Has Anyone Read the Copenhagen Agreement?
Sounds like a crack-pot. Is he a crack-pot? Someone please tell me he is a crack-pot and there are no plans for anything resembling a transnational entity with “the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs” of sovereign nations and democratic elected governments or to settle us with annual Dane-law payments of $70 billion to $140 billion. And that the document doesn’t exist and never will.
I haven’t read it, but why shouldn’t those countries that have benefitted most from industrialisation divvy up to some sort of fund to compensate for the damage they have caused, and why can’t we have some sort of combined national effort to enforce it?
Would it matter if it did? Would, say, America or China or India or Britain pay the slightest attention to such demands?
Here’s the September 15th draft, in pdf:
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf
The document does exist and the things that he’s pointed out are in it. It is, however, still a draft, and there are 34 days until the Copenhagen meeting.
All four countries are signatories to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Meaningless. If a treaty is inconvenient we’ll ignore it.
It is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, you need not even ask if it is crack pottery, that should be your baseline assumption.
If you wish to read rational, non-Leftist critical commentary on Copenhagen, read the Financial Times.
That would be illegal. If it’s a ratified treaty, the government can’t ignore it.
Or else what?
That aside, even if Obama signs the thing, how likely is it that the Senate would ratify something that sends that much money to developing countries?
Putting aside whether this is true in practice, it isn’t even true in theory.
As a matter of law, there are two kinds of treaties: self-executing and non-self-executing. Most treaties are the latter. They require implementing legislation to have any legal force. So unless the government runs afoul of the implementing legislation, the government can ignore it with impunity.
Even when there’s a self-executing treaty, or one fully implemented by federal law, it has the force of a statute and is overriden by any later-in-time statute. So the government can “ignore it” just by passing contradictory legislation.
Uh-huh. And all the Kyoto signatories are meeting their commitments …
Well, if anyone could possibly show that there has been damage caused by CO2, I suppose you might have a point. But despite two decades of trying, nobody has been able to show that. In fact, the recent decade of no warming argues the opposite, that the natural variations are large enough to totally over-ride any possible effect from CO2 … which makes it virtually impossible to show that CO2 is doing anything at all.
But heck, I’ll play your game, give us a number. How much damage has been caused in say Benin from CO2, and how much did it cost the folks there? And what exactly was the damage? Should Benin get more money than Togo, or less?
Or let’s go the other way. How much money has warming saved in Chile? What beneficial effects has the warming had on this cold country, how much has it made from the increased growing seasons? Should Chile pay Benin because it has supposedly benefitted and Benin has supposedly lost from the warming?
Finally, how much of the warming has come from CO2? 10%? 50%? 90%?
I’m sure you see the problem …
Sorry for the drive-by, off-the-cuff post – no time at the moment.
I have a few papers going to Copenhagen, and I’m under the impression that the 2 percent levy was on emissions transactions, not general monetary transactions. Clean Development Mechanism, Joint Implementation, that sort of thing. All located within the UNFCCC. Don’t like it? Reduce your own emissions and don’t buy a credit. Credit still cheaper (even with the tax) than reducing on your own? Then what are you complaining about, it’s still cheaper than reducing on your own. Basic economics.
Again, I’m sorry to be so flippant and will be crossing my fingers that I didn’t misread the OP.
Rhythm
At the very least I should assume we can all agree that such a rather drastic move with a transnational body with power to enforce legislation on individual countries should be thoroughly discussed beforehand and then left for the citizens to vote on and not stowed away in some obscure UN document and hurriedly passed through.
Nope. The source document says inter alia:
However, this is Option seven of nine wealth transfer options, each of which has up to three Alternatives, so it is likely that you are thinking of one of the other options or alternatives. Perhaps it is Alternative 1 of Option 3, viz:
Or Alternative 2 of Option 6
Don’t like it? Choose another Option or Alternative … or wait, there is another Option — hand the paperwork back to the UN and say “No thanks, call me crazy but I’d rather spend it on climate disaster mitigation than hand wads of cash to an assortment of totalitatian dictators, corrupt governments, and incompetent bureaucrats.”
That would be my option, but YMMV …
I’m still somewhat unclear on treaties. President ratifies a non-self executing treaty. We violate it. So it wouldn’t be a violation of our domestic law and the AG couldn’t prosecute anyone, but it would still nonetheless be a breach of the treaty. Wouldn’t this entitle other signatory countries to prosecute us for our violation?
A non-self-executing treaty requires each of the signatories to pass domestic laws in each country to bring the treaty into force. If it is violated, what is violated is a domestic law, not international law. As such, any prosecution would take place in the country in question, under domestic law. An example of this is the Treaty on Torture, which had no force until the US passed a law that gave it (some) teeth.
Also, a treaty must be ratified by Congress, not the President. Last time such a law came up in Congress (Kyoto) it was shot down 99-0, IIRC.
Thanks for the reply. I’m still somewhat unclear. So other countries can’t prosecute signatories for violating, say, the Geneva Conventions? I understand that if the US doesn’t implement a domestic statute, we can’t prosecute ourselves, but I would think other countries still could. What if we are a signatory, implement domestic law, but never prosecute anyone for violating the treaty? Are we untouchable?
I realize this isn’t really replying to the OP, but I’ve got treaties down pretty well, I’m just confused on who exactly can prosecute for a signatory breaching them.
And I think the Senate provides Advice and Consent, and if they do, the President may ratify the treaty.
The Geneva Convention is the other kind of treaty, the self-executing kind. As such, it is law in itself and does not require domestic law to implement it. All it needs is ratification by the Senate.
While it is theoretically possible that if a country does not implement a domestic law for a non-self-executing treaty they could be prosecuted in some kind of international forum, I don’t know if this has ever happened. The same is true if the domestic law is implemented but never enforced.
People think there is some book somewhere with all the international laws written down and some kind of international body to enforce them. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For example, the US has not signed on to the International Criminal Court. Why not? In part because it would be unconstitutional to do so. The founding fathers were very nervous that they would be tried by a foreign power for having the unmitigated gall to declare independence. Accordingly, they made it unconstitutional for the US government to allow one of its citizens to be tried overseas for a crime committed in the US. Like, say, by the ICC.
So international law and domestic law have a very uneasy coexistence. The ICC has no jury. The Bill of Rights, on the other hand, guarantees every American a jury trial … how can those possibly be reconciled?
Finally, you have the role of the Senate and the President reversed. There’s a good discussion of the issues at senate.gov. The money quote is: