More than 50 years have passed since countries began embracing the “polluter pays principle” – the simple idea that those responsible for pollution should pay for it. When the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) introduced the idea in 1972, it applied to the costs of preventing and controlling pollution.

Since then, the principle has been extended to pollution’s damage to the environment and public health. In 2021, the European Union concluded that the principle was not evenly applied across its member countries, so it launched a “fitness check” whose results were scheduled to be released sometime this year.

In July, the International Court of Justice ruled that the polluter pays principle should apply worldwide. It declared all countries have a legal obligation to protect the climate system from greenhouse gas pollution by regulating polluters in their jurisdictions and, if necessary, seeking reparations.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to make polluters pay. The first is to assign a price to carbon that reflects the true cost of fossil fuels to people and the planet. At last count, 75 carbon-pricing mechanisms had been implemented by 44 nations and 33 sub-national governments.

The second method is litigation. The United Nations and Columbia Law School report that more than 3,000 climate-related lawsuits are underway in 55 government jurisdictions and 24 international or regional bodies. They generally seek money to compensate the victims of climate change for its damages. Some lawsuits also seek to penalize fossil fuel producers for covering up the link between their products and global warming.

Unless we see more of the first method, we are likely to see more of the second. The United States is a prime example. With Congress failing to price carbon and the current president refusing to acknowledge that climate change is real, two-thirds of the climate lawsuits have been filed in the U.S.

Meanwhile, scientists are lending credibility to legal damage claims by quantifying the extent to which global warming and fossil fuels exacerbate bad weather.

Outside the U.S., litigation is most active in the Global South, where 305 cases are underway. More than 50 climate lawsuits are underway in Australia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Germany, as well as the U.S.

Some cases are attempting to establish new precedents for the fossil-energy industry’s liability. For example, last May in the United States, a woman sued three of the world’s biggest oil companies for the death of her mother during an unprecedented heat wave. Scientists submitted a study that the heat wave would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.

The results of these cases have been mixed, so lawmakers may be asked to better define liability. Donald Trump is also active in this arena. He has ordered the government’s attorneys to fight state-level climate policies. At the same time, fossil-fuel companies are lobbying the U.S. Congress to exempt them from accountability for their pollution and their decades of deceit. The industry cites the precedent where Congress has excused gunmakers from liability for gun deaths.

This is the complex legal world we have entered because national governments have not fulfilled their self-identified obligations under the Paris Climate Accord. It has been 10 years since 195 nations agreed unanimously to limit fossil energy pollution enough to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels. Now, many scientists say the goal has become unattainable.

Worldwide greenhouse gas emissions reached a record high last year, even excluding those from changes in global land use, such as deforestation. Emissions have gone up an average of 1.5 percent annually since 1990. Last year, they were 65 percent higher than in 1990. The most important indicator – the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – is approaching 430 parts per million, far above the safe level of 350 ppm. In May, the concentration broke a record, reaching a level the planet has not experienced in at least 800,000 years.

With nations preparing to convene next month for their 30th Conference of the Parties (COP 30), they still have not established a timetable for the world’s transition from fossil fuels to pollution-free energy. In fact, their written products avoided using the words “fossil fuels” until last year. Yet, electricity generated by solar and wind technologies is less expensive around the world. The International Energy Agency reports that solar electric projects were more than 40 percent less expensive than the cheapest fossil fuels last year, while onshore wind generation was 53 percent cheaper.

One glimmer of hope is that three of the biggest carbon polluters – the United States, Russia, and Japan – have achieved absolute decoupling of emissions and economic growth. Their economies have grown significantly over the last 34 years, while their greenhouse gas emissions have declined. That should forever dispel the myth that clean energy requires economic sacrifice.

However, the larger picture remains gloomy. Under the Paris agreement, countries were supposed to update their carbon reduction plans last February. When most failed to do so, the United Nations extended the deadline. When national leaders met at the United Nations in New York City last month, they were greeted with a report showing that the “gap between fossil fuel production and climate targets is wider than ever, with 20 countries accounting for 80 percent of oil, gas, and coal production.” Nearly half the countries still had not updated their plans.

Meanwhile, the negative effects of global warming are growing. Several island nations are in imminent danger of disappearing due to rising sea levels. At least five in the Solomon Islands have completely disappeared. Nearly 50 cities and regions worldwide have been completely or significantly depopulated because of rising seas, coastal floods, erosion, landslides, or saltwater intrusion.

Analysts report that “global damages from climate change are severe and escalating, resulting in trillions of dollars in economic impact and significant human impact from extreme weather events. The costs are projected to grow substantially, with some estimates placing future annual damages at trillions of dollars, highlighting the need for both adaptation and mitigation efforts.”

It is clearly time for the international community to try something new at next month’s COP. New multilateral and multisectoral agreements, apart from those under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, may be an option, such as the “climate clubs” proposed by Nobel laureate economist William Nordhaus in 2015. Another example, advanced by the European think tank Bruegel, is a coalition between the UK, Japan, Korea, Australia, India, Canada, Mexico, and perhaps China. It would signal that these countries are not willing to follow the current U.S. administration’s irrational and dangerous climate denial.

In past articles, I’ve recommended amending the Paris agreement to require that participating nations make their carbon—cutting goals enforceable under their own laws and regulations. Although the UN likes to say the Paris pact is “binding,” it only binds signatory nations to the negotiation process, not to concrete mitigation targets.

Most important right now, countries should not give in to President Trump’s arm-twisting to buy fossil fuels from the United States. Trump is using the threat of higher trade tariffs to bully other countries into buying more American oil and gas. Unfortunately, the EU, which was already increasing its purchases of American gas to replace supplies from Russia, agreed to more than triple its purchases of U.S. crude oil, nuclear reactor fuel, natural gas, and other petroleum derivatives at a cost of $750 billion. Trump has used tariff threats to pressure South Korea into buying more U.S. fuels and Japan into considering investing in a U.S. LNG export project.

It has become a political cliché that we have everything we need to bring climate change under control today, except political courage. Five countries have achieved soft landings on the Moon, yet many countries act as though a soft landing to decarbonization is beyond their grasp. It’s not just a livable planet that’s at risk. If we insist on ruining it, we will have to give up our pretense as the world’s most intelligent species.