(Updated below ... Give me global oligopoly or give me climate death!)
I
Post-Copenhagen. At bottom, the question is legitimacy. The global New Class met in Copenhagen, convinced, as ever, that it had legitimacy to act as it proposed to act, with the UN as its vehicle, because legitimacy was conferred by “expertise.” The UN bureaucracy, its permanent culture of functionaries, endorsed the global New Class elites and their claim of legitimacy through expertise, because, after all, the experts were using the UN as the vehicle and thereby conferring upon it governance legitimacy — if you are Ban Ki Moon, what’s not to like about that? Together, they thought they had found the formula to buy off the poor world through the climate fund. They also thought they had found a formula that would bring the BRICs on board, by endorsing the Kyoto formula of encouraging industry to move from the rich world to China and India. Obama and the Democrats would deliver the United States.
In the event, it turned out that the BRICS and the developing world decided to exercise their particular forms of legitimacy — the legitimacy of the sovereign equality of member states at the UN — in order to demand more for relaxing their “hold-up.” Global New Class legitimacy at the UN encountered that other form of global governance legitimacy, that of the mass of member states. Whose legitimacy matters and for what? And what does it mean to say that a climate change deal requires, in Secretary General Ban’s words, an “equitable global governance structure” to administer it — especially given the many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many things that are apparently to fall under its tent, from global free trade to ice water in our glasses? What is this global governance, anyway? What makes it “equitable” and supposedly, therefore, legitimate? Is it legitimate to do a deal of global proportions, on climate change or anything else, and not involve everyone? Is “expertise” enough grounds for global legitimacy, the legitimacy required to remake relations from the top to the bottom, trade, jobs, lifestyles, you name it?
II
If your issue is simply the substance of climate change policy, and not UN politics, then you perhaps don’t much care about these abstract issues of legitimacy, global governance, and the UN. Until the end of Copenhagen, however, because it turns out that (given the breathtaking scope of things to be governed under the rubric of climate change, starting, really, with the whole global economy, as it affects ordinary people) that the meanings of global governance, legitimacy, and the UN matter after all.
What we call “legitimacy” and what Ban called “equitable,” after all, translated in the event, among other things, into a hold-up premium for the G-77 and a corresponding unwillingness of the G-rest to pay up past a certain point. Global governance, but “legitimate global governance,” meaning, it appears from Copenhagen, not just solemn obeisance to experts, but solemn obeisance to the ‘sovereign equality of states’ — which is to say, the UN and, in particular, the countries of the General Assembly.
For some of Copenhagen’s participants who believe(d) both that
- climate change is the existential problem of now and the future, but who are (were) also
- committed to global governance as an activity of the world together, and so committed to the legitimacy that comes with the UN over any nation-state that might act unilaterally, or little conspiracies of the great powers foisting off their oligopolistic deals on the rest of the world
... for them, legitimacy, particularly via the sovereign equality of states, is a problem.
Copenhagen just showed, for those who hadn’t thought this problem applied to them and their existentially important issues, that legitimacy means, among other things, that you’ve granted a “hold-up” to whomever you’ve ascribed legitimacy. Apparently that includes Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chavez. That’s not a problem for me, because I ascribe minimal legitimacy to the UN and zero to the General Assembly and its members qua members. But for a large number of international law experts, professors, academics, think-tankers, diplomats, journalists, and global governance devotees, this is a problem.
III
As to the academics: Let me now predict a sizable number of law review articles in the next three years, devoted to showing ways in which the General Assembly and its member states together, and its organs and appendages, and the Group of 77, are not legitimate when it comes to holding up deals on matters of “existential” import to law professors. Hooray for global oligopoly!! But those same law review articles will also have to show, presumably, how all this is consistent with the many things said against unilateral action by one state in particular, and consistent with actions by congeries of states acting as great powers to impose on others in the world.
