David G. Victor - Mentions and Appearances

[On the future prospects for electric planes for short-distance flights] There is no question that this will be unbelievably complex and costly. The only reason to do it is if we think that opening niches in the U.S. (and in other countries) will be the starting point to a broader application — eventually to medium-haul flights and beyond. One does this only if we need to make deep cuts in emissions. If we do shallow decarbonization there are other options that are cheaper — more natural gas, more renewables. But shallow decarbonization doesn’t fix the climate. Only deep decarbonization fixes the climate.

The world’s diplomats have spent 30 years talking about the climate problem. That hasn’t achieved much. Global emissions of warming gases keep rising. Electric planes could be part of the solution. It’s possible that we’ll see people using them to take flights between cities like San Diego and San Francisco.

[On climate change and the challenges in reaching the Paris Agreement goals] From a modeling point of view, the reason we see so much carbon capture and storage is because models see the existing energy system, and they see this incredible heroic goal. So they move all the chips on the board into these deep reduction technologies: carbon capture and storage, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage … and they do all that because they can’t solve the equation. They literally can’t get there from here. We need to grapple with the reality that we’re not going to meet the goals that we’ve talked about.

We are seeing shallow decarbonization in the power sector with the big shift to gas and away from coal. But in a few years that well runs dry and EIA projects that electricity emissions will stop falling. That will be a watershed for the U.S.A. because the one sector that accounts for nearly all of the progress the country has made on emissions — however scant — has been from the power sector.

The movement against climate cooperation is just raising the level of difficulty. The animating force for a lot of the populism today comes from political groups that are seeing globalization producing outcomes they don't like.

[On the U.S. intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and climate change] Actions on Paris undermine U.S. credibility, and the damage from that will be lasting – as they will from our actions in Syria and many other places.

[On climate and international relations] The ongoing (often petty) expansion of the trade war with China will amplify the damage to the U.S.-China relationship. That relationship is fraught with challenges that go far beyond the Trump administration, but it is impossible to get serious about climate without a serious engagement with China.

[On the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius] By setting our goals with a single set of measures, we were making the climate problem more abstract. It was hard to see the progress people were making with that indicator.

[On climate change] You want to understand not just the impact, but also what are the levers you can pull in order to reduce that impact.