Seems like the defendant wanted to loose the case.
That makes no sense. Given the incentives courts always provide for a guilty plea in the interests of saving time and effort, why would a defendant that wanted to lose a case plead not guilty? If you know you’re guaranteed to be found guilty it’s far better to plead guilty (though never before extracting a commensurate quid pro quo for doing so).
Thanks, AK, I like it.
Now we just need to generalize from 50 geese in a field to a planetary value of 1000 ppmv of CO2.
If the latter impacts 10 billion people, does the math support the analogy?
Beats me, mate. It’s all Dutch to me. ;)
If I only had confidence in the IPCC’s conclusions, I would have fully supported the Urgenda ruling. It’s good for courts to step in if governments mess up.
It’s just that from information from, among others this blog, I came to the conclusion that it is highly uncertain whether humans are causing the climate to change.
My main point though is that governments are not above the law and it’s good that the courts can hold them accountable.
So it almost appears that the court is making law not interpreting.
Whenever there are two intepretations of a law and a court picks one, Danny, has it made law or interpreted law?
And in either case is there a substantive difference in practice?
The problem here is a perceived lack of separation of the powers of the legislature from that of the judiciary.
On further reflection, Peter, I’d say this perception was confined to those whose ox had been gored by the court’s decision.
Seems to me that the judiciary was merely insisting that the state stick to its earlier agreement while giving the state a little slack, which is entirely within the remit of the courts. I’m unable to see any of the claimed legislative activism.
With such an attitude I’d probably be treated rather harshly in Pakistan, where judges get little sympathy from the state.
Dr. Pratt,
I’m not sure that’s a fair evaluation which is why I asked if there was a standing 30% reduction commitment in place. If so, then the ruling makes more sense but I’ve not yet been able to find one. If not, then it appears the court has ‘applied’ a level of commitment which was not in place prior.
In your earlier comment you indicated the 30% reduction commitment was in place. Can you provide a source? What I find is in the link provided above from C2ES which indicates 6% from 1990 and 16% from 2005, but it’s dated from 2011 so there could be more current and I may have missed more up to date information.
The answer will help to determine if there is “a substantive difference in practice”. Imposition is seemingly substantially different than that which is volunteered. If they volunteered, then reneged, that would be a different story. If they volunteered, adjusted (legally), then were subjected to imposition, yet another story.
Thanks.
Dr. Pratt,
From the post: “At the request of an environmental organisation by the name of Urgenda, a contraction of “urgent” and “agenda”, the court instructed the State to revise its current policies to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by at least 25% by 2020, not the 17% it currently aims at.
To produce this result, the court extended an existing tort law doctrine of “social responsibility” for avoiding “unacceptable danger creation.” The court found climate change to be an unacceptable, and, thus, unlawful danger and, ordered the government, based on its duty of care, to take action to protect against it.” (3rd and 4th para).
Pakistan is where the legislature is telling the judiciary what to do? This is far more common, especially in eastern European, middle eastern and Asian countries. Its the same problem of separation of powers and it is compounded by the presence of a strong military as well. Nothing to do with what the ruling is about Vaughan, honest! ;)
Uncle, if we focus strictly on Dutch actions, emissions regulations have to be backed by legislation. The Dutch people have a Parliament. I think the Dutch parliament will be sensible and understand enacting laws to satisfy Urgenda’s ideas will harm the Dutch economy, and won’t really solve anything.
I live in Spain, and I have other concerns I feel are much more important. The last thing I need is to have the Dutch commit economic suicide and introduce a deadly precedent in European law. This means I do expect the case to fail for everybody’s good.
Vaughan Pratt: What did you find of either kind in Bergkamp’s rant about “Enormous implications”? Didn’t “enormous” tip you off there?
Are you saying that you know that the lines I quoted are a technically deficient analysis? Why don’t you just say so? My mockery was intended to signal my disbelief that any important changes would eventuate from this decision. This ends, I suggest, when somebody loses a job at Phillips or one of the storage and distribution facilities in Rotterdam.
I would recommend they study how to beef up their sea defenses for X meter sea level rise 85 years from now, and beef up their global climate expertise to be able to judge the probability that x sea level rise will happen.
So the idea is to ship electricity back and forth from the southern to the northern hemisphere?
“As with all guest posts, keep your comments civil and relevant.”
For a post entitled “The Urgenda ruling in the Netherlands”???
Apparently a subscription to the English Private Eye Magazine is needed.
They have had long and fruitful discussions on the Ugandan situation for 40 years.
“Ugandan discussions”, or a variation thereof (such as “discussing Ugandan affairs”), is often used as a euphemism for sex, usually while carrying out a supposedly official duty.”
Be that as it may,
The best way of exposing hypocrisy or drivel is to let it take it’s cause until a large number of people are affected and offended by it and a counter push, judicial or otherwise occurs.
Good luck to the Dutch who are more morally correct and bound by convention to behave properly than most other people.
It is no surprise that a court in that country could come up with such an impressive decision.
Let them live with the consequences of their action, I say.
Ugandan discussions occurring world wide?
I’d like to see that.
And so through the precautionary principle, democracy gets ‘professionalized’ out of existence. Technocrats determine what or what isn’t safe and therefore what an individual, an organization or the state can, cannot or must do. The legal system then defers to the same technocrats and effectively embodies the technocratic view in law, overruling any semblance of democratic decision-making to the contrary.
The technocrats sidestep the need to persuade or bring the people (and so the legislative and electoral bodies) with them through open discussion and fair debate, particularly about the real level of risk involved.
This is despite evidence that the technocrats (scientists and public servants) are poor at estimating and dealing with risk (eg BSE/CJD), can lack reproducibility or transparency in their work (eg Psychology), are liable as a group to be support plausible but unproven theories (dangers of saturated fats, WMD), or to over-promote their findings or claims of efficacy while down-playing side-effects (disease-mongering, statins, tamoxifen), or carry political agendas into their work (eg Ehrlich). And then blackball anyone who disagrees with them as a conspiracy theorist for railing against ‘the consensus’ clique.
[…] completely obliterated one comment which challenged her to retract her support for a blog post by Mark Steyn containing a homophobic reference that insinuated that Greg Laden was […]
The courts are only accountable to themselves! The governments of many eastern European, middle eastern and Asian countries hold far different views of what influence heir judiciaries may hold over their policies.
Vaughan Pratt, so the biggest challenge is to educate politicians and judges on the scientific method and how the climate consensus tries to avoid it while pushing policy agendas that restructure the world economies.
