Through 20 weeks of persistent and peaceful demonstrations, South Koreans called for their former president's impeachment which resulted in a special presidential election in May. Moon Jae-in, a candidate from a progressive party, was elected and took over the Blue House immediately.

Kim Jin Pyo

Kim, a National Assembly Member for a fourth term, served as Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Human Resources Development (2005-06); Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Economy (2003-04); vice chairman of the transition committee under President Roh Moo-hyun; and Senior Secretary of Policy and Planning to President Kim Dae-jung in 2002.

Kim received a BA in law from Seoul National University and an MA in public administration from University of Wisconsin.

This event is open to the public and reservations are not required.

Hurricane Harvey and Irma have brought home to everyone the impact of climate change on our economy, our society, and our daily lives. Curtailing climate change is an urgent issue, one that requires international cooperation. In this session experts from Japan and the United States discuss some of the lessons that have been learned from Asia’s experiences. In the case of Japan, following the period of high growth (1960s-1980) which made Japan an economic power house, the government took strong steps to clean up polluted air and water. The Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011 forced Japan to take even more aggressive action to reduce energy consumption and lessen its impact on the global environment. In contrast, the United States, the world’s largest economy, is one of the world’s largest polluters and recently made headlines when it withdrew from the Paris Agreement negotiated at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP2). California, and other state and municipal governments, are now taking the lead in US efforts to deal with climate change. Speakers will address questions on strategies for limiting carbon emissions and possibilities for future international cooperation on climate change.

Shorenstein APARC is pleased to host the Abe Fellows Global Forum (Abe Global) inaugural season’s flagship event. A new initiative of the Abe Fellowship Program, Abe Global brings the research and expertise of Abe Fellows on issues of global concern to broader audiences. The event is co-organized with the Social Science Research Council, in collaboration with the Center for Global Partnership of the Japan Foundation, which funds the Abe Fellowship Program

Abe Fellows Global Forum
Confronting Climate Change:
What Can the U.S. and Japan Contribute to Creating Sustainable Societies?

Conference Program

13:30-14:00     Registration

14:00-14:20     Welcome remarks

       Takeo Hoshi, Director, Japan Program, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University

       Junichi Chano, Executive Director, CGP

       Opening Remarks

       George P. Shultz, Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow, Hoover Institution,

        Stanford University

14:20-14:45     Keynote Speech

                             Michael Armacost, Shorenstein APARC Fellow, APARC, Stanford University

14:45-15:00     Break

15:00-17:00     Panel Discussion “What Can the US and Japan Contribute to Creating Sustainable Societies?”

                  Moderator:      Takeo Hoshi

       Presenters:      Toshi H. Arimura,  Waseda Univeristy

                              Janelle Knox-Hayes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

                               Phillip Lipscy, Stanford University

                               Dana Buntrock, University of California, Berkeley

                               Michael Armacost, Stanford University

16:55                 Closing Remarks

                               Linda Grove, Consulting Director, SSRC 

17:00-18:00     Cocktail Reception

Abstract: Continuing social concerns over nuclear energy technologies still limit the application of long-term solutions to nuclear waste management in most countries. These concerns result from a lack of public trust in the scientific basis used in the decision-making approach to waste disposal, particularly the siting of a geologic repository.  Also, nuclear waste issues have become intertwined with the discussion of the future of nuclear energy. Moreover, setting aside the technical uncertainties about the long-term behavior of the waste materials under extended geologic disposal conditions, a scientific dilemma exists about how to deal with the preferences of future generations that will have to safely manage the waste. This stalemate situation has motivated an effort to frame the discussion from a different and interdisciplinary perspective.

An innovative approach to nuclear waste management called ENTRUST is proposed. The approach consists of an analytical framework for the holistic assessment of nuclear waste management strategies and policies where the primary focus is on building and maintaining public trust. Based on a careful use of quantitative information for technical issues, ENTRUST seeks to support a participative and deliberative analysis of the policy and narratives on strategies for nuclear waste management and disposal.

Speaker Bio: François Diaz-Maurin is a Nuclear Security Visiting Scholar at CISAC (2017-2019) and a European Commission’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow (2017-2020).

François’ research at CISAC deals with the issue of the long-term management of nuclear waste produced at commercial power plants in a context of uncertain transitions and persisting social concerns over nuclear energy technologies. His interdisciplinary research seeks to merge quantitative and qualitative methods for the holistic study of nuclear waste management systems and policies.

In this talk, François will be presenting the preliminary results of his 3-year research project entitled “Building Trust in Nuclear Waste Management through Participatory Quantitative Story Telling (ENTRUST)”. The project will contribute to CISAC’s “Reset of U.S. Nuclear Waste Management Policy” science-policy initiative.

