Is the UN all talk and no walk? How International Law Can Address the Climate Crisis By Annika Reynolds
The most prominent voice at the 2019 UN Climate Change Summit was the raw fury of a sixteen-year-old. Greta Thunberg said, with the righteous anger of future generations robbed of everything: You all come to me for hope? How dare you! She spoke to a room of world leaders. She spoke to a room of people that gathered under the auspices of the UN – the apotheosis of our modern international legal system. She spoke to a room of people that should have been the guiding light of humanity’s future. Yet Thunberg’s anger was validated over the rest of the Summit, as leaders were more preoccupied with externalising blame for emissions than achieving concrete strategies. By the end of the Summit, it is fair to ask if the limited commitments made will even offset the carbon produced by world leaders traveling to New York. Is this a signal that the international legal system is too weak, too amorphous, to ensure climate action? More predisposed to finger-pointing between countries than real change? Ironically, I imagine Jair Bolsonaro, the current President of Brazil, would say yes to this question and equally, Trump. Certainly, our current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has indicated his derision of international norms with his snubbing of the Summit altogether. I suspect they would say yes because of their nationalist leanings. For nationalism is the rhetoric of isolationism and, in the context of climate change, the process of externalising one’s emissions and their impact. It is easy to close borders to climate refugees, to keep producing excess emissions and mining coal in a disengaged international community. 15
