About this Event
“Scientist Rebellion” produced a graph that charts the steep increase of parts of CO2 per million over the past half-century, and it marks the series of international conferences and agreements along the way, from the first World Climate Conference in 1979 (336 ppm) via the first IPPC Assessment Report in 1990 (354 ppm) to the Paris Agreement which, adopted in 2015 (401 ppm), pronounces the goal of limiting global warming to 2˚C or better 1.5˚C when compared to pre-industrial levels (about 280ppm). As the graph moves to the present, its colour stripes indicate raising global temperatures, leading to the present increase of already 1.3˚C.
The graph illustrates what is clear to see all around: carbon emissions have continued rather unabated and fossil fuels have not gone anywhere. Lawyers of an idealistic bent might react that the law has just not been effective enough, the targets not ambitious and the commitments not hard enough. Others, of more critical inclinations, might sigh and point out that, of course, the law has been complicit all along because it is tied up with extractive capitalism and anthropocentric worldviews. What the graph suggests across the board is an erosion of legal normativity, either because the law is not effective or because it got the preferences all wrong and prioritises profits over the planet.
The present paper investigates this erosion of legal normativity from different vantage points and probes related legal practices and doctrines in the context of the climate crisis, ranging from doctrines of desuetude via practices of civil disobedience to climate litigation and the recognition that, still now, ‘renewal repeats’.
Speaker`s Bio
Ingo Venzke is Professor for International Law and Social Justice at the University of Amsterdam, Director of the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL). He is Editor-in-Chief of the Leiden Journal of International Law. He recently edited Contingency in International Law: On the Possibilities of Different Legal Histories (OUP 2021) (together with Kevin Jon Heller) and wrote Tragedy & Farce in Climate Commentary for the European Review of Books (2023).
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Edinburgh Law School, South Bridge, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
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