David Victor Quoted on California's Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
A Reality Check on Ambitious Climate Targets
10/28/2011
Andrew C. Revkin,
New York Times, Dot Earth Blog
An interesting commentary published in Nature this week explores what it would take to achieve California's ambitious plan to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. It is worth exploring here because it holds lessons that apply far beyond that state.
The piece, "Piecemeal cuts won't add up to radical reductions," is by Jane C. S. Long, a principal associate director at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the co-leader of a team of energy analysts who spent two years writing "California's Energy Future – The View to 2050," an analysis of what mix of efforts could possibly achieve the required changes in energy and transportation systems.
She writes that a no-holds-barred deployment of known technologies and programs to push energy efficiency to the limit could take the state more than halfway to its goal, but going further would require fundamental leaps in technology.
Click here to read the full article.
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David Victor is Director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation (ILAR). Looking across a wide array of issues from environment and energy to human rights, trade and security, the Laboratory explores when (and why) international laws actually work.
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