Billionaire George Soros announced in ) ) ) ) October that Stanford Law School professor emeritus Thomas Heller would head the new ) ) ) ) Climate Policy Initiative, a San Francisco-based think tank Soros is funding ) ) ) ) with $100 million. Heller told the Stanford ) ) ) ) Daily he was “expecting to engage people in research, from Berlin ) ) ) ) with the technical university and here in the Bay Area, where doctoral-level ) ) ) ) students from Stanford are interested.”
“I’m looking forward to train[ing] a new generation around the world, and I would love to see this develop to help make those [research] opportunities available,” he said. “There’s an educational dimension to it that we hope Stanford will be involved in and students will take advantage of.”
Heller had already provided a forum where students could contribute to addressing climate change. In the fall of 2008, he selected a group from disciplines across the University to participate in the Climate Change Workshop, a full-year, cross-listed and unusual course held at the Law School.
Heller decided early on that the class would focus on low-carbon technology transfer. Pivotal work in this area had been done by the late Stanford professor John Barton, JD ’68, who analyzed the effects of intellectual property rights on the flow of technology across international barriers. Heller envisioned a similar approach, challenging the class to conduct case studies examining the effects of factors other than intellectual property rights—such as the regulatory environment, infrastructure, industrial organization and production systems.
From there, the students took over. They formed two groups, each focusing on one low-carbon technology sector: wind or biomass. Their research included local and international fieldwork; during the winter holidays and spring break, the Climate Change Workshop scattered across the globe to Mexico, Denmark, Brazil, India and China. Students interviewed government officials, managers, analysts and industry experts; visited manufacturing sites, toured facilities and spoke with villagers; and attended industry meetings and conferences.
The experience combined cutting-edge policy and research, says Danny Cullenward, a PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program on Environment and Resources. “As students, we had tremendous freedom to design a research agenda that supported Professor Heller’s work on international climate policy. Perhaps most importantly, we had the opportunity to craft our projects to respond to real-world policy issues as they arose.”
For Yue Li, her workshop field trip to China was a catalyst for further study of issues surrounding climate negotiations. Now a consultant and researcher for Climate Insights, Li, MA ’09, maintains a blog on China’s climate policy—a blog that the CDM Regulation Center under China’s National Development and Reform Commission reportedly wants all its employees to read.
SCOTT SHACKELFORD and ASHLEY WALTER, MA '09, both graduated from the Law School in 2009.