(I’d add as well that for the first time in quite a while, international law professors, who are the minor clergy of global governance, will suddenly discover reasons for writing about the institutional United Nations — a topic under some neglect in comparison to the academic love affair with international tribunals and international criminal law. I predict a whole wave of law review articles giving a new theory of UN legitimacy, showing how it is true, and has always been true, and could never not have been true, that East Asia is at war with that global governance is really a theory of Some States Know Best, and that expertise, specifically in the form of climate change panels, confers legitimacy. It is even possible that law professors will conclude that the General Assembly, through its resolutions, does not make international law, not even when cited by the International Court of Justice.)
IV
Genuine climate change believers might therefore consider that the price of hitching their wagon to the UN might well have cost them the game, at least for some time to come. Versus, for example, a series of robust bilateral or multilateral deals among key players that simply ignored the UN and the motley of the General Assembly specifically. It always appears tempting to take a global problem and enlist the global go-to organization … but more attention to the history of the UN and its processes might have suggested that, if one were truly serious about the issue, the UN was precisely the venue to avoid.
It is perhaps difficult for the environmental climate change community to understand that, from the UN’s standpoint as a historical player (a standpoint that the UN itself is unable to articulate, however) climate change is not the defining issue and never was. The defining issue is the UN itself. Climate change policy is simply the latest, and particularly aggressive, vehicle that the international community hopes will drive forward toward UN global governance. If the history of UN causes, values, and agendas is any indication, climate change will be tossed aside if, and when, it too proves a bridge too far for global governance.
The wheel of politics turns at the UN — with the UN itself as the constant. Perhaps climate change and global warming will be the issue that alters the wheel of change and not-change, but so far there is little indication of that. None of this exhausts – far from it – the range of issues that swing in and out of fashion at the UN, particularly with respect to human development and global welfare. Not long ago, on account of the Asian tsunami, it was natural disaster. For a while it was pandemic disease. These are all important issues – let us have no misunderstanding – but they are also “flavors of the month” (as the NGO expression has it) among funders, at the UN, in the international community. They are also deserving of well-considered, well-funded answers.
As are the environmental issues that are not CO2, air pollution and water pollution, and many other environmental problems that cannot be captured in a global negotiation around the presumption that this percentage shift up or down in carbon emissions today will have one degree or a half degree or whatever degree at some far point down the road. The science behind the connection might be perfectly defensible, but it’s a purely notional idea, whatever the science behind it, so far as the negotiators are concerned. “I’ll give you half a degree z-decades from now and you give me $x-billions-today”? It would require remarkable faith in one’s discounting models to make deals like that — but its real-world significance is how much any future presumed degree shift translates into payments today to the developing world or, more precisely, to its rulers and their regimes: legitimacy, again. It is not entirely dissimilar from bank managers looking to single number indicators of risk from their derivatives and securitizations — the number is notional and anyway they don’t understand its derivation, but that doesn’t matter because it is merely a marker in negotiation.
Climate change has, for the moment, swept the field as the “it-girl” issue of the UN and all its processes. The confluence of “experts and enthusiasts,” together with the permanent search by the UN bureaucracy for the issue that will drive “global governance,” and the permanent seeking by the worst actors who dominate the General Assembly, snuffling around for new resources, ensured that whatever the merits of the issue, the actors would goad each other on to further and further claims – for money, for legitimacy, for political governance. Those who come to the governance issues from the inside of a single substantive issue, such as climate change, are perhaps taken by surprise, because, for the UN’s permanent actors and constituencies, climate change is just another issue on which to plump for global governance, on the one hand, and a hold-up premium on legitimacy, on the other. There were other, quite unrelated issues, for which the same governance claims were made; they failed, as this one likely will but, from the standpoint of the permanent interests of the UN, what matters is not any particular issue, but the perennial claim to governance.
