Prospects for Coordinated Global Action to Tackle Climate Change: A View from the United States

The Environment Institute hosted a free public event with Franz Litz on Friday 23rd April.

Now that the dust has settled on the Accord reached by international climate change negotiators in Copenhagen, what are the prospects for concerted global action to fend off the worse effects of climate change? The non-binding Copenhagen Accord relies on a country-by-country approach to emissions reductions, coupled with a framework for measuring, monitoring and verifying those reductions. This bottom-up approach was made necessary in part by the domestic political context within the United States-the largest contributor to climate change pollution and perhaps the slowest major economy to take concerted national action to reduce emissions. But can a bottom-up approach be successful?

Franz Litz, Senior Fellow with the Washington, DC-based environmental think tank, the World Resources Institute, spoke on the prospects for effective global climate change action and the likelihood that the United States will step up to the challenge of climate change.