RSA - Climate Change Justice

Climate Change Justice

1st Jul 2010; 13:00

(full recording including audience Q&A)
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RSA Thursday

In the debate over climate change, questions of fairness and justice play a crucial role. Many commentators argue strongly that a climate treaty should place greater burdens on rich countries than on poor countries, or should punish countries that have contributed the largest amounts of greenhouse gases, or should place equal burdens on people around the world.

But, in fact, argue University of Chicago Law professors David Weisbach and Eric Posner, this would be a serious mistake, one that, by dooming effective international limits on greenhouse gases, would actually make the world's poor and developing nations far worse off.

Join David Weisbach at the RSA as he puts forward the the provocative and original argument that the best - and possibly only - way to get an effective climate treaty, which will improve the welfare of people around the world, is to exclude measures designed to redistribute wealth or address historical wrongs against underdeveloped countries.

Speaker: David Weisbach, Kearney Director of the Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and co-author of Climate Change Justice (Princeton University Press, 2010.

Chair: Paul Ekins, Professor of Energy and Environment Policy, UCL Energy Institute

Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #rsaweisbach