Does decarbonization still have a future?

A year ago Mark Blyth came to LSE and gave a talk called Burning Down the House that laid out how decarbonization would proceed with a new US administration committed to a strategy of carbon dominance. What Blyth saw as unfolding over a three year period effectively happened in one year. In short, through tying fossil fuel exports to its tariff policy, effectively banning green research and investments, and by supporting national political movements that oppose decarbonization, the US is actively trying to scupper both global and local decarbonization efforts. Will this succeed? In this talk Blyth argues that it will not, for two reasons. The first is the incentives of countries in the global south to lessen both their oil and dollar dependencies. The second is the inevitability of a return to multilateral solutions for climate adaptation as nationalist responses of denial and delay become prohibitively expensive. Meet our speaker and chair Mark Blyth is the William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics and the Director of the Rhodes Centre for International Economics and Finance at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He holds a joint appointment in the department of political science. He is the author many award-winning books including, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (New York: Oxford University Press 2015), Angrynomics (New York: Columbia University Press 2020), Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation (Oxford University Press 2022), and Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers. He writes about the politics of growth, distribution and decarbonization and why people continue to believe dubious economic ideas despite buckets of evidence to the contrary. Benjamin Braun is Assistant Professor in Political Economy at the European Institute. More about this event Established in 1991, the LSE European Institute is a world-leading centre for the study of Europe in its global context. With eight master’s degrees and a doctoral programme, a vibrant research community, and a world-leading public events programme, our work spans Political Economy, Politics & Policy, Culture & Society, and Migration. Follow us: Instagram, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Twitter, YouTube, and Soundcloud. Join our mailing list to receive news about EI events. Any questions? Contact us at [email protected].