V
Secretary General Ban meant it quite sincerely when he said that the world faced an existential crisis over climate change. What he meant, however, was not limited to climate change – but rather for global governance, for which climate change is an existential driver. But so might many other things, and will be, if this one does not work out. Because what matters for the UN is not finally climate change or anything other substantive issue, but the claim to legitimate governance of as much as possible. This is what the UN bureaucracy always says, about every issue, in which there is a suggestion, a hint, that it might be the thing that cracks open the possibility of the governance to which the UN believes it is legitimate heir. (The legitimacy question will not go away — and the international law experts will have to make some hard choices about what they prefer, their substantive outcomes on certain global issues or their hithertofor views of legitimate global process. I foresee much squaring of circles in the academic literature.)
But if your issue is climate change, query that you might not have given sufficient attention to the long history at the UN, across a wide range of issues, serially proposed to constitute “existential crises” for which only global governance could save us. There was something before, and there will be something after; seen specifically from the standpoint of the permanent and objective interests of the UN, climate change is not just a substantive issue, it is also a card to be played in a much longer game. Believing in Ban and in themselves, and believing that this time around there were clever answers to the collective action questions, the advocates before and at Copenhagen, the experts and enthusiasts, ratcheted up and up the agenda of things that would have to be addressed in this “existential” crisis. The agenda finally looked largely indistinguishable from the permanent wish list of governance — check back at previous instantiations of UN crises, however, whether 2005 or earlier ones, and much the same pattern emerges. Unable to withhold the “hold-up” of global governance legitimacy that goes along with the principle of sovereign equality, equally for Mugabe as for Brown or Wen or Obama or Merkel, demands went up and up. Then the bubble began to collapse.
VI
Other issues will come to the fore as this one recedes, for a time or until the next big review conference at which hundreds of millions of dollars can be spent on the peculiar culture and social affairs of global elites or else permanently. At the UN, however, these issues are inevitably part of the institutional cycle of permanent crisis. Whatever importance they have on their own, within the dynamics of the UN, they have a specific role to play in the waxing and waning of crisis-and-stasis.
Does the bubble of misplaced expectations, and its pricking, matter? Of course it matters if and to the extent one thinks that climate change is an important issue. Moreover, it is a humanitarian and welfare disaster for important issues, ranging from development to the global epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, etc., to peacekeeping and post conflict peacebuilding that have a moment in the sun, but then are displaced by some new enthusiasm on the part of the international community. There is a long list of issues that need to be addressed multilaterally, in some useful sense of multilateral, but serial, crisis attention is not the way to do it. The marching, but marching in place, of the UN, and its cycle of equilibrium sustained and weirdly strengthened by punctuated crises, has profound costs.
(PS. Stewart Baker’s take is very interesting, here, at Skating on Stilts.)
JohnF says:
“Because what matters for the UN is not finally climate change or anything other substantive issue, but the claim to legitimate governance of as much as possible.”
Is there any government, or quasi-government, that does not subscribe to this principle? I doubt it. I’d like to think that at the founding of the U.S. we did not subscribe to this idea, but the history of 20th century America has been overwhelmingly the march of the federal government to embrace this principle.
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December 19, 2009, 3:19 pmBlue says:
Climate change = NIEO Mk. 2.
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December 19, 2009, 3:34 pmChrisIowa says:
I work with some small towns that are more concerned with how to provide sewer, water, drainage, & police.
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December 19, 2009, 4:34 pmRyan Waxx says:
So because the Federal Government is abusively overreaching its powers, we really ought to let the U.N. do so as well out of a sense of fairness?
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December 19, 2009, 4:48 pmJoe - Dallas says:
Every time socialism has been tried, it has failed. First, in the late 1800’s the small socialist communities failed, the socialist leaders believed that if the entire state/country was governed under socialism, then it would work. When socialism failed in the entire country, USSR, eastern europe, etc, the socialist leader believed that it will work if the entire would was governed by socialism. Climate control is now socialism’s best hope to crate the utopian world so deeply believed by the left.
