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It’s the end of the world as we know it. Or is it? Depends on who you ask, apparently. The International Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the United Nations body whose mission is to “provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies,” has proposed numerous projections as to when Earth will pass the tipping point after which it’s simply too late for us to change our pollutin’ ways. The most extreme, RCP8.5, published back in 2011, suggested disaster. Now, however, the IPCC says those predictions – which they’re now saying always represented a “worst-case scenario” – “have become implausible.” Despite this, the UN voted 141-8 this week that countries have a legal obligation to address climate change. The more things change (like policy and predictions of doom), the more things stay the same (like the nature of politics, oh, and the climate).
Climate Change – More Politics Than Science
Back in July of 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that countries must “prevent harm to the climate system and that failing to do so could result in their having to pay compensation and make other forms of restitution,” The Guardian reported at the time. Flash forward to May of 2026, and the UN General Assembly felt moved to pass a resolution backing that opinion. Eight nations opposed – the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, Yemen, Liberia, Russia, and Belarus – while another 28 abstained from the vote.
Here’s the kicker: Those eight nations standing in opposition are among the world’s biggest oil producers and carbon dioxide emitters. They’re on the list, but not all inclusive. It should be noted that the US is ranked number two in the world for emissions at just over 4.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, but China came in at number one with a whopping 13.1 billion.
Still, the UN resolution was a glowing success; 141-8 is a landslide. So, what power does the UN General Assembly or the ICJ have to enforce their newest edict? Bupkis. Either body can demand that the US – or any other nation – pay a fine or pay reparations or even have its UN ambassador jump around in a circle on one leg while patting his own head. But if said nation simply ignores the demand, there isn’t really anything the UN can do about it.
The Ever-Shifting Sands of Settled Science
Since even before Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, and Malcolm K. Hughes published their “hockey stick” graph in 1999, the climate change conversation has been one of accusations of fraud from one side and shifting goal posts from the other. Is the data we’ve been presented with over the years accurate? Again, that all seems to depend on who you ask. But whatever may be true, we’ve certainly seen plenty of panic over what isn’t.
Remember Al Gore? During his 2007 climate presentations and his 2009 address at the Copenhagen climate summit, Gore said that scientists said there was a 75% chance the entire north polar ice cap could be ice-free by the summer of 2013 – or maybe as late as 2016. That, of course, never happened.
But it goes even farther back – beyond even the hockey stick. The UN in 1989 issued a ten-year window for a disaster that never materialized. Noel Brown, then-director of the New York office of the UN Environment Programme, claimed that if global warming wasn’t reversed by 2000, entire nations could be washed out by rising sea levels. Again, it simply didn’t happen.
There have been other examples, of course, perhaps the most amusing one recently being the 2019 declaration by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” Now, to be fair to Ms. AOC, she does still have about five more years for her prediction to pan out – so we can’t lump her in with Al Gore quite yet. But recent revisions to the IPCC models – and, of course, the ridiculously tight timeline she gave to begin with – suggest she may be well on her way to joining him.
Interestingly, not only are the most extreme models now being abandoned by the UN scientists, but all this is happening as global emissions and fossil fuel use continue to rise. According to data gathered by Statista, the world consumed 87.2 million barrels of oil per day in 2011, the year the IPCC released the now-rejected projection. That number ticked up slightly each year until 2019, when it hit a peak of 100.27 barrels a day. Consumption dropped off in 2020 due to COVID-19 shutdowns, but began climbing again in 2021, and hit a high of 105.15 barrels per day in 2025, with a predicted 106.53 being the daily number for 2026.
Now let’s look at fossil fuels in general. The Energy Institute measures the total consumption of coal, oil, and gas combined in terawatt-hours. In 2000, the number was 94,467. In 2011, it was 124,912. Again, there’s a slight dip in 2020, but the 2024 total was 142,421 TWh of fossil fuel consumption. Both graphs show a steady increase over the years, with that one exception, and yet the planet still seems to be handling it. So why all the hubbub? The Cato Institute probably summed it up best in a 2014 article on the topic: “The reason we have a global warming crisis is because crisis sells.”
