CIGS Symposium "Climate Realism and European climate policy"

Symposium outline

The symposium consists of two parts.

Part 1: Is the science of climate change settled? While there is general agreement that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are contributing to global warming, there is still great uncertainty about the magnitude of future warming and its environmental impacts. To understand these uncertainties, we need to make a clear distinction between what is well documented and well understood and what is not.

Part 2: In Europe, as in Japan, numerous policies to mitigate global warming have been adopted and promoted, but many of these policies have failed or are facing growing political criticism. A growing number of European governments are concerned about unilateral targets and policies that have been increasing the cost of energy and threaten to make many industries less competitive. Even in Germany, which used to be a global climate leader, the new coalition government is beginning to roll back the most costly policies. We also discuss the implications of international policy changes on the Paris Agreement and on Japan's plan to cut CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050.

Opening remaks

• Toshihiko Fukui
  President, The Canon Institute for Global Studies（CIGS）
  

Presentation

• Benny Peiser
  Director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
  "Climate Realism: Understanding Agreement and Disagreement in Climate Science"
  Presentation by PeiserPDF： 2.07MB
  Summary of speech Part1 by PeiserPDF： 157KB
  
  
• Taishi Sugiyama
  Research Director, The Canon Institute for Global Studies（CIGS）
  "Reality Check of Environmental Impact Assessment of Climate Change"
  Presentation by SugiyamaPDF： 612KB （Japanese）
  Summary of speech by SugiyamaPDF： 204KB
  
  

Discussion

• Moderator
  Taishi Sugiyama
  
  Discussant
  Benny Peiser
  
  Summary of Q&A Part1PDF： 188KB
  
  
  

Presentation

• Benny Peiser
  "The Crisis of EU Climate Policy"
  Presentation by PeiserPDF： 6.39MB
  Summary of speech Part2 by PeiserPDF： 229KB
  
• Sumiko Takeuchi
  Principal Researcher, The International Environment and Economy Institute
  "The Challenges of Japanese Climate Policy"
  Presentation by TakeuchiPDF： 1.87MB（Japanese）
  Summary of speech by TakeuchiPDF： 178KB
  
  

Discussion

• Moderator
  Taishi Sugiyama
  
  Discussant
  Benny Peiser
  Sumiko Takeuchi
  
  Presentation by Sugiyama for DiscussionPDF： 1.87MB （Japanese）
  
  Summary of Q&A Part2PDF： 189KB