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December 19, 2009, 4:58 pmDoctor Gator says:
As if with a Black Hole, were seemingly are being sucked into an Orwellian World, in which the only true facts are those facts that the governing classes and their academic and media henchmen promulgate.
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December 19, 2009, 5:21 pmRich Rostrom says:
There is a fundamental difference between the UN and a national government, namely the much greater separation between the UN apparatus and the people over which it would rule.
Most national governments are unitary, and have all power the populace will allow them, or is compelled to allow them. The U.S. is a federal state, which limits the powers of the Federal government. Accretions of power to the Federal government have been made (mostly) by Congress, which is chosen by the people.
The UN has no authority whatever. It cannot impose anything on anybody, except with the voluntary participation of national states. It has no troops, no police, no judges, no legislative power. But its apparatchiks and its fans want it to have authority.
The proposed “global governance structure” to enforce an anti-AGW regime would change that.
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December 19, 2009, 5:28 pmIchthyophagous says:
The UN is founded on the obviously silly notion that all General Assembly members are equal, whether they contain 300 million people or 12,000 (the population of Tuvalu). By any reasonable measure, it makes no sense to cripple the world economy to guard against the possibility of nations like Tuvalu becoming submerged. The question is how far the collective delusions of our international mandarin class can succeed in overcoming common sense. Very far, apparently.
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December 19, 2009, 6:12 pmtroll_dc2 says:
Climate change is an international problem, and it is a real problem despite what a lot of people who participate on this forum assert. Reform efforts will not work if the entire relevant world does not buy in.
From what I can tell, the UN does not provide a good framework for addressing the matter. There are many reasons for this, but the most important is that it seeks to use the environmental issue to advance its own institutional goals; there is what might be called a lack of good faith here.
So what is the alternative? Even if the technical issues of figuring exactly what is going on with the atmosphere and what can be done effectively about the problems can be resolved, taking the correct measures will be a profoundly political matter. I would devote a lot of resources to dealing with the technical issues and then convene a by-invitation-only international conference, not under the UN’s auspices (which means that it could not be held until after Obama left office), to try to reach agreement on implementing those measures.
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December 19, 2009, 6:26 pmMark N. says:
I suppose it depends on what you mean by “socialism” and “the left”. Even if some sort of world-government emerged, it’d be far more likely to be a sort of milquetoast liberal-ish welfare state than a Marxist socialist state. You don’t think the new rich in Shanghai or Moscow are going to sign on to giving all their money away, even if the Americans capitulated, do you?
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December 19, 2009, 6:42 pmJohnF says:
ChrisIowa makes a good point. Very small governments are often controlled by their citizens, so I should except them from my comment.
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December 19, 2009, 6:49 pmStewart Baker says:
For a slightly different take, see my comment at http://www.skatingonstilts.com/skating-on-stilts/2009/12/a-new-global-order.html
Excerpt:
...
What’s interesting about Copenhagen is how it differed from this script. It started out on the usual lines. The EU had taken a tough position on the need for serious reductions in carbon emissions — a position that reflected its deeply held moral principles and its self interest as an economy whose carbon emissions had been held down by traditionally high oil prices and a collapse in inefficient Eastern European coal plants after the wall fell. The EU had also created a rough deal with the developing world, which would do something about emissions in return for large sums of money in aid. This approach had succeeded in freezing the US out of the diplomatic consensus. So as Copenhagen opened, Europe occupied the moral high ground and had lots of allies. It could fairly expect that a chastened US would finally have to come in from the cold at Copenhagen.
Yet a few days later, the summit ended with the Europeans sputtering mad, forced to take a disappointing deal that was negotiated without them. From the early reports, it looks as though the President left them sitting secure in their moral redoubt and went directly to the largest developing countries — China in particular, but also India and Brazil — to craft a compromise that worked for those countries and for him, even as it was condemned as shockingly cynical by Europeans.
...
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December 19, 2009, 7:27 pmKenneth Anderson says:
Stewart Baker: That’s very interesting — folks, you should check out the link above.
