the Wuhan Virus which shut the country down for years and the massive tariffs on our products and seizure of our coal were just things that happen between friends. And there is no way he is compromised, having made his billions from China. Presumably we welcome Chinese warships openly to test their weapons off the coast of Queensland, once they have finished with Taiwan.
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G’day TdeF,
I’m wondering if your “Wuhan virus” shouldn’t be labeled the “Fow-Chi virus”?
Cheers,
Dave B
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Dr Forrest was waiting in China to greet Albo on arrival a couple of weeks ago. He was there with other mining executives to talk about developing green steel.
https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2025/07/17/landmark-china-green-steel-talks-must-be-followed-by-action/
An article in today’s Age gives a sneak peak into the future, The warning sign about Chinese steel before Kew pool roof collapse
It’s paywalled so I’ll just paste a few paragraphs:
“Lab testing detected “inconsistencies” in the Chinese steel used to support the roof of a $73 million Melbourne public pool before it caved in during a construction collapse, a court has heard.
A court heard imported steel used by construction company ADCO to build the Kew Recreation Centre was found to have a range of issues, including insufficient yield stress, tensile strength and excessive aluminium.
Under cross-examination from VBA counsel Chris Carr, KC, on Wednesday, Zhang said senior external engineers had raised concerns about the accuracy of mill certificates for imported steel they had used on previous projects and, as a result, agreed the material for the Kew pool would need to be independently tested by Australian labs.“
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What else is it used in. Hopefully not in ant pre-stressed concrete bridge sections.
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Let’s hope the CCP use the same cr*p steel to make their armaments!
Which the Twigster doesn’t reckon they’ll use. Has he caught the Biden mental acuity virus?
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I think it is time that the people sued the governments of the world for their abject stupidity.
Instead of a UN court announcing the world can pay, how about the people announce that the government members, as individuals, can be sued for their decisions. A business director is liable for their decisions, surely the government should be too.
If an elected member takes us down the path of destroying all reliable power generation and then people suffer, (or worse), due to a lack of power, then the decision makers need to be held to account. Same for weather based decisions.
Imagine all those councillors proclaiming that the ocean is going to rise so you can’t build a house on the beach front. This has resulted in real world losses to the individuals who own these blocks of land. What needs to happen is the council need to PROVE the ocean level is rising and show it locally. If not achieved within a 5 year period, (eg no definitive data available after a five year spell), then clearly the decision was wrong. The councillors need to drain their own accounts to pay for the losses they have caused.
Too many courts have made decisions based on the vibe, the feelings of those before it and the sense of doing the ‘right’ thing. All without evidence. The judges need to be held to account for their decisions.
Maybe, if there were real consequences for making a baseless decision or enacting a law that destroys prosperity without merit, then this current round of lawfare would end. And what about making the applicants who started these court cases liable for all legal fees and costs if they lose.
Choices have consequences.
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Great idea, we could start back at the Lima Declaration.
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The starting point resulting in MAGA today
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Islands not sinking? Some of them probably are. Tectonic subduction has, for millennia, been Donald Trump’s fault. You know it makes sense.
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And what was Tony Abbott’s role in all of this?????????????????
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I don’t suppose the ICJ bothered to tell us what warming we could expect if the CO2 concentration went to 500ppm and when that would be. If it didn’t do that, how can they make decisions based on a (supposed) threat that they cannot define in any detail?
And what of the evidence that there is such a threat? There really is none. The IPCC’s so-called evidence is mostly evidence of warming and on the rare occasions that it isn’t, it’s just one or two papers written by people with vested interests.
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Perhaps we should all just sue the UN for actually not stopping any wars. After all, it was supposed to be their main job after inception.
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They supposedly prevented WW3, nevertheless the Security Council should be replaced by a small group of honest brokers.
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I’m really enjoying watching the desperate survival moves of the global blob as it perceives it’s death on the immediate horizon. I will enjoy even more the inevitable persecutions of the responsible individuals.
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The fact is that most Pacific coral islands are increasing in size and have been over the last 60 years.
Here’s a belated report from their ABC and quoting Dr Paul Kench’s studies.
Thanks again to Andrew Bolt for belting the ABC morons for decades until they threw in the towel and told the truth.
So much for their DANGEROUS SLR lunacy.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-08/why-are-hundreds-of-pacific-islands-getting-bigger/13038430
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And as Lawrie demonstrated with a link yesterday, the volume of 3 glaciers in the Karakoram mountain range have been increasing in size over recent years.
It’s described by scientists as an “anomaly”. I think anomalies are any phenomena that doesn’t fit with the AGW narrative.
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Here’s a quote from the Deltares Aqua study in 2016. More LAND increase was measured than water increase.
