Now the essays are over theres a real pressure to get the dissertation done. I havent really had time to think about the dissertation even though its been bubbling away in the back of my mind all year. I haven't really got any definite plans, however i have lots of ideas that i really should either be shot down or pursued. Im still really interested in the environmental law. I think that although there has been so many books written, so many articles, companies and speeches based on the green movement there are hardly any laws or policies to back this up. That's pretty much the long and short of it. Of course Europe or the EU can be viewed as an exceptional or special area as it can and will adopt polices based on subsidiarity. To clarify: if the EU can work together by achieving a consensus or unanimous agreement of all 27 member states then this will surely work better than countries working individually or even competing as to who can be the greenest. This is just a very very brief outline of how I think the EU or Europe should tackle global warming. Mark Leonard, a British foreign policy thinker at the Centre for European Reform goes further and claims that this approach would eventually push other countries to indeed adopt same or similar policies as failure to do so would complicate economic ties. When one of my lecturers put this idea forward I had trouble coming to grips with it as surely this constitutes bullying-one large institute bullying poorer countries or indeed continents. I look back now and I can see that Mark and my lecturers view is ringing true. For example on a micro level if a cheese maker in France produces her cheese and sells it to an American company with paper packaging rather than plastic then that American company then has to process that paper. If that American company then recycles that paper and then passes it on to another industry then the same process continues. If you then imagine all of Europe's cheese makers using paper packaging via EU law (or directive) the importers across the globe would then be forced to either understand the ethical or economical implications. This is as i always say a simplistic hypothetical scenario but it can be applied to quite a lot of the market (market being one thing that even Euro sceptics accept as a good thing).