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December 19, 2009, 7:30 pmtroll_dc2 says:
The New York Times reports support Stewart Baker’s analysis, and they also suggest that my idea of by-invitation-only conferences will be how things are done. See here.
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December 19, 2009, 8:18 pmSteverino says:
I think the greenies may start getting it now. Go read Andrew Rivkin’s article “Heat over leak of UN Warming Analysis” in the Dec. 17 New York Times for some background.
According to the AGW hysterics, the “tipping point” beyond which global catastrophe’s are unavoidable is a rise in temp of 2dg C/century. According to the UN’s own analysis, and they confirmed the document’s genuine, the binding agreement wouldn’t have held temperature rise below 3dg C/century. Even if everyone met their targets, which they’ve no history of, the agreement wouldn’t have held warming below the “tipping point.” It would have been 50% higher.
Of course, you have to believe the AGW hysteric theory of climate change, which is just one of many theories of climate change and has never been able to predict anything.
But the point is that the global governance crowd says it believes the science. They insist the science is settled (it isn’t).
So why would the Copenhagen “tree-ring circus” insist we take the science of their pet theory of climate change, AGW hysteria, seriously when they don’t take their own scientists seriously?
Answer: because it’s not about climate change, but establishing global governance.
Now, don’t get me wrong; the greenies would love the idea of authoritarian global governance. But they realize now that the chief proponents of AGW hysteria are using it merely as a convenient scare tactic. The greenies, and the scientist really, have just been used as a prop.
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December 19, 2009, 8:30 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Copenhagen as UN Politics, Not Climate Change Substance -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Eugene Volokh, Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: Copenhagen as UN Politics, Not Climate Change Substance: Post-Copenhagen. At bottom, the question is one of le.. http://bit.ly/6yWTVp [...]
Sarcastro says:
Really everything I hate is socialism since it all takes taxes.
Global warming? Socialist conspiracy to take over the world once they somehow get the US, China and India on board.
Health care? You know that’s socialist. More so than Social Security or Medicare or anything else!
Gay marriage? Socialist plot to get to tax churches!
Abortion? Socialist population control.
War in Afganistan? Lame rules of engagement is socialist plot to humble America so it’s pride can be broken — the first step towards socialism.
Passing any laws at all? Well, that just expands government, totally socialist!
Paddlin’ the school canoe? You better believe that’s
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December 19, 2009, 9:03 pmEzra says:
It’s odd to observe this, but we’re quickly heading towards a place where the world-view of Muslim extremists will be less dangerous and less distorted than the world-view of mainstream ‘moderns’.
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December 19, 2009, 10:17 pmLeo Marvin says:
Like the US Senate.
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December 19, 2009, 10:41 pmSarcastro says:
Ezra makes a great point! Blowing up buildings to get 72 virgins is totally saner than health care reform!]
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December 19, 2009, 11:09 pmAlanDownunder says:
1. Tuvalu being, in some senses, the US’ equal at the UN is no more ridiculous than South Dakota being, in all senses, California’s equal in the US Senate.
2. It takes a hell of a lot of denialism and a hell of a lot of paranoia for nationalistic concern about a non-exemplary polity ceding a degree of sovereignty or sociopathic concern about creeping socialism to exceed concern about the effects of climate change. But for the paranoia, I doubt the denialism would even exist.
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December 20, 2009, 1:18 amGCA says:
Very interesting take by Stewart Baker on Copenhagen, AGW, and geopolitics. Old Europe’s motivation makes sense. I didn’t think Obama was that smart — maybe he is, or maybe cirumstances worked out serendipitously for him and he seized the moment by accident. Either way, if Mr. Baker is correct, a coup for Obama. Hard for me to swallow, given my visceral dislike for the direction he is taking us. If he and those close to him are that geopolictically smart, it makes them all the more dangerous in a Machiavellian sort of way. And I do think the direction they are headed is fraught with peril, if not for the ruling class, then for the rest of us.
