Peter Drahos’ Survival Governance: Energy and Climate in the Chinese Century shows why US corporate-centric strategies, from shale production to carbon capture are a failure. A radically different model has to be embraced.

TRANSCRIPT 

LYNN FRIES: Hello and welcome. I’m Lynn Fries. Producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. With me to talk about his new forthcoming book is Peter Drahos.  

The global high carbon economy is running out of time and the book Survival Governance: Energy & Climate in the Chinese Century argues that a strong state is required to galvanize a global project of survival governance. Catalytic leadership is needed to shut down the fossil fuel industry and to fast-track innovation in renewable energy. 

My guest, Peter Drahos is Professor of Law and Governance at the European University Institute and Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Queen Mary, University of London. He is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. Some earlier books include Intellectual Property, Indigenous People and Their Knowledge and Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy? co-authored with John Braithwaite. Welcome, Peter 

PETER DRAHOS: Thank you.

FRIES: Peter, as this book draws on an extensive interview process that was part a larger project on the global governance of energy at the Australian National University, at the Regulatory Institutions Network or RegNet, start by telling us something about that.  

DRAHOS: Here we owe a great debt of gratitude to the Australian Research Council, which is the independent body for the funding of research at Australian universities. It really backed myself and a small group of researchers. And they were very generous. They essentially gave us funding for nine years. And so, we were able to really drill down into all of the key countries on energy policy.  

Our main focus was essentially government people and people in industry. They were our primary targets. And we did this over a period of nine years. We began interviewing just before the Copenhagen Climate Conference. I was surprised at how frank people were in the way that they spoke to us. People were genuinely worried about the slowness of progress. In the words of one climate negotiator that we spoke to, you know, he said that the real problem here was that governments were not being honest with their publics about the scale of the problem. And I think at the end of that process, I think that's actually very true,  

FRIES: You introduce two concepts in the book: survival governance and the bio-digital energy paradigm. Explain what you mean by those concepts. And let’s start by taking with survival governance first. 

DRAHOS: Well, I have a very simple definition of it. It essentially means that states and non-state actors begin to think about preserving and maintaining ecosystems because their survival depends on it. So, in the end if we don't preserve ecosystems, we jeopardize our own survival.  

We need really big picture thinking. And that I think requires states now to use their powers of regulation and to use their powers of financing to encourage and support and foster innovation in the directions that really matter. And what I argue in the book is that those directions are summed up by this idea of the bio-digital energy paradigm.  

So, the energy part of that is clear. It has to be renewable energies.