Extreme weather events from Pakistan to Africa to the U.S. have put the increasingly dangerous realities of our changing climate on display. But the United Nation’s climate meeting wrapped up last fall without any agreement on new carbon emissions reductions.

Global climate diplomacy seems to have hit a wall at a time when it should be accelerating.

That’s the argument made by David Victor of UC San Diego and Columbia Law School’s Charles Sabel in their recent book “Fixing the Climate: Strategies for an Uncertain World.” The good news, they say, is there are successful models of environmental problem-solving that we can look to. 

In the 1980s, the world came together to address the hole in the ozone layer thanks to the Montreal Protocol. Since the 1990s, California has made real progress decreasing air pollution. What lessons can we learn from these past successes? How can local communities experiment with bottom-up solutions if global agreement continues to be elusive? 

Victor and Sabel will join faculty from the UCLA Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment to discuss these issues and share ideas. 

“This is one of the most refreshing, important, and hopeful books on climate policy in many years,” said William Boyd, the Michael J. Klein professor of law and faculty co-director of the Emmett Institute, who will moderate the event. “Sabel and Victor offer a much-needed corrective to the blind spots and missed opportunities of climate policy — a very important intervention in the current moment.”

Boyd will be joined by Edward Parson, UCLA environmental law professor and faculty director of the Emmett Institute, and Mary Nichols, Distinguished Scholar at the Emmett Institute and former chair of the California Air Resources Board. Steven Cliff, current executive officer of the California Air Resources Board and former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and Kim Clausing, UCLA Law tax professor and former Treasury Department official, will also join the panel.

The event will be held Feb. 16 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Learn more and RSVP here.