Yale Environmental Law and Policy Expert Offers Views On International Climate Change Negotiations in Kyoto, Japan

Daniel C. Esty, Yale professor of environmental law and policy and a former E.P.A climate-change negotiator, is available for comments on developments at the Kyoto Climate Change Negotiations, a conference in Japan being attended this week by representatives from 150 countries. Their goal is to agree on measures to reduce emissions of “greenhouse gases” that trap heat in the atmosphere.

Professor Esty calls the negotiations difficult and suggests it is not clear the conference will succeed, given the range of issues that remain open at this late stage in the process. On the positive side, however, he sees in the Clinton Administration proposals the opportunity to put the world on the right track. “It is more important to get the policy going in the right direction than to try to solve overnight all the complex problems involved in climate change,” says Professor Esty, who has spoken widely on ways to balance environmental and economic concerns.

His call for a long-term perspective and balanced approach echoes the conclusions of his recent book “Thinking Ecologically: The Next Generation of Environmental Policy”, Yale University Press, October 1997, which he co-authored with Yale industrial environmental management expert Marian Chertow. See attached news release. He also is the author of “Sustaining the Asia Pacific Miracle: Environmental Protection and Economic Integration,” published this year by the Institute for International Economics; and of “Greening the GATT: Trade, Environment and the Future,” advocating coordination between environmental protection efforts and support of free trade.

A Yale-trained lawyer, Professor Esty is director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. He served in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1989-93. For interviews, call him at 203/432-6256.