Re-thinking the design of climate stabilisation policy
Paul A. David,
This seminar will offer an overview of recent developments in the commercial application of advances in the technology of direct air capture of carbon dioxide and its reliable sequestration in useful industrial inputs and final goods (DAC&RSU). It will focus on several important near-term and long-implications of these developments that call for the novel, even radical ‘re-thinking’ of current global climate stabilization strategies. Beyond the foreseeable near-term welfare benefits to be derived from the complementary relationship between removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and the management of “carbon-pricing” instruments (i.e., carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programs) that are meant to provide private incentives for investments in “alternative”, non-fossil sources of energy, DAC&RSU has the long-term potential to permit closing the carbon cycle and thereby achieving a profound transformation of the material basis of the world’s hitherto global economic system, and thereby open the path to an epoch of sustainable global economic development and growth.
About the speaker
Professor of Economics & Senior Fellow (Emeritus) of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR); Quondam W. E. Robertson Professor of American Economic History; Professor of History (by Courtesy) at Stanford University; Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford, & Professor Emeritus of Economics and Economic History & Quondam Senior Fellow of the Oxford Internet Institute in The University of Oxford, Oxford; Professorial Fellow of United Nations University-MERIT (Maastricht, NL)
Venue: Conference room (0.16 & 0.17)
Date: 24 May 2018
Time: 12:00 - 13:00 CEST