ICJ Ruling, K-Pop DH, & Local Youth Voices

This Great Idea is based on the fabulous news – shared by both Christiana Figueres in her Outrage + Optimism podcast/blog and Katharine Hayhoe in her Talking Climate blog.

Read Christiana Figueres’ July 24, 2025 post here.

Read Katharine Hayhoe’s July 26, 2025 post here.

The Good News*?

On Monday, July 23, in the Great Hall of Justice, Judge Iwasawa Yuji, President of the International Court of Justice, delivered the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on climate change.

Figueres writes, ‘It is the most far-reaching legal statement ever made on the responsibility of States to protect the rights of current and future generations to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. And it is the clearest legal affirmation to date that cooperation among States to address climate change is not optional – it is a binding obligation.’

Hayhoe notes, ‘It’s true that the ruling is an advisory opinion with no legal mechanism for enforcement. However, it represents important precedent that will have weight in other courts as litigation continues.’

Figueres enumerates the many individuals and organizations whose work – over decades – led to this enormous legal win.

Hayhoe points out that some of those organizations originate in countries that now, ‘may be entitled to reparations from the world’s top emitters’, then quotes Flora Vano, Vanuatu country manager for the non-profit ActionAid (a major force behind this verdict), as saying, ‘This ruling is a powerful tool we can use to demand that those most responsible for this climate crisis be held accountable.’

Both underscore that, in Hayhoe’s words, ‘this ruling is yet more proof that ordinary people, when they use their voices, can change the world.’

Or, as 30-year Vanuatu climate activist Cynthia Houniuhi said, ‘This is a victory forged by Pacific youth but owned by all’.

You can find more on Vanuatu and other groups’ indomitable spirit and extraordinary climate justice work in Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage (Fortress) and more concisely in San Kwon‘s article, Vanuatu Leads Recent Initiatives in the International Push for Environmental Justice, on Earth Law Center’s website, and/or, The Guardian’s article, ‘We Were Heard’: The Pacific Students Who Took Their Climate Fight to the ICJ – and Won.

What’s the Great Idea?

Pair this amazing Good News – highlighting the quotes from Vanuatu activists and other commentary on the actions of a few ‘ordinary people’ – with the fantastic global phenom that is K-Pop Demon Hunters, which so powerfully heralds this same phenomenon – especially in What It Sounds Like.

Consider the astounding 2024 win: Montana Top Court Upholds Landmark Youth Climate Ruling, the upshot of which is,

‘Montana’s Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s decision that had sided with 16 young activists who argued that the state violated their right to a clean environment. The lawsuit was brought by students arguing that a state law banning the consideration of climate when choosing energy policy was unconstitutional. In a 6-to-1 ruling, the top court found that the plaintiffs, between ages five and 22, had a “fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.’

How might your young people raise their voices?

Collective creation care work is a powerful antidote to the helplessness, hopelessness, depression, and despair too many young people experience – directly connected to the climate crisis.

Begin where Houniuhi began on the day of the verdict:

Pray together:

  • Notice the beauty and fragility of your particular place.
  • Notice the interconnectedness of soil, water, air, other-than-human, and human creatures in your particular place.
  • Notice the belovedness of all that is in your particular place.

Then –

Wonder together:

  • How does this beauty and fragility, this interconnectedness, this belovedness, speak to your young people?
  • What love for your particular place is stirred in your young people?
  • What are your young people passionate about with regard to your particular place?
  • What are their deep, immediate, local concerns for your particular place?

Raise voices together:

  • What do your young people most want to say?
  • What form might their message take?
    • Consider music, public visual art, film, letter writing, theater, etc.
  • Who needs to hear from your young people?
  • How can you amplify and direct young voices so that those who need to hear, hear?

Reflect together:

  • Reflecting on What It Sounds Like, lift up the power of:
    • ‘finding harmony’
    • ‘shattering the silence’
    • ‘rising, defiant’
    • ‘shouting in the quiet, “You’re not alone”‘
    • and recognizing that ‘none of us are out here on our own’
  • Pay attention to individual and group feelings:
    • How does it feel to collaborate in creating a shared message or vision?
    • How does it feel to know that your message was heard by its recipients?
    • What other messages or actions does this practice inspire?

Collective climate action is desperately needed at every level of community: hyper-local all the way to global. Empowering our youth in working together to share their needs and visions for the future is a key way to combat both eco-anxiety and climate change!!

Remember: ‘The most far-reaching legal statement ever made on the responsibility of States to protect the rights of current and future generations to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment’ came about because individuals and small groups of ‘ordinary people’ – most of them youth and young adults – came together and made their voices heard.

This IS What It Sounds Like!!!

[*Yes, I capitalized this ‘Good News’ because for the planet as a whole and every part of God’s beloved and good creation, this is, indeed Gospel Good News.]