International treaties are confusing. Especially confusing are international treaties on complex and controversial issues like climate change. Columnist Bryan Fong clearly doesn’t think there is a need for the U.S. to sign on to the climate treaty that will be formulated this December in Copenhagen. Walla Walla Congresswoman Cathy McMorris shares a similar view, recently explaining to Whitman students that she doesn’t believe the United States should regulate our greenhouse gas emissions.
And yet, maybe Fong and McMorris just need to have the ideas presented to them differently. In order to clarify the upcoming international climate treaty in Copenhagen, Alex and I have decided to use the metaphor of the place we know best, the world of Whitman College.
Whitman has a problem: there are too many parties being thrown and they are producing too many red keg cups. Whitman needs a certain number of keg cups in order to be a properly functioning college but the level of cups has gone beyond the number that Whitman can possibly process.
Consequently, the international governing body of ASWC decided to establish a new committee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Keg Cups, to provide different Whitman clubs with information about the keg cup problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Keg Cups (IPKC) did not do its own research but rather collected research from the Whitman Undergraduate conference.
The IPKC decided that this keg cup problem was a really big deal so ASWC decided to make a Framework Convention on Keg Cups that all of the clubs at Whitman signed after one very long ASWC meeting.
However, the Framework Convention had no power to force any of the clubs to regulate their keg cup emissions so the problem continued unabated. As the cups started to pile onto Boyer, ASWC decided that they needed to put some hardcore regulation into place. Since the idea was formed in Kimball, they called it the Kimball Treaty.
The Kimball Treaty put a cap on keg cup emissions. However, newly formed clubs such as Campus Climate Challenge protested that they had only thrown one kegger and so were not responsible for the keg cups that were now overflowing onto Ankeny. Thus ASWC came up with the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.”
This principle meant that all groups had a responsibility to reduce keg cup emissions but newly formed clubs like Campus Climate that really needed to throw keggers to get people to join their club didn’t have a binding target.
The TKE house, the Whitman world leader in keg cup emissions, got kinda pissed at this. They were afraid that if Campus Climate was able to throw tons of cool parties, less people would want to go TKE. So the TKE house refused to sign onto the Kimball Treaty.
Without the TKE house signing onto the Kimball Treaty there wasn’t a large enough percentage of the world signed onto the treaty so it didn’t enter into force for eight years, until the Beta house (Russia) finally decided to sign on in 2005.
Since 2005 some of the clubs that have signed onto the treaty are on track to reduce their keg cup emissions by 2012 when the Kimball Treaty ends. Some of them aren’t. However, now newly formed clubs like Campus Climate Challenge have been throwing more and more parties and have even surpassed the TKE house.
This December in CoHo, all of the clubs will again be coming together to make an agreement on what will happen in 2012 once the Kimball Treaty expires. This CoHo Treaty is crucial if Whitman College wants to avoid drowning in keg cups.
It is especially important that the TKE house sign onto the CoHo Treaty because the TKE house is a Whitman leader and what the TKE house does, other groups will follow. Also, even though new groups are starting to produce more keg cups, the TKE house still is a major emitter and if past emissions are taken into account, the TKE house has a lot to account for. However, everyone knows that under CoHo new groups will need to have some sort of emissions targets.
Regulating keg cup emissions will not wreck TKE house recruitment. There are plenty of creative ways to have fun that don’t involve keg cups and if the TKE house just got a little more creative the Whitman world would be a much more beautiful place.
Rachel • Apr 26, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I wish I had friends as cool as Lisa Curtis and Alex Kerr.
Gillian Frew • Apr 25, 2009 at 7:44 pm
This is fantastic.