The Blair black hole in global climate policy: international trade of zero-carbon goods
Professor Ross Garnaut
- Start Monday 16 Jun 2025 12:30pm
- Finish Monday 16 Jun 2025 1:30pm
- Venue Oxford Martin School
- Register for event
The Tony Blair Institute of Global Change recently published an article asserting that reducing emissions was difficult and would fail unless we expanded use of technologies that are expensive and a challenge to living standards. This is reminiscent of nineteenth century economist William Stanley Jevons’ in “The Coal Question”, warning of the limits that finite coal resources placed on British prosperity. The hole in both visions is the absence of international trade. International specialisation and trade along the supply chain of zero-carbon goods production can render the limited renewable energy resource endowments of Europe and Northeast Asia compatible with prosperity through early movement to zero net carbon emissions.
In this lecture, Prof Ross Garnaut will discuss how international trade in zero-carbon goods amongst the rest of the world can deliver continued prosperity through transition to zero net emissions.