Science, Technology, and Public Policy

"With such radical and scientifically ignorant positions being advocated by the president-elect, many of us—myself included—saw November 8th as the day the sky began to fall. Fortunately, our domestic democratic institutions and the global response to climate change are bigger and more resilient than any one man. While a Trump presidency will certainly be detrimental to progress on climate change, it won’t be as catastrophic as many of us are thinking."

"...[E]ven if the impacts of a Trump slump in U.S. domestic climate action are manageable, the impact on global policy may not be. The concern here is not immediate support for new coal plants or the immediate risk of conflict; it is the way in which a weakening of international institutions might initiate a negative feedback loop played out over many years and decades."

Dr Olli Heinonen, S. Rajaratnam Professor of Strategic Studies, on 25 October 2016, in a RSIS seminar at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

The authors explore, in particular, the implications for CO2 removal and solar geoengineering of the Paris Agreement's long-term temperature goals, provision for "removals by sinks," and market-based mitigation mechanisms.

"In an unprecedented action, a court has ruled that the Dutch Government must reduce its greenhouse emissions by 25%. The landmark case was initiated by some 900 Dutch citizens and the verdict offers a legal breakthrough in a longstanding political stalemate, underlining the potential power of a well-informed grassroots lobby group in the environmental policy area"

"...[A]ttention is turning to solar geoengineering, also known as solar radiation management. Although the concept of injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere has so far been tested only using computer simulations, there's high confidence that it would work to cool the Earth because it would mimic the well-understood cooling effect of large volcanic eruptions."