The impending failure of the international climate conference at Cancun is the latest in a string of failures going back 20 years, to the negotiations that crafted the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
I was at the UN Conference that agreed to the UNFCCC. I was dismayed that the Convention and its subsidiary agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, would all be non-binding treaties. Any knowledge of international relations - or human nature - should tell us that a non-binding treaty on climate change is about as effective as a peace vigil in a bombing raid.
Let us contrast the climate treaty fiasco with that ancient, discredited treaty process which formed the beginnings of international public law.
The Vienna Peace Congress of 1814 was disparaged at the time but historians now agree that it set the tone and procedure for subsequent international law and prevented European wars from escalating into world wars, for 100 years. (In his PhD thesis, Henry Kissinger declared this the longest period of ‘peace’ that Europe has ever had.)
I was at the UN Conference that agreed to the UNFCCC. I was dismayed that the Convention and its subsidiary agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, would all be non-binding treaties. Any knowledge of international relations - or human nature - should tell us that a non-binding treaty on climate change is about as effective as a peace vigil in a bombing raid.
Let us contrast the climate treaty fiasco with that ancient, discredited treaty process which formed the beginnings of international public law.
The Vienna Peace Congress of 1814 was disparaged at the time but historians now agree that it set the tone and procedure for subsequent international law and prevented European wars from escalating into world wars, for 100 years. (In his PhD thesis, Henry Kissinger declared this the longest period of ‘peace’ that Europe has ever had.)
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