Fixing the Climate: Strategies for an Uncertain World

by Charles F. Sabel, David G. Victor

Overview

Solving the global climate crisis through local partnerships and experimentation

Global climate diplomacy—from the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris Agreement—is not working. Despite decades of sustained negotiations by world leaders, the climate crisis continues to worsen. The solution is within our grasp—but we will not achieve it through top-down global treaties or grand bargains among nations.

Charles Sabel and David Victor explain why the profound transformations needed for deep cuts in emissions must arise locally, with government and business working together to experiment with new technologies, quickly learn the best solutions, and spread that information globally. Sabel and Victor show how some of the most iconic successes in environmental policy were products of this experimentalist approach to problem solving, such as the Montreal Protocol on the ozone layer, the rise of electric vehicles, and Europe’s success in controlling water pollution. They argue that the Paris Agreement is at best an umbrella under which local experimentation can push the technological frontier and help societies around the world learn how to deploy the technologies and policies needed to tackle this daunting global problem.

A visionary book that fundamentally reorients our thinking about the climate crisis, Fixing the Climate is a road map to institutional design that can finally lead to self-sustaining reductions in emissions that years of global diplomacy have failed to deliver.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691224558
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	08/02/2022
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,126,468
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Charles F. Sabel is the Maurice T. Moore Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. His books include Experimentalist Governance in the European Union. He lives in New York City. David G. Victor is professor of international relations and industrial policy at the University of California, San Diego. His books include Global Warming Gridlock. He lives in La Jolla, California.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

List of Abbreviations xi

1 Introduction: Toward Experimentalist Governance 1

2 Lessons from the Path Not Taken: Montreal and Kyoto 18

3 Theory of Experimentalist Governance 47

4 Innovation at the Technological Frontier: Three Policy Icons and a Common Approach to Uncertainty 74

5 Experimentalism in Context: Ground-Level Innovation in Agriculture, Forestry, and Electric Power 106

6 International Cooperation beyond Paris 151

7 Piecing Together a More Accountable Globalization 170

Notes 181

References 205

Index 229

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“If you read just one book this year about how we can best solve climate change, read this one. It is beautifully written, fundamentally pragmatic, and—best of all—deeply hopeful.”—Rebecca Henderson, author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“To get big cuts in carbon emissions, we’ve got to push the technological frontier. Charles Sabel and David Victor’s compelling new book shows persuasively how we can do this by government and business partnering together to test new technologies and learn quickly what works. This is vital reading for everyone who truly cares about climate action.”—Jay Inslee, Governor of the State of Washington, former US presidential candidate, and coauthor of Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy

“In this excellent book, Sabel and Victor offer nothing less than a new paradigm for addressing climate change, building on decentralized problem-solving practices that are already widely deployed but have been hidden in plain sight due to our focus on outdated models.”—Dani Rodrik, Harvard University

“Fixing the Climate will transform the way we think about globalization and climate policy. In reenvisioning the problem of global climate action as one of collective experimentation and innovation rather than zero-sum distributional struggle, Sabel and Victor offer a perspective that combines realism, pragmatism, and optimism. An eye-opening and urgently needed book.”—Adam Tooze, author of Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy

“We are making progress in cutting emissions. There is already overwhelming willingness by political, business, and civil-society leaders to move even faster, and this book shows how these actors must work together in the right ways to make that happen.”—Nigel Topping, UN COP26 High Level Climate Action Champion

Editorial Reviews

2022-05-25
A blending of top-down and bottom-up approaches to climate change.

When the world is burning, is there time to change fire engines? Perhaps, write professors Sabel and Victor. The outlook may seem bleak, but new models of cooperation and “effective problem-solving” have been emerging in recent years. Some of these involve government, federal or state (as with California’s aggressive efforts to reduce carbon emissions); some are at the corporate level, generally driven by self-interest and the possibility that new methods of atmospheric decarbonization will yield new profit centers. Among the most effective measures, the authors suggest, are those that leverage local governance and involve the citizens who live on the ground in places where smokestacks are belching emissions or drag chains are deforesting the tropics. The authors deem this blend “experimentalist governance,” adding that changes and innovations will best come from several directions while requiring some sort of coordination. In a meaningful example, they suggest that battling overgrazing on the part of sheep would demand not only agreements on limits set by the shepherds themselves, but also on the possibility of breeding sheep that eat less grass or engineering new kinds of grass as well. This speaks to the authors’ assertion that battling climate change through, say, pollution reduction depends on “destabilizing innovation,” the kind of creative destruction that turned the world from landlines to cellphones. In sometimes-arid prose, the authors examine numerous case studies, including Brazil’s tangled efforts to preserve the Amazonian rainforest even as its developing economy considers it to be “unspoiled land to settle and exploit.” Throughout, they suggest that local people and “small groups of willing innovators” must pitch in to help further “open plurilateral agreements” at the national and international levels.

Of considerable, if specialized, interest to climate activists and policymakers.

Kirkus Reviews

"N/A"—-Markus Beham, Zeitschrift Nachhaltigkeitsrecht

From the Publisher