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December 20, 2009, 1:46 amGCA says:
Re the equality of Tuvalu and the US at the UN in comparison to state parity in the U.S. Senate:
The U.S. Senate’s members were originally appointed by the governments of the Several States. The Senate’s function was to protect the rights of the Several States. To my way of thinking, the passage of the 17th Amendment was a great blow to Federalism because direct election of Senators made Senators answerable to the same (though in large states arguably broader) constituencies as members of the House of Representatives while simultaneously leaving state governments unrepresented in Congress. The Founders established the House to be the voice of the people; now Senators have the same political motivation as do House members, albeit every six years and state wide. But, especially in small states, what, other than the six year versus two year terms, is the practical difference in political motivation?
At this point the UN has a system of representation arguably similar to that of the original U.S. Senate but nothing comparable to the U.S. House of Representatives — also not good in a body that aspires to govern the world, but for the opposite reason than direct election of U.S. Senators is bad: only state interests are represented and the people have no voice — which is especially bad for those suffering under totalitarian regimes as well as the rest of us. Under the U.N. system, dictators hold inordinate sway.
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December 20, 2009, 2:11 amSarcastro says:
[The UN is primarily a collective security organization, created to keep the status quo. This includes keeping dictators in power.
It may be galling that Congo has as much voice as we do, except that it totally doesn’t practically.]
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December 20, 2009, 2:43 amGCA says:
Status quo? Iran and North Korea acquiring nukes and threatening their neighbors with impunity? Hugo Chavez receiving standing ovations when decrying capitalism while threatening his neighbors and forging an alliance with Iran? Nope — the UN empowers dictators.
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December 20, 2009, 2:57 amSarcastro says:
[Hell, by your definition of empowerment through inaction, the US (under Bush as well as Obama, natch, the UK, NATO, etc. all empower dictators.
For the UN, status quo is defined only by borders. Till a border is crossed, the usual rhetorical wankery happens. But once a border is crossed, the charter says the rest of the world comes down like a ton of bricks. At least that is the collective security theory.
Check the charter, or better yet, the history. It’s supposed to prevent a World War 2 by keeping borders as static as possible. And no, it’s not perfect. See tbe former Yugoslavia. Lotsa border-changing there!
And before you say it, I agree with you, that’s a pretty weak definition. It’s not well put together to deal well with civil wars, even genocides. And it’s pretty inefficient at foreign aid as well, but it’s the best we got.
Plus the status quo sucks. Ethnic strife, brutal dictators, corruption. Though empowering the UN to be able to do more to change it is probably not something anyone really wants.
So then you are left with the UN not being much other than a debating society. But merely keeping the rhetorical chanels open is something I see as well worth the cost. See WW-1.]
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December 20, 2009, 3:22 amFen says:
Wow, Sarcastro is up to 15 fallacies alleady. How cute.
/edit up to 24 as a wrote this.
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December 20, 2009, 10:43 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » The Copenhagen Debacle says:
[...] also Ken’s recent post. Categories: Climate [...]
Sarcastro says:
[I could certainly be wrong, Fen. But I do argue in good faith. Please, to pass time in this snow day, and to show that you are also in good faith, elaborate some of these fallacies.
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December 20, 2009, 11:02 amClay Barham says:
Why must all the media be so deceptive when showing video of greenhouse gas emmission from all those steam-belching smoke stacks? That is not carbon dioxide smoke, but moisture. True, moisture is the biggest greenhouse gas of all, forming a global warming blanket in the form of clouds, falling snow and rain, but telling people that won’t gain points for the communists pushing our surrender to illogical forces. claysamerica.com
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December 20, 2009, 12:32 pmClimategate/Copenhagen roundup, Dec. 20: flatulence awards edition « Spin, strangeness, and charm says:
[...] Anderson: Compenhagen [sic] as UN redistribution politics, not climate change substance. “At bottom, the question is one of legitimacy and what it means to say that a climate change [...]
