This article was first published on 21-01-2026.
Receiving an honorary doctorate from the university in the city where he has worked for 25 years, and where both his daughters studied, feels like “a gesture of support, an encouragement to keep doing what I’m doing”, says Roger Cox in his office at Paulussen Advocaten in Maastricht. It sounds modest coming from an attorney who has received global recognition, from being named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2021 to winning the Dresden Peace Prize, placing him alongside Aleksei Navalny and the European Court of Human Rights.
What is all the more remarkable is that Cox started out in construction law rather than climate litigation. His career took a different turn 20 years ago, when he watched Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth and began to ask himself what he personally could contribute to the fight against climate change. “I first looked into environmental law – it seemed the obvious place to start. But along the way, I found out that its primary purpose is to protect the status quo, so companies can keep doing what they’re doing.”
Cox realised he needed to take a different approach. “Climate change is about much more than the environment. It affects finance, energy supply, human rights. Focusing on the latter in particular can drive real change.” The logic, he explains, is that major contributors to climate change are failing to meet their “duty of care to society”: the actions of these companies and institutions put others at risk. “Even if there are no specific laws and regulations requiring them to reduce emissions, for example, they should still take responsibility for that. The emissions they produce today will harm humanity decades from now – that’s scientifically undisputed.”
Major players
He set out his ideas in his 2011 book Revolutie met recht [Revolution Justified], which laid the groundwork for his climate litigation. His best-known case is undoubtedly the one he brought against the government of the Netherlands on behalf of the Dutch Urgenda Foundation. The court ruled that the government had to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020, compared with 1990. It inspired new cases around the world, says Cox, “with a lot of judges adopting our reasoning. We hope the Shell case will have the same effect.” With that case, brought on behalf of Milieudefensie/Friends of the Earth Netherlands, he aims to force the oil giant to halve its carbon emissions; the Supreme Court is expected to rule on it next year.
Next, Cox and Milieudefensie are taking on the Dutch bank ING together. “We’re focusing on the major players, not the corner bakery. A lot of industries are dominated by a handful of multinationals. They largely determine the systems we live in.”
The real problem
That’s what it all comes down to, says Cox: power dynamics. “I think a lot of people don’t see – or don’t want to see – the underlying structures. Climate change is only a symptom of the real problem: oil and gas companies have become too powerful. Since the 1970s, neoliberal ideology has increasingly shifted power from governments to corporations. These companies are increasingly organised on a multinational scale, giving them new leverage. If they don’t like something, they can threaten to relocate to another country. And through mergers, they become ever larger, with enormous revenues. With that kind of money, you can buy anything.”
That power is then used to preserve existing systems, Cox continues. “Political lobbying, greenwashing, hiring the best lawyers… It’s what made Amsterdam’s financial district rich. The climate crisis could already have been solved, but companies would rather give profits to shareholders than invest them in innovation. And when things get tough, it’s never the shareholders who have to tighten their belts. Cuts and redundancies are borne by workers and citizens. That’s where much of the discontent in society comes from. And who gets the blame? Those who cannot defend themselves – asylum seekers, LGBTI+ people.”
Sacrifices
Taking on powerful polluters has required personal sacrifices. In interviews, Cox often speaks of the years when he spent countless nights and weekends at the office, missing much of his daughters’ upbringing. “It’s the only way to win these kinds of cases.” Won’t that discourage law students and young graduates from following in his footsteps? “Not everyone needs to follow my path – it’s not representative. We’re trying to break something open. Once that’s done, others can build on our work. They can do so with a healthy work-life balance.”
But anyone can make a difference outside the courtroom, Cox says. “Talk to each other about why things are happening the way they are. Make your voice heard. Show that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can go vegan or vegetarian all we want, but that alone won’t change enough.” He points to Fridays for Future, the school strikes for climate. “Before the pandemic, they had a huge impact on the way politicians talked about the issue.”
Pushback
What about the fear of being labelled an activist? “No one should lose sleep over that”, Cox says firmly. “It’s a tried-and-tested strategy used by certain groups – the far right, neoliberal think tanks – to silence people. They go out of their way to give the word a negative connotation. The same thing is happening with the word ‘woke’, which is really about empathy. Activism is about engagement; there’s nothing wrong with that.”
It’s simply “how the game is played”, says Cox. “I’d always take resistance as encouragement – it means you’re pushing in the right place. If there’s no pushback, the status quo isn’t feeling threatened and you’re just going along with the crowd. If anything, you should actively seek out resistance.”