“Earth’s surface gained 115,000 km2 of water and 173,000 km2 of land over the past 30 years, including 20,135 km2 of water and 33,700 km2 of land in coastal areas. Here, we analyse the gains and losses through the Deltares Aqua Monitor — an open tool that detects land and water changes around the globe”.
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Here’s the Nature study of the 2016 Deltares Aqua report.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3111
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Here NASA reported on the 30 year data in 2016 of the Deltares global Aqua study and included the important land and sea measurements.
https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/article/tracking-surface-water-changes-over-the-past-30-years/
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https://richardsonpost.com/george-christensen/40103/the-5-woke-weapons-being-deployed-against-your-freedom-in-2025/
Is this what Albo_Labor has planned for Australia? From his press announcement about Carbon Tax it certainly seems so
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Andrew Forrest-led Fortescue takes another big step back on green hydrogen and flags $220m writedown on abandoned projects. Please stop blaming Trump. Just because the forrest can’t see the wood for the trees. Green Hydrogen has been a bummer from the get go! Now it’ll be just another Tax write off that will be paid for by all Australian Taxpayers
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Let’s face it, ANYTHING with “green” in the title is doomed, but only after a gazillion dollars of our money has been micturated against the masonry by our malevolent mini-Marxists.
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The President of the United States calls Climate Change a Chinese Hoax. And no one reacts. Why?
Because everyone knows that.
The Chinese output 40% of all CO2, more historically than all other CO2 emissions through time. No one says anything. Because everyone knows it.
Australia is one of the largest coal and iron ore exporters in the world, but we are aiming to shut down all our own industries, taxed into submission on CO2 with massive hidden and illegal taxes. No one comments.
Let’s hope Trump and his successors and his tariffs bring order to chaos. And an end to the UN Climate Crisis and Boiling Oceans, which are such patently absurd statements.
The Greens have abandoned any pretence of caring for the environment in favor of hatred of Jews and Israel and pushing identity and sex change, ESI and DEI and Black Lives as the biggest problems in ecology. From watermelons to full Jaffa oranges in a year.
You sense that the insanity of Climate Change, DEI, aboriginality, anti Semitism, unchecked mass migration is starting to produce a long overdue reaction. And Trump is leading the way and the English and Irish and Poles are not far behind.
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“Because everyone knows that.(..)” IT’s THE RUSSIANS.
He is only POTUS because RUSSIANS.
DNI Gabbard has just explained how POTUS Obama explained this.
The Russians are fully ‘developed’ due to skin pigment advantage.
Everyone else (China) are perpetually undeveloped victims for the same reason and can’t be blamed for ANYTHING.
That’s why IT couldn’t possibly have come from a lab.
Because virtue is matter of skin pigmentation.
When I resided in the BLOB City State of DC in the last century, this noted academic (MD no less) could be heard frequently on the local University radio station.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Cress_Welsing
Offered so that you may have deeper understanding of the intellectual origins of the fustercluck insanity about which you so eloquently and accurately rage.
And is on the verge of bringing down Europe and maybe the rest of us with it.
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Never forget what the true believers really believe and how crazy they really are.
Even if Human co2 emission increases stopped today it would take thousands of years to return us to 200 years ago or the LIA.
Anyone not understand their crazy nonsense now? Here’s that laughable lunacy from the Royal Society’s question 20 and answer.
IOW a win, win for the NON OECD and poverty and slavery for the rest of us. Will we ever WAKE UP?
https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/question-20/
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If only rich nations have to pay, surely that excludes Australia with a debt approaching one trillion dollars.
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FWIW
“CLAIM: Heatwaves to increase in frequency, duration under global warming”
“When I saw this press release from Portland State University, I knew I would not have to look far to spot the bias and/or error. First it’s a climate model, second, it’s the WORST climate model, CMIP6 -Anthony”
More at
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/07/23/claim-heatwaves-to-increase-in-frequency-duration-under-global-warming/
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Seriously, are there any good ones? A few years ago one of the better ones ( best of a bad bunch) was Russian.
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The Russian one is in the CMIP-6 model shandy
Mentioned in Rud Istvan’s comment there –
“Every CMIP6 climate model except INM CM5 produces a spurious tropical troposphere hotspot. GIGO.”
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No doubt they also said that the law of gravity is discriminatory to fat people. Lawyers have no jurisdiction over science.
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If all the world sues all the world, the money stops working.
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‘International law’ doesn’t exist. ‘Law’ means a body of legislation binding on specified people (by birth or in a territory), enforced in a specified territory, publicly known, with standardised process in trials and specified penalties. International law falls short of these criteria. There are only international treaties and conventions, and signatory nations. Anything more is a pretence to authority. The United Nations clearly wishes to claim authority over nations, but that is a vanity.
The idea of international law was boosted by the Nuremberg trials, in which one charge against senior Nazis was (absurdly) ‘crimes against peace’. Those trials laid bare important facts of history and the Nazis got what they deserved, but jurisdiction was retrospective and incoherent.