A. Zarkov says:
Let’s look at who produces carbon emissions.
China 21.5%
USA 20.2%
EU 13.8%
Russia 5.5%
India 5.3%
Japan 4.6%
UK 2%
Add these up and you get 73%. The African countries (sans Nigeria) each produce less than 0.1%. Thus there is no need to bring in most of the Third World. This is not a problem for the UN. The major emitters can negotiate any cuts in emissions by themselves and they don’t need to give any of these countries anything. They are chronic and incurable mendicants.
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December 20, 2009, 1:39 pmMartinned says:
Unusually, I actually agree.
I wouldn’t describe the OP here as anything other than ridiculous paranoia, but that doesn’t mean that the UN is the most appropriate forum for dealing with this. Are all the relevant players in the G20? I don’t think so. Well, then we’ll have to invent some new forum. Unilateral or bilateral action doesn’t work, that won’t overcome the collective action problem here. But get the six mentioned by Zarkov together with Brazil, and you’re in business.
P.S. You may have double counted the UK there. (At least I hope your number for the EU includes the UK.)
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December 20, 2009, 1:45 pmPeter Buxton says:
This is the most hideously written essay on Volokh, esp. the first two paras. The twisting sentence structure does not elucidate, nor hide a punchline, but only shows off.
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December 20, 2009, 2:23 pmKenneth Anderson says:
Peter: Well, remember, you get what you pay for ... as I’ve often noted, what goes up here is unrevised first draft. Though you might not like the book any better. I’m quite sure Martinned won’t! :)
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December 20, 2009, 2:43 pmMartinned says:
Even more than the EU, the UN is its members. Speaking of the UN (presumably meaning the secretariat) as having some kind of institutional voice that carries weight relative to the permanent five and the other major powers in the world is just silly.
Any organisation of any size has an organisational culture, which usually involves a significant investment in the goals of the organisation. Academics think academia is the greatest thing since sliced bread, lawyers think the law is the solution to all problems, Google employees think that Sergei Brin and the other guy are gods, etc. No one goes to work for the UN secretariat unless they believe in international law and international/multilateral collaboration. That’s organisational culture. But the UN secretariat, certainly the secretariat other than the secretary general, is so insignificant relative to the Permanent Five that it doesn’t matter what “the UN” (still presumably meaning the secretariat) thinks.
It wasn’t the UN secretariat who decided to UN-ify global warming. The impetus to do that comes from places like General Assembly resolution 44/228 from 1989. (Adopted without vote.) In fact, that resolution continued a process started with the 1972 Stockholm Conference. My point is, this process has been ongoing for a long time, without ever being legally binding. To the extent that Rio and Kyoto contained some legal requirement to work towards a successor treaty, this is a very weak obligation indeed. (If for no other reason than that the US never ratified Kyoto.) Each and every attendee at each and every one of those summits chose to be there, not because of some nefarious UN conspiracy, but because they felt that a global perspective was the most sensible way to look at this problem.
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December 20, 2009, 4:30 pmTalnik says:
AlanDownunder said: “Tuvalu being, in some senses, the US’ equal at the UN is no more ridiculous than South Dakota being, in all senses, California’s equal in the US Senate.”
Yeah, maybe. But guess which state has more nukes!
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December 20, 2009, 6:11 pmMartinned says:
Euh... South Dakota? Isn’t that a perfect place for missile silos?
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December 20, 2009, 6:33 pmLeo Marvin says:
... and more importantly, more Randian jackalope ranchers.
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December 20, 2009, 8:07 pmMarty says:
‘Legitimacy’ seems a strange concept to apply to something that lacks legitimacy at the most basic level: the problem has not been proven to even exist, nor has the proposed solution been shown to be effective if there even is a problem.
This whole thing is just a scam to enrich the people who trade in carbon credits and sell “green technology” and “green science,” at everyone else’s expense, regardless of any actual climate issues.
