Abstracts & Papers

The information of global climate change including China with figures and China’s policies and actions dealing with the climate change will be introduced in the report. The China development strategy of energy and the different ways from traditional economy to low-carbon economy are going to be minutely described as well.
[Paper]

This paper will explore Germany's decision to phase out of nuclear energy and transition to a renewable energy-based energy system. The paper will look at the question from a historical perspective, consider the forces that have promoted transition, and the normative and institutional factors that are behind the transition.

[Paper]

Describe, from a scientist's perspective, the success of the Montreal Protocol in protecting ozone and climate as a template for international cooperation on an important environmental issue and to describe the challenge for the future.
[Paper]

On the basis of available observations, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly stated that climate has been changing since the beginning of the industrial era and that these observed changes are likely linked to human activities. A large number of models have been used to project how climate could change further during the next centuries. At the same time, many governments of the world consider that the mean global warming should not exceed 20C. Knowing that the planet is approximately 0.80C warmer than in 1850, and that an additional 0.60C warming is already “wired” into the system (without increasing further the atmospheric CO2 concentration), the total amount of CO2-equivalent that we can still emit (worldwide) in the next 40-50 years is limited to about 750 Gt CO2 (or 18 Gt CO2 per year). The current global annual emission represents about 30 Gt CO2.

How do we reach the target of 20C warming? Models show that a 80% reduction in the CO2 emissions is needed, which represents a considerable political and technical challenge. And how should these emission reductions be distributed among the different countries of the world? The paper will provide some models to attain this objective, and suggest that it will be difficult to reach this goal under the present political conditions. Although mitigation should remain our primary goal, adaptation to unavoidable climate change may therefore become a necessity. The paper will address methodologies that should contribute to adaptation strategies by the public and private sectors. The development of climate services, for example, will help develop adaptation measures. However, there are many challenges to face including the low perception by economic actors and business leaders that adaptation will soon become a necessity and perhaps an opportunity for their business at a time where the climate question evolves from an environmental issue to an economic problem. Among the possible measures to be taken is climate engineering. Scientific and ethical issues surrounding this approach will also be discussed.
[Paper]

This paper discusses the novel challenges to governance, mainly at the international level, posed by current proposals to manipulate the Earth’s radiative balance to reduce absorption of sunlight, in order to partly offset climate change being caused by elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases.  While not new, these proposed interventions have become prominent and acutely contentious over the past few years, as the severity of climate-change risks society faces over coming decades have become increasingly evident – due to both continuing failure to achieve required sharp cuts in emissions, and remaining scientific uncertainties.  Relative to the familiar responses to climate change – limiting the emissions causing change, and adapting human and natural systems to reduce the harmful impacts – these engineered interventions have three salient characteristics: they are cheap, fast, and imperfect.  Because they can modify the global climate rapidly, within months of deployment, they are the only response that may allow limiting or reversing severe climate impacts once these have become sufficiently evident to motivate a response.  But they pose many risks, of which their direct environmental impacts may well be the least serious – e.g., the risk that reliance on these imperfect interventions may further weaken already feeble efforts to cut emissions, lead to blind alleys where ongoing interventions cannot be stopped, or spur new international or inter-regional conflicts.

An effective governance system for these technologies must combine elements of scientific, regulatory, and security decision-making.  The governance response must in part be scientific because specific methods are presently undeveloped and their consequences weakly understood.  Research is needed to assess their potential benefits and harms, regionally and globally.  The governance response must be in part regulatory, in that it will have to decide who may make what interventions, under what conditions, with what provision for risk assessment, monitoring, and liability and compensation.  And the response must resemble security decision-making because it is plausible – indeed, even likely – that some nations may perceive fundamental interests to be at stake in the amount and character of climate change they suffer, through whatever mix of changes in response to greenhouse-gas forcing and intentional interventions to limit these changes – and will be prepared to fight over these.  In addition to providing sufficiently legitimate decision-making to authorize what is done, when and by whom, governance of these technologies must also be able to deter unauthorized deployment, limit and compensate for harms, and prevent or limit resultant conflicts.  Even at the national level the integration of scientific, regulatory, and security decision-making is uneven and often weak, and no present international regime effectively combines all three of these modes of policy-making.  Control of these technologies may require substantial expansion of governance authority at the international level, and substantial delegation of authority to expert-based scientific processes – each of these representing intensely challenging, and intensely contentious, departures from current policy traditions and practices.  The paper will sharpen these challenges and propose a few near-term steps to manage them.

[Paper]