Search

In the wake of the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the American and Canadian governments have taken different environmental policy pathsâ€"Canada has ratified the agreement while the United States has not. But while officially approving the emissions plan, the Canadian government has not acted on its aims and objectives. Meanwhile, the United States has supported other environmental agreements, such as the APEC Sydney Declaration for Climate Change, also signed by Canada. These redirections and evasions serve to rhetorically undermine and defocus the Kyoto initiatives. In both countries, approaches to climate change have been politically and rhetorically opportunistic. In light of the ambiguous defeat of Kyoto in Canada and the United States a political discourse has emerged that has adopted the term “Kyoto” as a rhetorical tool to describe poor environmental policy. Using the debate transcripts from the American House of Representatives and the Canadian House of Commons this interdisciplinary and international panel will investigate the rhetoric of Kyoto from three unique perspectives: that of a rhetorician, that of a political scientist, and that of a biologist. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A framework detailing the structural causes of uncertainty is developed to explain why debates over nuclear proliferation and climate change are dominated by belief-oriented thinking. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As preparation for field research in three mid-size cities in Europe and the United States, this paper presents theory and analysis supporting the advantages of local level responses to climate change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically there has been a significant divide between national and international law and politics. Most issues, particularly those that relate to the general welfare of citizens within a specific jurisdiction have been left to the political system holding sovereign authority. Nevertheless, as globalization has spread throughout the world more and more attention has been paid to the overlap between such issues. With increasing frequency international law must content with the challenges of national politics and the limitations of domestic political decision making. Conversely, national laws and courts are forced to contend with international legal pronouncements and public opinion. Within the United States, for example there is considerable debate about the current administrations unwillingness to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol. This has resulted in numerous state and local proposals to address such issues. In addition, there has been considerable attention paid to international human rights law and decisions about how to address prisoner rights within the global war on terrorism. In the recent juvenile death penalty case the United States Supreme Court Justices addressed the intersection between international and national law. This paper will look at this intersection and discuss the implications. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]