It would be better if the Copenhagen conference failed and we start again from scratch

Selected Version - Version 2 (Current Version) : 11 Dec 2009 | 11:17 | booji

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On the point: Will waste years on new wrangling.

Hansen said "The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means." Although a treaty may well be negotiated we will not yet know precisely what it means. Different states will have different interpretations of it. There may be several 'authoritative' languages (languages that are the copies that are law - if binding) and they wont necessarily be able to make the language say exactly the same thing in them all. All this means it will take a long time to work everything out. Normally a treaty has time to be slowly tested by the states that created it, but in this case there are things that need to be done immediatly so we do not have time for this period of working out what everything really definitively means.

This would be the case if there was a new treaty as well, so it would have to be added on to the extra time it would take to negotiate a new treaty. No international treaty will end out simple and easy to understand because there are too many parties and interests to be included.

Yes, because... Will waste years on new wrangling.

 

No, because...

Hansen said "The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means." Although a treaty may well be negotiated we will not yet know precisely what it means. Different states will have different interpretations of it. There may be several 'authoritative' languages (languages that are the copies that are law - if binding) and they wont necessarily be able to make the language say exactly the same thing in them all. All this means it will take a long time to work everything out. Normally a treaty has time to be slowly tested by the states that created it, but in this case there are things that need to be done immediatly so we do not have time for this period of working out what everything really definitively means.

 

This would be the case if there was a new treaty as well, so it would have to be added on to the extra time it would take to negotiate a new treaty. No international treaty will end out simple and easy to understand because there are too many parties and interests to be included.