About David G. Victor

David G. Victor is a professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and director of the School’s new Laboratory on International Law and Regulation. Looking across a wide array of issues from environment and energy to human rights, trade and security, the Laboratory explores when (and why) international laws actually work.

Most recently, Victor served as director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he was also a professor at Stanford Law School. Previously, he directed the science and technology program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, where he directed the Council's task force on energy, co-chaired by Jim Schlesinger and John Deutch, and was senior adviser to the task force on climate change, chaired by governors George Pataki and Tom Vilsack. Victor’s research at Stanford and the Council examined ways to improve management of the nation's $50 billion strategic oil reserve, strategies for managing investment in “geoengineering” and a wide array of other topics related to technological innovation and the impact of innovation on economic growth. His research also examined global forest policy, global warming, and genetic engineering of food crops.

His books include: Natural Gas and Geopolitics (Cambridge University Press, July 2006), The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming (Princeton University Press, April 2001; second edition July 2004); Climate Change: Debating America's Policy Options (New York: Council on Foreign Relations); and Technological Innovation and Economic Performance (Princeton University Press, January 2002, co-edited with Benn Steil and Richard Nelson). Victor is author of more than 150 essays and articles in scholarly journals, magazines and newspapers, including Climatic Change, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Nature, The New York Times, Science, Scientific American, and The Washington Post.