Just days before world leaders are set to meet to discuss climate change at the G-7 leader summit in the U.K. comes another grim milestone. The amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere hit its highest ever recorded level in May — 419 parts per million according to data released by the National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration.
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But, while most climate news is bleak, there are glimmers of hope as David Victor, a professor of industrial innovation at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy writes in an article published in the journal, Nature. He points to niches like electric vehicles, batteries and solar and wind industries that are seeding a decarbonization revolution.
"The overall global picture has barely changed in terms of the dependence on carbon based fuels, coal, oil, natural gas. And so if you set goals globally, you're always going to have this kind of disconnect between the ambition of the goals and the reality," Victor said. "If instead of talking about the climate change problem as a big grand global problem, but instead as a series of revolutions that have to happen in key sectors where you identify pioneers, governments, firms willing to do things together, and there might be countries that might be some subnational units like the state of California, the city of San Diego, identify those places and do more with the pioneers. Then you'll make more progress."
Victor joined Midday Edition Wednesday to discuss where he sees glimmers of hope in the effort to slow or reverse global warming and what he wants to see come out of the G-7 summit and the UN climate change conference, also known as COP-26, planned for November 2021.
