Symposium Foreword: ‘Go Ahead Without Us’: Global Climate Change Policy in the Absence of Full Participation

Abstract

This symposium collection in Transnational Environmental Law (TEL) considers prospects for progress on global climate change policy under the assumption that the United States (US), or another critical national actor, will not meaningfully participate in any international climate change mitigation regime. Almost without exception lawmakers, diplomats, academics, and other interested parties discuss global climate change policy under the assumption that robust US participation is necessary to achieve successan understandable view, given that as much as 20% of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are attributable to the US. 1 Meanwhile, for the better part of the last two decades, US ambivalence and at times outright hostility towards climate change policy have impeded the development of a robust international regime. The national US political situationfrom the disincentives for bipartisan compromise in a winner-takes-all two-party system, to the de facto super-majority requirement for the passage of legislative bills in the Senate, to the contorted alignment necessary to secure agreement between the House, the Senate and the Presidentmake it reasonable to wonder if the US could ever adopt the kinds of robust and transformative policy declared to be necessary by much of the climate change policy community.

Transnational Environmental Law's Missing People

“…I mention these here to err on the side of inclusion, despite the fact that in each instance the reference is being made to a 'role' rather than a personality. This included two articles referring to United States (US) President Donald Trump, 19 three mentioning former US President Barack Obama, 20 and one mention of the following: former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 21 the Prime Minister of Singapore, 22 the Indonesian ASEAN representative, 23 37 • In a loose category of corporate 'celebrities', Lord Browne of British Petroleum, 38 Sir Richard Branson of Virgin, 39 Mervin Kelly of Bell Labs, 40 Failing to name and discuss individual people is not the only way in which scholarship might be described as 'depeopled'. Indeed, this label might seem perverse given the deliberate and significant contributions of transnational environmental law scholarship to making visible non-state actors and their role in transnational law.…”