Summary
Proceedings of the One Hundred Second Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law: The Politics of International Law - Discussion
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Polar politics: change in the Arctic.
The panel was convened at 1:00 p.m., Thursday, April 10, by its moderator, Daniel Magraw of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), who introduced the panelists: David Caron of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law; Suzanne Lalonde of the University of Montreal; and Bakhfiyar Tuzmukhamedov, Vice President of the Russian Association of International Law (RAIL), delivering remarks of the Association's President, Judge Anatoly Kolodkin.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY DANIEL MAGRAW * I will spend a few minutes at the outset describing the really remarkable, extraordinary warming that is happening in the Arctic and some of its physical consequences, and I will identify several of the important international legal issues. The Arctic has experienced significant warming over at least the last three decades. The rate of warming seems to be accelerating. Even the United States Government officially acknowledges this. Even though its views of the broader issues of climate change remain murky at best, on Arctic warming, the United States Government is clearly on record as saying that it is happening. The effects of this warming on the sea ice are remarkable. About 43 percent of the summer sea ice has disappeared since 1979, over the last three decades. This involves a positive feedback loop. As the ice melts, less sunlight is reflected back and more is absorbed into the dark waters, thereby warming them, and causing more sea ice to melt. We are essentially on a downward spiral and there is no reason to think it will stop. In fact, many scientists are predicting that there will be no summer sea ice at all by the year 2030 and some even have predicted that there will be no summer sea ice by the year 2013. Even 2030 is within the lifetimes of most of t...See the full content of this document
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