I suppose we can view legitimacy as a secondary social construct, devoid of who or what is being legitimized, but still... they’re ALL crooks and worse so the idea of any of it being legitimate is a bit strained.
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December 20, 2009, 10:38 pmMarty says:
A Zarkov,
But if you clamp down in those countries, those emitters involved in manufacturing and agriculture, at least, can just move to countries that aren’t covered, at no reduction in emissions.
It’s all crap, scientifically, but if you buy the premises and the approach of reducing emissions by regulation or tax, you must have a universal regime or it just leaks.
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December 20, 2009, 10:42 pmlucklucky says:
“Each and every attendee at each and every one of those summits chose to be there, not because of some nefarious UN conspiracy, but because they felt that a global perspective was the most sensible way to look at this problem.”
People are romantic and also need to give a mean to their lives. Which means finding new “problems” to solve and also feel they are building the Grand Design or maybe i should call a Blockbuster Life. For them local politics is trivial and already traveled. No one tried to make a World Government yet so they are in a unique endeavor which will arrant them immortality and since Humans try everything to reach immortality...
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December 20, 2009, 11:21 pmKenneth Anderson says:
Careful about South Dakota, it’s my home state ... born there as my family crossing from Alberta, on the way to California, where my parents decided to stay and never spend another winter in snow. True, we were only in SD, what, three months and I haven’t been back, but I have Deep Feelings for my native land.
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December 20, 2009, 11:53 pmSteverino says:
No, Sarcasto. He said it would be less dangerous and less distorted.
Is creating a strawman argument by putting words in someone’s mouth an example of arguing in good faith?
On 9/11 al Qaeda blew up the WTC in an attempt to destroy the US economy. Hence the economic target.
They only caused a temporary disruption.
Obamacare will cause far more damage than they ever could have.
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December 21, 2009, 1:29 amMartinned says:
Who are these “people” you speak of? Bush sr., who was in charge during the Rio conference, or only those Democrats who ran the White House during Kyoto and now Copenhagen? Regardless, how is the US president’s (to stick with that example) decision to attend or not, to send a heavy delegation or not, to sign or not, to propose to ratify or not UN politics?
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December 21, 2009, 8:17 amLeo Marvin says:
Steverino is actually defending Obama. You can’t be part of al Qaeda if you’re worse!
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December 21, 2009, 3:46 pmAlanDownunder says:
- Kenneth at 11:43pm December 20.
On purely altitude considerations, deep feelings for Tuvalu might be more in order — feelings deep enough not to be swamped by phobic paranoia about the UN in particular or collective action in general.
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December 21, 2009, 10:43 pmNach Kopenhagen: Staatendämmerung? : Verfassungsblog - all matters constitutional says:
[...] Völkermörder vorne dran, würden sich vor Hohngelächter ihre Wänste halten. “Some States Know Best” als neue Völkerrechtsdoktrin. Trauen wir uns [...]
ChrisTS says:
For amusement, say ‘give me global oligopoly’ five times fast.
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December 22, 2009, 3:54 pmChrisTS says:
Well said.
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December 22, 2009, 3:55 pmizavela says:
Dear conspirator n Predator expert @ or for the UN.
All is good n very well toughted i guess to drive the world much crazyer n to only desperate state.
Thanks greatly to the Federal reserve bank+ World bank+UN n Consortium of Cie n scams, fake n falses finacial institutions arond the world to maintain lie and self destruction. Fran-massonic and other manipulative n religious sectes and corporate narrow minded psicho who think they are over n control the world until now.
Seek n kill those tugs bastards who have lead population mass often to the gravyard or war as their salutary end.
Conference et resolution which do not mean anything to the bankers as well as the UN key vetoers.
I am starting my own solution if there is a real global warming or a true climate change. It is better, rather than waiting for Gvt n UN or FRBA to solve it for you.
Plz do not trust UN, environmentalist, expert or scientists once an for all.
In My opinion.
Luc
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December 28, 2009, 5:03 pm