If you hear talk of ‘international law’, ask which code of law by what treaty, ratified by whom.
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International Law feeds into the strange notion of ‘human rights’, as Jo noticees in her title. Of course I affirm that people should treat each other well, but ‘human rights’ are not the reason why.
TOne meaning is ‘rights which humans retain simply because they are human beings, having these rights at all times in the same way they have arms and legs.’ A second meaning is ‘rights which humans may have but non-humans (rocks, plants) don’t have, although whether a specific human has a specific right in a specific situation depends on the details.’
The first, unconditional, meaning of human rights is nonsense, because such rights may clash, just as your arm and my leg cannot occupy the same space. If, moreover, freedom is a human right then all prisoners should be freed. No general could order enemy troops to be fired upon. Despite such absurdities, many people uphold this meaning of human rights. Whether someone has human rights of the second, conditional, type depends on the social interaction between that person and others – on wider society. A prisoner has forfeited his right to freedom. That is why UK implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights categorises Absolute, Special and Qualified human rights. Yet people are encouraged to view human rights as discovered rather than invented, “just because you are human”. The idea focuses on self, not society. Perhaps that is its attraction.
Conditional rights are guaranteed conditionally by a State. If you break the State’s law then it withdraws those rights and punishes you. These are really civil rights. But are there rights that a State *should* grant? Moral wrong and right cannot differ on either side of a national border. If so, such rights might be viewed as human rights, which an orderly State recognises and upholds. A further step would be consensus across nations about moral right and wrong, which they enact in their laws. ‘International law’ is a confused halfway house.
The French Revolution advanced the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man (‘les droits de l’homme’). It influenced the Code Napoleon which gave continental peasants better justice in Napoleon’s empire. It is no coincidence that rights were advocated in a secularising culture that had been influenced by the Bible. It comes from the notion that man is in the ‘image of God’ and Christians who believe in human rights say these are endowed by God. This was held to be “self-evident” in the US Declaration of Independence of 1776, at least of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. But how self-evident is it? God says we have responsibilities toward others; to the man who asked who his neighbour was, Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Is the rights-based view equivalent to the responsibilities-based view, with one focusing on the receiver of benefit and the other on the giver? Both views require relief to be given, but the responsibilities view specifies whose responsibility it is to help: yours, if you see someone in distress. The rights-based view leaves that question open. If the responsibility is the State’s, via its recognition of human rights, a bureaucratic machinery must run into all parts of life. This may widen into totalitarianism – exactly what human rights are meant to combat – even as people become passive to the suffering of others and grumble “it’s not fair” about their own situation. The responsibilities-based view fosters selflessness, the rights-based view selfishness.
Clearly we do not have human rights before God, because God (who is omnipotent and good) allows ‘natural’ disasters so bad that a man who was responsible for them would be seen as a gross human-rights violator. According to the Bible God actually instituted human death as a punishment (Genesis 3:22-3 plus Romans 5:12), so he does not uphold any human right to life. Christians may prefer not to insult God as a human-rights violator; the only alternative is that human rights do not exist.
As for secular attempts to argue for the notion of human rights, Jeremy Bentham made the core arguments against the idea in his 1796 work Anarchical Fallacies (subtitled ‘An examination of the Declaration of Rights issued during the French Revolution’), stating that “Natural rights is simple nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense – nonsense upon stilts.” Decades later, Auguste Comte, the (secular) founder of positivism, denied the existence of human rights in his last work, Catéchisme Positiviste. So too did the Scottish philosopher David Ritchie in his book Natural rights: A criticism of some political and ethical conceptions (1895).
If a State acknowledges human rights, it gains a responsibility to fulfil them, because people can tell the authorities, “You say I have this right and you have the ability and authority to fulfil it, so give it to me!” But if a government provides food and housing – and human rights are mainly social (in contrast to civil rights such as habeas corpus) – then what of the motive to provide these things for oneself? How will government find the resources to provide for all? In one lifetime the Jarrow marchers’ ‘right to work’ became the right not to work and to live on benefits: a culture of entitlement. The UN in 1966 adopted an “international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights”. Human rights get ranked by the power politics of interest groups. Jurisprudential literature on rights will grow but settle nothing, because there is no coherent way to rank clashing rights.Jonathan Sumption, a former Justice of the UK Supreme Court, wrote in the Foreword to his book Law in a Time of Crisis (2021): “I doubt the value of multiplying rights, which often serve only to magnify and perpetuate grievances.” The Oxford scholar Nigel Biggar published ‘What’s Wrong with Rights?’ in 2020, pointing out that human rights come at the end of a chain of reasoning, not the beginning; that the idea cannot be sustained in isolation; and that human rights tend to grow in scope.
