Teaching Climate Change Law & Policy

Apologies for Cross-posting…

Just in case you didn’t see this,

Yours,

Michael Maniates

Allegheny College

P.S.  For the Schelling essay, click on the associate link below, treat with disdain the ensuing web page that tells you that no such article exists, remove the “%20″ in the web link in the address at the top of your web browser for the Schelling piece, then resend the modified URL.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MIT Press releases Holdren, Schelling, and Bonvillian essays from “Energy for Change: Creating Climate Solutions,” the Fall issue of Innovations journal

In conjunction with the clean energy address that President Obama is delivering at MIT today, MIT Press is releasing essays from the soon to be published fall special issue of Innovations journal on energy and climate solution. The pre-released essays are authored by White House Science Adviser John Holdren, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economics Thomas Schelling, and the Director of MIT’s Washington office, William Bonvillian.

In his introduction to the special issue, Holdren states that the forthcoming publication is “as thorough a survey of energy and climate solutions as has yet been compiled.” Of the climate challenge, he writes:

“Without energy, there is no economy. Without climate, there is no environment. Without economy and environment, there is no material well-being, no civil society, no personal or national security. The overriding problem associated with these realities, of course, is that the world has long been getting most of the energy its economies need from fossil fuels whose emissions are imperiling the climate that its environment needs.”

Schelling, a leader in the study of climate change for over three decades, advances a new proposal for international coordination. Writing with reference to next month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, Schelling states,

“Among the ideas that I do not believe will get serious attention in Copenhagen is one I see as critical to addressing the climate challenge: creating a new institutional structure to coordinate assistance from advanced industrialized countries to developing countries with the objective of transforming the way that people in the developing world produce and utilize energy.”

Bonvillian’s essay, co-authored with Georgetown University’s Charles Weiss, summarizes and advances the core arguments presented in the authors’ MIT Press book titled Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution. Bonvillian and Weiss argue that the transformation of the energy technology infrastructure represents an unprecedented challenge for policy-makers as well as for technological innovators:

“Where complex technology sectors like energy are involved, we need to have Congress legislate standard packages of incentives and support across common technology launch areas, so that some technology neutrality is preserved and the optimal emerging technology has a chance to prevail.”

The Director of the MIT Press, Ellen Faran, states that “The Innovations special issue reflects the commitment of MIT and the MIT Press to promote innovative solutions to global issues and to encourage the widest dissemination of its scholarship.”

Sample articles from the issue follow below. Members of the media wishing to see an advance copy of the issue should contact: .

Schelling: http://mitpressjournals.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1256243031168/INNOV0404_schelling.pdf

Holdren: http://mitpressjournals.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1256243017670/INNOV0404_holdren.pdf

Bonvillain-Weiss: http://mitpressjournals.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1256243006055 INNOV0404_bonvillian-weiss.pdf

Others wishing to receive this special issue upon publication are encouraged to subscribe to Innovations at: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/order/default.asp?issn=1558-2477

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