Thank goodness Reuters has its eye on the ball and is keeping track of the decisions of the International Court Of Justice at the Hague, Netherlands. Judge Yuji Iwasawa and 14 other members of the United Nations court have decided that "Greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally caused by human activities which are not territorially limited."
Ten years ago 190 countries signed the Paris Agreement to take actions that would limit global temperature increases to 1.5 C. The signatures on the agreement don't seem to have meant much.
The finding is only a preliminary move and what follows isn't binding, ie. internal combustion automobiles won't be immediately banned and hydrocarbon power won't be replaced entirely by solar panels and wind turbines. Countries that allow the continuation of green house production won't be invaded by electrically-powered UN tanks. They will, however, be frowned upon by the compliant nations, should there be any.
Advanced societies are dominated by mathematics and numbers. In the case of climate anxiety the figure 1.5C has been adopted as a line not to be crossed. Like the 6 foot social distance of the Covid paranoia, it's needed to have a number to legitimize the theory. Why not .75C or 3C? Furthermore, how is a temperature increase measured over the entire surface of the earth simultaneously? That really doesn't seem possible. Doesn't science, genuine science, include the quality of predictability? If a glass of pure water is placed in a freezer with a temperature of 0F we know that ice will be the result, always. While science and technology have allowed the prediction of weather into the near future there's been no success in doing so over the many decades that are involved in climate change.
If the International Court of Justice wanted to achieve something of true value they would attempt to eliminate the barbaric practice of circumcision of infant boys.
Chapter 2. Chief Justice Iwasawa made a 2 hour speech indicating that a signatory failure to rein in fossil fuel production and subsidies could result in "full reparations to injured states in the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction provided that the general conditions of the law of state responsibility are met." How exactly the injuries and reparations are determined isn't specified.
The fifteen justices are:
Yuji Iwasawa President Japan
Julia Sebutinde Vice President Uganda
Peter Tomka Slovakia
Ronny Abraham France
Abdulgawi Yusuf Somalia
Xue Hanqin China
Dalveer Bhandari India
Georg Nolte Germany
Hilary Charlesworth Australia
Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant Brazil
Juan Manuel Gomez Robledo Verduzco Mexico
Sarah Cleveland USA
Bogdan Aurescu Romania
Dire Tladi South Africa
Mahmoud Daifallah Hmoud Jordan
Phillipe Gautier Belgiuim
They will apparently decide if one country has released enough green-house gases to negatively affect another country and what the compensation for that will be.
The United States withdrew from compulsory ICJ jurisdiction in 1986.
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