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Research Group Sustainability and Climate PolicyProf. Dr. Felix Ekardt, LL.M, M.A |
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Research Group Sustainability and Climate PolicyProf. Dr. Felix Ekardt, LL.M, M.A |
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Felix Ekardt will hold six speeches on climate protection and constitutional theory in China, amongst others at the world congress of legal and social philosophers.
Since September, Felix Ekardt's new book `Cool Down: 50 Irrtümer über unsere Klima-Zukunft' is available in bookstores. Summary Cool Down
At the end of August, Felix Ekardt and Michael Kerbler discussed the financial crisis and climate change. The discussion was boradcast by the Austrian Radio Ö 1.
Substantial environmental law also requires the possibility to bring legal actions to courts, lest it remain on paper. Effective environmental protection, however, always has had to face strong resistance. Simplification of planning; and speed-up of administrative procedures and the conservation of economic advantages on a national level on one hand – on the other hand, more openness to civil society through information, participation, and protection of third-party-rights on a European and international level. More and more, national administrative law is marked by this contrast. Here, in the conformity of grown national administrative law with European law – in particular concerning problems of balancing and errors regarding procedural rules – lies the greatest current legal problem concerning large scale projects, not in the, by friends and foes alike, overestimated right of corporate action.
Partly related to this topic is the problem of the required strength of precaution in environmental law (which is not tantamount to `absolutely harmless'!). Precaution and the rules on the assessment of facts in environmental law are a problem of correct balancing and decision-making in general. This becomes particularly apparent with the classic means of environmental policy: threshold values for dangerous substances. This also concerns the underestimated reach of threshold-related human rights protection that should benefit environmental claimants; the problem that threshold values are neither political value judgements nor assessments of facts; the problem that experts should not balance fundamental rights nor make political decisions; and that balancing in environmental policy-making often leads to lethal results.
Downloadable texts: