The Legal Research Society

Lawyers and social scientists alike have for a number of years agreed that environmental conditions and scarcity of natural resources have the potential to act as a catalyst for armed conflicts. Such assertions have strengthened the normative link between environmental law and the law governing armed conflicts on a general level. This linking is already recognised, in general, in the area of international law of armed conflicts, which, inter alia, lays down that the methods and means of warfare are not limited; and in particular in the international law of armed conflicts which provides for the protection of the environment during hostilities such as Articles 35(3) and 55 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva convention. In addition to this “environmental-armed-conflict-law”, considering the state of the environment as a cause of armed conflict has gathered consensus among policy-makers, diplomats and academics. This was most recently recognised when Al Gore, together wi...

In Cervantes’ classic novel from the early 1600’s, Don Quixote de la Mancha bravely, but rather foolishly, sets out to fight windmills, which he mistakes for being the giants that any decent knight must fight. Although the encounter leaves Don Quixote battered, it now looks as if he will have to learn some new skills to keep up the fight. According to today’s New York Times, flying wind turbines might be a thing of the future. Although this might seem a bit far fetched, it has certain advantages. For instance, the wind blows constantly and steadily in the altitude of 10.000 feet and some estimates suggest that the flying turbines at that altitude will be able to generate energy at a very competitive price per kilowatt, compared to conventional methods of on-the-ground production. The NY Times reports that the turbines have the potential to prove particularly useful in rural areas and, so far, interest has been registered from a number of developing countries. However, some problems rem...

Former Vice-President Al Gore today won the Nobel Peace Prize for his movie An Inconvenient Truth . Gore’s movie, from 2006, is based on talks and slide shows that Gore toured extensively with after loosing the presidential election to George W. Bush in 2000. It describes the scientific data on, and portrays the effects of, global warming in an easy-to-understand manner. Earlier this year, Gore won an Academy Award for best documentary feature for his movie. Gore has won popular accolades for the film, although it has, at the same time, been criticized for portraying the science behind global warming as overly simplistic, and for exaggerating the facts and evidence. Gore shares this year’s prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – a UN body set up to assess the scientific evidence in relation to human-induced climate change. The Nobel Committee cites Gore’s and the IPCC’s “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change,” as w...