Prof. Selin on the UN Climate Summit
As the world has geared up for the United Nation’s cliamte summit called by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, all eyes are on New York and the gathering of world leaders – national, civil society, business – pronouncing their renewed committment to tackling the menace of global climate change. Prof Henrik Selin of the BU Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies is cautiously optimistic that maybe something has changed this time. But cautiously.
Quoted in a US News and World Report news story on the UN Summit, Prof. Selin says:
“There is more positive rhetoric now coming out of the U.S. and China ahead of the Paris meeting than was coming out ahead of the Copenhagen meeting,” says Henrik Selin, an international relations professor at Boston University who focuses on climate policy.
“The domestic politics are changing in the U.S., with federal rules coming out and the federal government becoming more involved and serious,” he says. “And similarly in China, it’s in China’s interest to curb air pollution, especially as that relates to health risks. China is experimenting with regional carbon markets and have said that in a year or two, they will have a national carbon market.”
Prof. Selin had also commented at length on the changing mood of global climate negotiations at a recent panel discussion (September 17, 2014) held at the Pardee School on the emerging dimensions of climate and development debates.