{"id":18360,"date":"2015-12-15T11:37:13","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T19:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=18360"},"modified":"2015-12-15T11:37:13","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T19:37:13","slug":"the-exception-to-good-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/15\/the-exception-to-good-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"The Exception to Good Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been much ado about how the recent climate deal reached in Paris is non-binding.  The following article explains how that need not be important, because the parties involved made the commitment in good faith, and their reputation in the international community is tantamount.  While I agree in principle, we must not forget the exception to good faith.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"1215badfaith\"<\/p>\n

The Paris climate deal has been lauded as \u201chistoric<\/a>,\u201d \u201csweeping<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cambitious<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a way to lead the world into a post-fossil-fuel, less-than-2\u00b0C-warming future. <\/p>\n

But it has also been ridiculed for being \u201cnon-binding.\u201d That is to say that America and nearly 200 other countries all got together and agreed to try really, really hard to slow climate change and to submit ongoing progress reports, but didn\u2019t set up penalties within the agreement. <\/p>\n

Non-binding, though, does not mean meaningless. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth taking a moment and thinking about what a binding agreement is. If I offer to pick your child up from daycare Thursday afternoon, is that a binding agreement? You can\u2019t, strictly speaking, punish me if I leave little Sarah sitting on the curb. But \u2014 and this is a big but \u2014 you can shame me. You can avoid me, distrust me, and not make any more social agreements with me. <\/p>\n

This idea of social pressure and participation does not only apply to carpools. It also applies to the international community. Sure, China could renege on its promises to transition off coal. The United States could decide it\u2019s not going to give any money to developing nations to help build renewable energy. But that would make for pretty bad foreign relations. <\/p>\n

In fact, most international agreements rely on countries\u2019 desire to continue having good relationships with their counterparts, Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, told ThinkProgress. <\/p>\n

\u201cInternational agreements operate under good faith,\u201d Burger said. \u201cWhether a country is an upstanding member of the international community is what\u2019s at stake.\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

The Republican Party does not give a rat\u2019s ass for America’s reputation in the international community.  They proved that when they defaulted on our debt in 2011<\/a>, causing a drop in our credit rating.  They are the exception to good faith, and they have seditiously tried to undermine these negotiations at every turn.  So the future livability of our planet may well depend on who we elect in 2016.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been much ado about how the recent climate deal reached in Paris is non-binding.  The following article explains how that need not be important, because the parties involved made the commitment in good faith, and their reputation in the international community is tantamount.  While I agree in principle, we must not forget the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}