David Victor's Op-Ed on The Huffington Post
A Fresh Start on Global Warming
10/22/2012
David Victor,
The Huffington Post
Next month, the curtain rises on the next round of international talks on global warming. Never before has diplomacy on this important topic been in a worse state. There are dozens of exciting new ideas for how governments could tackle the dangers of warming, but no idea and no government is clearly dominant. Outside of Europe, no major world economy is actually doing much to control its emissions. Even worse, most of the world's biggest firms have lost faith that governments will do much in the near future and have scaled back investments on needed new low-emission technologies.
Fixing this problem requires rewiring the political forces that, to date, have made it impossible for governments to make real progress. Serious efforts to cut emissions are like drinking castor oil -- painful at first but beneficial, perhaps, if sustained over a long period of time. Few governments are good at that.
In recent years, the most important rewiring has come by linking global warming to energy security. Much of what is needed to cut warming gases can also help countries cut their dependence on foreign sources of energy. China, for example, is sharply slowing the growth of its energy appetite and emissions of warming gases that come from burning fossil fuels by adopting some of the world's most aggressive energy efficiency measures.
Click here to read the full article.
Click here to download White Paper on Energy Security and Global Warming.
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David G. Victor is a professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and director of the School’s 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, named one of The Economist's best science and technology books of 2011.
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