David Victor's Article on Hillary Clinton's New Global Warming Plan
Hillary Clinton's Plan to Get Serious About Global Warming
06/21/2012
David Victor, Charles Kennel, Veerabhadran Ramanathan,
The Daily Beast
This United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit happening now is a reminder of how little has been achieved since 1992, the last time diplomats gathered there to focus on global environmental perils. The final segment of the Rio + 20 meeting opened yesterday with no coherent agenda and is likely to close tomorrow with few practical outcomes.
Back in 1992 at the first Rio summit the world rightly made climate change its signature issue because sustainable economic growth and protecting the planet's ecology are impossible to achieve if the planet's climate system way out of whack. But the bold vision for stopping global climate change hasn't inspired much serious action. World emissions of warming pollutants today are about 40% higher than they were in 1992 and will rise even higher in the future.
The good news is that it far from the big UN halls, where talk outweighs action, a new and much more effective climate change strategy is emerging. Earlier this month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fleshed out a scheme with Sweden and a few other like-minded nations to cut warming pollution by working in a small, nimble group rather than the whole United Nations. Supported by the United Nations Environment Program and an array of leading scientists, the effort focuses on controls that don't just slow global warming but also deliver tangible benefits to health and food security.
Click here to read the full article.
Related Links
David G. Victor is a professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and director of the School’s new Laboratory on International Law and Regulation. His research focuses on how the design of regulatory law affects issues such as environmental pollution and the operation of major energy markets. He is the author of Global Warming Gridlock, which explains why the world has not made much diplomatic progress on the problem of climate change while also exploring new strategies that would be more effective.
