Transnational Climate Law

Abstract

Climate change shatters the idea that jurisdictional borders and doctrinal debates about the scope of the ‘legal’ are the sole tensions with which a concept of transnational law must contend. Climate change exposes a further fault line underlying legal thought and practice – the problematic, but deep-rooted practice of separating ‘Human’ from ‘Nature’. This separation, and its accompanying assumption that the natural environment is a limitless resource for human exploitation, is powerfully challenged by the reality of a dramatically changing planet, and the rise of Anthropocene literature that bring planetary limits sharply into view. This chapter reaches beyond the most visible manifestations of climate law – legislation and lawsuits that appear already bearing the climate law label – to explore the ways in which a transnational law lens illuminates the rather larger subject areas of unenvironmental law and unclean energy law.

Keywords: Climate Law, Climate Lawyers, Carbon Markets, Climate Experimentalism, Unenvironmental Law