Some climate change with that policy?
Jonathan Phillips
Issue date: 12/6/06 Section: Features
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After swathes of popular attention - magazine cover stories, record-high temperatures, and a documentary by Al Gore - global climate change is enjoying a Barack Obama-type year. Even Congress acknowledged environmentalism last month in a bill to cap greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emissions. Climate change also emerged as the most pressing discussion topic at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
But does KSG's attention to the issue mirror this surge? The number of second year MPPs declaring Environment and Natural Resources as their policy area concentration (PAC) sunk to seven his year and the program's thesis seminar was canceled. With key faculty members Robert Stavins and William Clark on teaching sabbaticals, there are now even fewer courses offered on the subject.
The topic of climate change has not come up in the JFK Jr. Forum, the school's main venue for policy discourse, since September 2004, when the Forum hosted an economics-oriented event entitled "Climate Change Hits Wall Street."
So where at KSG are people talking about climate change?
The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs hosts the two programs that undertake the bulk of KSG climate change work: the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program. These programs have long conducted interdisciplinary research on climate change policy and the innovation and implementation of cleaner, more efficient technologies.
This semester, Dean David Ellwood and Christopher Stone, Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of the Practice of Criminal Justice, are teaching a course entitled "Acting In Time" which undelines the need for governments to commit attention and resources to problems brewing early, before they escalate into disasters.
"The Acting-in-Time Initiative is highlighting global warming as one of the clearest examples of a crisis the world's governments see coming. The question is whether or not enough governments can act in time to mitigate it sufficiently," says Stone. "The problem may be so complex that it requires expertise and resources from every field to pull together. But it may also be a narrower political puzzle-and potential failure of political leadership."
But does KSG's attention to the issue mirror this surge? The number of second year MPPs declaring Environment and Natural Resources as their policy area concentration (PAC) sunk to seven his year and the program's thesis seminar was canceled. With key faculty members Robert Stavins and William Clark on teaching sabbaticals, there are now even fewer courses offered on the subject.
The topic of climate change has not come up in the JFK Jr. Forum, the school's main venue for policy discourse, since September 2004, when the Forum hosted an economics-oriented event entitled "Climate Change Hits Wall Street."
So where at KSG are people talking about climate change?
The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs hosts the two programs that undertake the bulk of KSG climate change work: the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program. These programs have long conducted interdisciplinary research on climate change policy and the innovation and implementation of cleaner, more efficient technologies.
This semester, Dean David Ellwood and Christopher Stone, Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of the Practice of Criminal Justice, are teaching a course entitled "Acting In Time" which undelines the need for governments to commit attention and resources to problems brewing early, before they escalate into disasters.
"The Acting-in-Time Initiative is highlighting global warming as one of the clearest examples of a crisis the world's governments see coming. The question is whether or not enough governments can act in time to mitigate it sufficiently," says Stone. "The problem may be so complex that it requires expertise and resources from every field to pull together. But it may also be a narrower political puzzle-and potential failure of political leadership."
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