Boštjan Zupančič, a judge from 1998 to 2016 in the European Court of Human Rights, also gained a low view. In an interview dated 2019/12/9, Zupančič said:
There are no human rights, there is only access to the Court… Human rights were, ab initio, an American ideological showcase vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and the countries behind the Iron Curtain. When I was at Harvard in the 1970s, we assumed that to be obvious. It was an opportunity for internationalist lawyers, of course, but the rest of us did not take them seriously. Nowadays, saying that is almost sacrilege because human rights are no longer just an ideology. They have become a religion. For what purpose? Obviously, to justify anything, from migration to hate speech. It does not seem to bother the people involved in human rights that no one knows what human rights actually are. On the contrary, this nebulousness works for them because they can, in their propaganda, project onto the human rights screen everything they consider politically useful.
Indeed…
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The BBC would love this globalist fascist decision while it wonders why more and more people wake up to their far left Hamas loving viewpoint and cancel their TV licence. It is getting so long now many might not recall the Sachsgate Scandal when then far left ‘comedian’ Russell Brand and all round pompous tosser Jonathan Ross left rude messages on the ansaphone of the actor Andrew Sachs – forever immortalised as Manuel from Fawlty Towers – about his daughter live on air on their radio show.
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All countries should take the opportunity to submit a lawsuit against China. The UN would then quietly revoke the legislation.
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There’s corrupt, there’s very corrupt, there’s extremely corrupt, there’s totally corrupt……………and then there’s the UN.
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The UN is a democracy of dictatorships.
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In summer/autumn 2022 Pakistan suffered catastrophic flooding that the country’s leaders attributed to climate change, giving them a reason to demand ‘climate reparations’ from industrialised countries in general and the UK in particular at that year’s climate junket, COP27. In fact the 1950 floods (obviously not due to CO2) killed more Pakistanis even though the population was six times smaller. The 2022 flooding was so bad because Pakistan was only 5% afforested, reduced from 33% in 1947. Silt from deforested areas flows into reservoirs and reduces their capacity, and monsoon rainfall runs directly off the mountains with no delay due to passage through forest soil.
The Daily Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson wrote this suggested response:
Dear Pakistan,
It was with some surprise that we learnt that you and other countries, including Bangladesh, Kenya, Mauritius and even China, would be seeking “climate change reparations” from the United Kingdom at this week’s Cop27 summit. Apparently, you (and Ed Miliband) think that the terrible floods Pakistan suffered recently are entirely the fault of industrialised Western countries like our own because of historic carbon emissions.
While there may be some truth in that, other experts have suggested that the reason Pakistan experiences such terrible flooding is because you have cut down all your trees. Pakistan has the highest rate of deforestation in the world. When your nation was created in 1947, 33% of the total land mass was covered by forests; now that area is only 5%. Because of the lack of trees, the rain runs straight off the mountains into the silted up reservoirs which then overflow.
In addition, we would like to point out that Pakistan has always had major floods, many just as catastrophic as the recent one. The 1950 flood, for example, killed twice as many people as the 2022 flood within a much lower population. Not every natural disaster can be blamed on the United Kingdom, gratifying and lucrative though that accusation may be.
Pakistan is already one of the UK’s biggest recipients of aid. In 2019/20, you received around £302 million from our heavily indebted country, spanning areas including human development, climate and the environment. Most British people would consider that quite a generous gift to a nation which has its own nuclear weapons and a space programme. Pakistan also has more than a thousand coal mines. We do wonder whether you have any concerns about their impact or was it just British coal mines which caused a problem?
Plus, the present population of Pakistan is 225 million (up from 65 million in 1970) which will inevitably add to pressure on the environment. Sorry, there’s not a whole lot we can do about that.
The proposition, as we understand it, is that Pakistan should now receive “loss and damage” compensation from UK for the “cost” of historic emissions. How is that bill to be calculated exactly?
We remain proud of our Industrial Revolution which freed millions of ordinary people from back-breaking servitude, as well as causing a vast and sudden increase in life expectancy. For centuries, the average lifespan in the UK barely rose above 36 years. By 1901, life expectancy had jumped to 45 years (men) and 50 years (women), due to an increase in wealth, the production of cheaper goods, healthier diets and better education.
The UK will neither apologise nor make amends for the Industrial Revolution whose beneficial effects continue to be felt every day around our world.
Should you persist in your unfair demands for “climate reparations”, may we suggest you pay us royalties for the following: the internal combustion engine, Spinning Jenny, steam power, Tarmacadam, electrical telegraph, railways, automobiles, airplanes, radio, television, computers, pharmaceuticals and the world wide web.
We’ll throw in Parliamentary government and democracy for free as a gesture of goodwill. Bank transfers welcome.
Very best wishes and we remain cordially yours,
Britain
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