If you want to protect the environment, it is essential to remove the Government from everything. Private contracts make pollution impossible since it is a violation of property rights. It is the Government that stands in the way of progress always and everywhere.

This should not be heretical to the left: Marx wanted the abolition of the State, eventually.

Well there is a very good reason for opposing global government (so I am sure it is not the reason that politicians have for avoiding it in this instance) but it is jurisdictional competition. It is partly because of vibrant (sometimes violent admittedly) competition between states that a number of them have emerged in such a way that they have government that are certainly sufferable, and in the case of much of the West, pretty pleasent to live under.

It is difficult to detect what the competition effect on jurisdictions is, although we might imagine it to be pretty high given how much people are prepared to spend and to lose in order to move into a superior jurisdiction. So we should fear the kind of incentives a global government would have, or lack of them.

What you are calling for is a world government dedicated to promoting the catastrophic global warming religion & other eco-Fascist scares to promote Luddism. I do not think there is anything more likely to return humanity to the dark ages.

Global government would mean, for example, the desires of the French electorate being overruled by the desires of the Indian electorate. People are preared to tolerate being outvoted in their own country, they don’t like the idea of other countries bossing them around.

Nonsense – the majority of the world have agreed. Politics is the art of compromise and that has been achieved.

How is anarchy in international relations a remarkable proposal? It was the case for the vast majority of human history, it’s basically still the case, de facto. It’s also a common international relations trope, so much that I have heard about it and I don’t care about academic IR one bit.

Fucking hell. If your solution to global warming is a global superstate I’ll buy a snorkel and some tanning lotion.

It’s bad enough my vote is a drop in the ocean in a national election without diluting it by another six billion.

What you are suggesting is replacing democracy with homeopathy.

‘The problem of collective action means that people won’t agree to contribute to public goods, preferring that the cost of doing so falls upon someone else.’

People contribute where they see a positive outcome to that contribution and where they have some say in how that contribution is used.

‘And on top of this is the sheer difficulty of getting lots of people to agree to anything.

Maybe you are right and the world needs a Fuhrer to take decisions for us but I’d rather stick a gun in my mouth.

‘What I mean is that there are clear reasons why anarchy within borders is thought undesirable.  If laws could only be reached by the unanimous agreement of all individuals, the rich and powerful would only consent to be bound by them on terms onerous to the poor.’

Within an Anarchy the ‘rich and powerful’ wouldn’t exist – at least as they exist within either capitalism or state socialism. Economic and political inequality is enforced by the State. That’s what the State is FOR.

What happened to arguing a smaller state rather than a global one?

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/04/17/why-the-left-should-argue-for-a-small-state/

The OP is confusing soi-dissant anarcho-capitalism with anarchism proper. I have some sympathy with his argument, though. Parliamentary representation, for all its faults, would be a better system at the global level, to the antiquated “meeting of the chiefs” systems we have in place at present.

More Rules! Remoter Leaders! Rationing for ever!

Transnational governance on climate change is such a bad idea that even Gordon wants it for heavens sake.

It is, frankly a bit rich for David Milliband to come prancing back from Copenhagen blaming the Chinese for torpeedoing everything and saying how unacceptable it is for them to scuttle the whole agreement.

Note to David Milliband – China represents nearly 20% of the global population – and emits 21.5% of the CO2. The UK is 0.91% of the population and emits fully 2% of the carbon (stats from Wikipedia so take them with a pinch of salt). So, in order for us not to be hypocrites, we’d need to be offering a 50% reduction in our carbon intensity pretty much immediately.

N.B. these statistics are still skewed because we import most of our raw materials these days whereas China’s output of CO2 is at least partly derived from aluminium smelting and other heavy industry for export.

If Britain was serious it would stop arguing about other country’s unwillingness to accept curbs on their emissions and concentrate on slashing ours. For example:

The Severn Barrage
Offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary
New high speed rail routes across the UK
Cease all airport expansion
Ramp up nuclear power capacity
Funnel research money into the ITER and DEMO experimental fusion reactors
Architectural competitions to design commuting out of cities and towns
All civilian government vehicles to go hybrid or electric within 5 years
Challenge the tourist industry to persuade more of us to holiday in the UK
Build a network of electric charging/battery swap stations and work with EU and US to develop common charging standard.
And still more support for domestic insulation.

But the government prefers to whinge about the Chinese refusal to commit themselves to being second class citizens for another generation.