Carr and the Climate

• Department of Law

The International Law Working Group hosts an paper discussion with Professors Ingo Venzke (University of Amsterdam) and Arnulf Becker Lorca (Chair in Public International Law, EUI), and EUI Law researchers, Timo Zandstra and Julia Galera Oliva.

Abstract:

The article delves into the dissonances between the aims and the practice in the climate regime, using Edward Hallett Carr’s work as a lens. Beyond the historical echoes of debates in the League of Nations’ era, the article draws out Carr’s more fundamental contributions for thinking about the travails of climate law in the present: his indictment of utopianism and rationalism, as though knowledge and insight lead to action; his dismissal of reductionist realism, as though morality does not matter; his call for blending realism with utopianism to avoid both determinism and voluntarism; and the question towards which his thought gravitates: Which non-utopian place to give to morality in international relations? Connecting to a view of ‘international from below’, the article appreciates international law not as an accumulation of ingenious texts to magically curb CO2 emissions, but as a mobilizing force in transnational climate movements.