The Trib Spins. Again

Our conservative friends over on the editorial board at the Pittsburgh Tribune review have done it again. Through methods subtle and not-so-subtle, they've spun an passably interesting idea into a 7 (?) paragraph chicken-little jeremiad about a coming New World Order.

Preaching to their choir of climate change deniers and New World Order fetishists.

They begin:

Using the dubious threat of man-made global warming as an excuse, Stephen Hockman, a deputy High Court judge in Britain, is proposing a green version of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It would be, in his mind, the supreme legal authority on issues regarding the environment, reports The Telegraph of London.

The first phrase alone tells you everything you need to know about the scientific literacy of the Tribune Review's editorial board. But that's a tired argument - so let's move on.

Here's what it says in the Telegraph:

The first role of the new body would be to enforce international agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions set to be agreed next year.

But the court would also fine countries or companies that fail to protect endangered species or degrade the natural environment and enforce the "right to a healthy environment".

The innovative idea is being presented to an audience of politicians, scientists and public figures for the first time at a symposium at the British Library.

Notice how the Trib omits any mention of that first role: to enforce existing international agreements. That should tell you everything you need to know about their intellectual honesty (as if you didn't already know that).

What exactly did Hockman propose? If you think you know the whole story from what the Trib published, you haven't been reading this blog for very long. Here's his initial proposal. It's from last August, by the way. In it he wrote:

'It is a trite observation that environmental problems, although they closely affect municipal laws, are essentially international; and that the main structure of control can therefore be no other than that of international law." Thus wrote Robert Jennings QC, a former president of the international court of justice, in his foreword to the first edition of Philippe Sands's Principles of International Environmental Law, published in 1995 - years before the potential effects of climate change had transformed public perceptions. Yet even today, after all the millions of words that have been written on the subject of climate change, we seem no closer to establishing that "structure of control". Indeed, Jennings's observation that the problem is mainly to be solved by legal means might now seem not so much trite as unorthodox, bold or even eccentric.

The potential effects of climate change and the urgency of efforts to tackle it have been given a new focus by recent developments, including reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Nicholas Stern on behalf of the UK government. Although few deny the necessity of finding solutions, even fewer have any to hand. International summit statements only confirm the diplomatic efforts involved in attaining any kind of consensus.

The understandable reluctance of developing countries to sign up to carbon commitments - unless the developed world is prepared to make an equitable contribution - calls for more radical options. Those options must be realised at state, regional and international levels, and they will require political, economic and legal solutions.

And he describes the Court:

Ideally, such a court would be compulsory and would include a convention on the right to a healthy environment and deliver transparency in access to data and in its proceedings. It would include a scientific body to assess technical issues and a mechanism to avoid "forum shopping" - that is, litigants taking their pick of the most propitious court available.

Of course, regulations and sanctions alone cannot deliver a global solution to problems of climate change, but without such components the incentive for individual countries to address those problems - and to achieve solutions that are politically acceptable within their own jurisdictions - will be much reduced. [emphasis added]

And concludes:

Only an impartial adjudicating body is capable of providing the catalyst for a global consensus as to the fairest way to distribute the burdens that accompany solutions to the climate change problem. Whatever difficulties may lie in the path of such solutions, the benefits will be greater. [emphasis added]

It seems reasoned and there's more than enough room to agree or disagree. But of course, to the climate change deniers, merely believing that the climate has changed because of human pollution is evidence of a lack of scientific impartiality.

Hey, it's colder out this winter than it was last summer! "Global Warming" must be a hoax!