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Global Climate Governance in 3D: Mainstreaming Geoengineering Within a Unified Framework
Get PDFThe failure of conventional climate change mitigation to reduce climate-related risks to tolerable levels has spurred interest in more unconventional—and riskier—climate interventions. What currently sounds like science fiction could become a reality in the not-so-distant future: planes blasting particles into the sky to block the sun, vast deserts covered with mirrors, algae sucking carbon into the depths of the ocean. Scholars tend to lump all these unconventional climate measures together in a fuzzy category called “geoengineering,” and set them apart from conventional climate change mitigation. But the characteristics of climate interferences vary across three distinct dimensions, which the mitigation-geoengineering dichotomy fails to capture. First, interventions operate via different mechanisms, such as altering the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases or changing the fraction of incoming solar radiation absorbed by the earth. Second, the characteristic duration of interferences varies from several days to millennia. Third, interferences differ in terms of leverage—the scale of climate impact achievable with a fixed investment of resources. This Article argues that global climate governance would be best served by a unified approach that addresses all climate interferences based on these three dimensions. In such a unified framework, influence over multilateral decisions to deploy risky, high-leverage interventions could be used as an incentive to induce greater national investment in safer, more expensive decarbonization efforts. Scientific uncertainty should not deter early action on geoengineering governance; it should be viewed as an opportunity to lock in agreement on neutral principles while national governments remain behind a partial veil of ignorance regarding their interests
Crisis Pregnancy Centers: An Inherently Unjust Limitation to Reproductive Rights
No full textThis paper’s purpose is two-fold. First, it presents an ethical analysis that details why the current practices of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) are unethical and violate women’s reproductive freedom. Second, it proposes policy solutions to mitigate inequities and disinformation caused by the practices of CPCs, in an attempt to protect the women who, fall prey to their service
Playing the Game of International Law
Get PDFIn the realist game of international negotiations, each state attempts to promote their interest regardless of international law. Thus, it is negotiations in the shadow of the sword, i.e., a negotiation in which each side knows that if the parties will not achieve an agreement, the alternative may be a war, and thus the bargaining position of each party is a function of their capacities in a case of war. Negotiation in the shadow of international law is an alternative to it: in this alternative the parties negotiate according to their international legal rights. It reduces injustice and incentive to armament and to terror. It thus promotes peace. A state can choose unilaterally to play the game of negotiations in accord with international law by merely respecting the rights of one’s neighbours regardless to their waving swords, and by this have much more peace and generate incentives against terror and armament. This efficiently brings much more security and peace. A policy of respecting international law, combined with conditional generosity, is more efficient. The wish for peace should make a country encourage its neighbours to avoid armament. The best way to do so is to adopt a policy of unilateral respect for international law and conditional generosity towards one’s neighbours. The international community should enforce, or at least encourage, negotiations in accord with international law
