David Victor Quoted in Nature Reports Climate Change
Oct 29, 2009
By Mason Inman, Nature Reports
The climate change game
Hopes are fading that a strong treaty will emerge from next month's negotiations in Copenhagen. Researchers who study cooperation, though, aren't surprised. Mason Inman reports.
"For any kind of climate agreement, setting emissions targets won't nearly be enough to ensure compliance. Most studies suggest that enforcement will be necessary to prevent free riding. The problem, says David Victor, an economist at the University of California in San Diego, is that 'governments don't have much direct control over emissions.' Instead 'you need to focus on things that governments actually control,' such as regulations or prices on carbon, he argues. 'The more you drift away from that the harder it is to design the agreement. And since this is one of the hardest agreements to design, if it is to be effective, that's a big problem.'
To read the full article and the rest of David Victor's comments, click here.
