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Climate change

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University of Georgia School of Law

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Natural Gas And Net Zero: Mutually Exclusive Pathways For The Southeast, Adam D. Orford Jan 2023

Natural Gas And Net Zero: Mutually Exclusive Pathways For The Southeast, Adam D. Orford

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Climate policy increasingly focuses on pathways to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, providing a clear standard against which to evaluate energy system planning. Examining the current and projected fuel mix of the electric power sector in the southeastern United States shows that an ongoing transition to natural gas for electricity risks locking in decades of greenhouse gas emissions at levels fundamentally incompatible with net zero goals. Furthermore, southeastern regulatory proceedings are not well designed to engage with this reality, although useful regulatory models are emerging. Natural gas will remain an important part of the southeastern fuel mix …


The Pledging World Order, Melissa J. Durkee Jan 2023

The Pledging World Order, Melissa J. Durkee

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There is an emerging world order characterized by unilateral pledges within a legal or “legal-ish” architecture of commitments. The pledging world order has materialized in the international legal response to climate change and in other diverse sites. It crosses and blurs the public-private divide. It erodes distinctions between multilateralism and localism, law and not-law, and progress and stasis. It is both a symptom of and a contributor to the dismantling of the Westphalian and postwar orders. Its report card is mixed: While pledging can be highly ineffective as a legal technology, the pledging world order may respond to some legitimacy …


From Contract To Legislation: The Logic Of Modern International Lawmaking, Timothy L. Meyer Jan 2014

From Contract To Legislation: The Logic Of Modern International Lawmaking, Timothy L. Meyer

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The future of international lawmaking is in peril. Both trade and climate negotiations have failed to produce a multilateral agreement since the mid-1990s, while the U.N. Security Council has been unable to comprehensively respond to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. In response to multilateralism’s retreat, many prominent commentators have called for international institutions to be given the power to bind holdout states — often rising or reluctant powers such as China and the United States — without their consent. In short, these proposals envision international law traveling the road taken by federal systems such as the United States and the …


Global Public Goods, Governance Risk, And International Energy, Timothy L. Meyer Jan 2012

Global Public Goods, Governance Risk, And International Energy, Timothy L. Meyer

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Scholars and commentators have long argued that issue linkages provide a way to increase cooperation on global public goods by increasing participation in global institutions, building consensus, and deterring free-riding. In this symposium article, I argue that the emphasis on the potential of issue linkages to facilitate cooperation in these ways has caused commentators to underestimate how common features of international legal institutions designed to accomplish these aims can actually undermine those institutions’ ability to facilitate cooperation. I focus on two features of institutional design that are intended to encourage participation in public goods institutions but can create the risk …