The Copenhagen process is multilateral, focused on reaching global agreements. But to get to a strong and truly effective global climate regime, bold bilateral initiatives may be needed. The conditions are propitious for a deal between China and the US, the world’s largest and second largest emitters, but that will call for imaginative and committed leadership on both sides as...
One gets a new perspective on climate negotiations when your toes are about to fall off! It took me 8.5 hours of standing in sub-zero temperatures to get registered at the Bella Centre (and this is after I was only about fiftieth in line, showing up at 6.45am). There were thousands of people behind me when I last looked back....
Monday, December 14 – The climate negotiations ground to a halt for much of today, as negotiators debated the organization of work for the second and final week of the meeting. The ostensible cause of the breakdown was concern among (some?) developing countries that the Kyoto Protocol (KP) track in the negotiations is moving more slowly, and getting less...
For too many years American climate change debates were political contests in which scientific evidence took a back seat to political posturing, obfuscation, and ultimately, inaction. Today, the science demonstrating that our world is warming and that humans are a primary cause of this warming is unambiguous. Though there remain a few public voices willing to deny the...
Here in Copenhagen, agreeing on some principles of climate finance, at least in very basic form, is at last becoming a priority. Last week, after announcing EU money for a climate change fast start fund, German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged that developing countries would only enter into a climate agreement if sufficient money was committed by developed countries: “This is...
As the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen enters its crucial week, we will be joined by a few guests who will be blogging about the climate talks, sometimes from Copenhagen itself. Dan Bodansky of the University of Georgia (and soon to be of Arizona State University) and the author of the book The Art and Craft of International Environmental Law has already...
One of my favorite issues of the New York Times Magazine is its "year in ideas" issue, which comes annually in December. Because OJ is a repository of things related to battlefield robotics and law and ethics, I wanted to flag for your attention the item by Dara Kerr, "Guilty Robots." [I]magine robots that obey injunctions like Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative...
President Obama's Nobel Prize speech yesterday made reference to the moral authority, under the ethics of the just war, for armed humanitarian intervention in some situations. It is a topic that has been debated and discussed as a matter of international law for, well, a long time, but which gained particular urgency following on Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo in the...
[As noted earlier, Professor Dan Bodansky is continuing his dispatches on the climate change talks. He is in Copenhagen this week and next, and sends us this initial letter. OJ will be providing additional commentary on the climate change talks -- from the conference, and from other academic commentators -- over the next week. Dan's letter is being cross-posted at...
Obama’s Nobel Lecture is a great speech. He spoke strongly in favor of international institutions and even more so international law. The great surprise of the speech is its unstinting support for just war theory. There is no doubt that Obama’s Nobel Lecture is the most hawkish one in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize. ...
Der Spiegel has an excellent story on the possibility that a Eurozone country might default on its sovereign debt, with economic, political, and legal consequences that could be anything from serious to dire. The country is Greece: Greece has already accumulated a mountain of debt that will be difficult if not impossible to pay off. The government has borrowed more than...
The Guardian has a leaked copy of what it's calling "the Danish text" (see it here). Apparently, this draft was developed by the Danes along with other developed countries including the United States and the United Kingdom in the hope that it might become the basis for whatever instrument emerges from Copenhagen. As widely expected, the instrument is framed as a "political agreement"...