François received both B.S. (2004, with distinction) and M.S. (2007, with distinction) degrees in civil engineering from the University of Rennes 1, France, and a Ph.D. degree in environmental science and technology (2013, summa cum laude) from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Before joining academia, François spent four years as an engineer in the design of nuclear energy technologies in Paris, France (2007-2008) and in Boston, MA (2009-2010) for AREVA Inc. North America and AREVA Federal Services LLC.

Abstract: As a potential measure of mitigating the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming, carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) entails capturing CO2 from from large industrial sources, compressing it to a dense supercritical form (scCO2), injecting it deep into suitable reservoirs, and storing it permanently. After 20+ years of research on CCS, including various applied studies involving pilot and demonstration projects, many stakeholders believe that the world is now ready to move from demonstration to industrial-scale implementation. Yet many hurdles remain, ranging from mostly technical nature to economic and public perception issues. This talk provides a broad overview of the decades of research on CO2 and discusses what has been learned versus what challenges remain. The presentation also elaborates on California as an interesting example for the complicated road to deployment at scale, as ambitious climate goals and generous carbon credits should provide for project economics to work, yet no California CCS project has materialized to date.

Speaker Bio: Jens Birkholzer is an internationally recognized expert in subsurface energy applications and environmental impact assessment. He is a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) in Berkeley, California, and currently serves as the Director for the Energy Geosciences Division (EGD) at LBNL. He received his Ph.D. in water resources, hydrology, and soil science from Aachen University of Technology in Germany in 1994. Jens joined LBNL in 1994, left for a management position in his native Germany in 1999, and eventually returned to LBNL in 2001. He has over 400 scientific publications, about 125 of which are in peer-reviewed journals, in addition to numerous research reports. He serves as the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control (IJGGC) and is also on the Board of Editorial Policy Advisors for the Journal of Geomechanics for Energy and Environment (GETE). Jens leads the international DECOVALEX Project as its Chairman, is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, and serves as a Senior Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. 

Abstract:

Over the past decades, there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. Franklin Foer, a correspondent at the Atlantic and former editor of the New Republic, has written a polemic against the monopolistic practices of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple. He argues they have ushered in a new, dangerous age of conformism. A threat to the very foundations of the republic. In the words of Steve Coll—the Pulitzer Prize-winner—his book is “an argument in the spirit of those brave democracy protesters who stand alone before tanks."

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Franklin Foer is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and fellow at the New America Foundation. For seven years, he served as editor of The New Republic. Foer has written for Slate and New York magazine. His previous book How Soccer Explains the World has been translated into 27 languages and was the winner of a National Jewish Book Award.

Abstract:

Few Ideas are as sacred in American politics as sovereignty. From the founding of the republic through the rejection of the League of Nations to the present day, Americans have grappled with how to reconcile their desire for independence with the need for effective international cooperation. Unfortunately, contemporary debates over how to defend and exercise that sovereignty are confused and overheated. Such polemics distract us from what is really at stake in the sovereignty debate: namely, the ability to shape America’s destiny in a global age. Contrary to common assertions, the United States is in little danger of subordinating its Constitution and system of government to international law and organizations. What globalization does require is for Americans to think more clearly about sovereignty’s different dimensions—and to consider “sovereignty bargains”, whereby the nation voluntarily trades off a measure of its freedom of action to cooperate with other countries in exploiting the shared opportunities and mitigating the common risks of interdependence.

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From September 2002 to January 2005, Dr. Patrick served on the secretary of state’s policy planning staff, with lead staff responsibility for U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and a range of transnational issues. Following government service, he was Research Fellow at the Center for Global Development. Dr. Patrick is the author of The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World (Brookings Institution Press, October 2018), as well as of Weak Links: Fragile States, Global Threats, and International Security, and The Best Laid Plans: The Origins of American Multilateralism and the Dawn of the Cold War. He also writes the CFR blog “The Internationalist.”

Dr. Patrick graduated from Stanford University (with a B.A. in human biology and honors in humanities) and received his doctorate in international relations and two masters degrees (in international relations and modern European history) from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has three children.

Abstract:

Duncan Green, Oxfam Strategic Adviser and LSE Professor of Practice in International Development, introduces the arguments of his new book, How Change Happens (OUP, October 2016). How Change Happens explores how political and social change takes place, and the role of individuals and organizations in influencing that change. He discusses the challenges that 'systems thinking' creates for traditional aid practices, and how a 'power and systems approach' requires activists, whether in campaigns, companies or governments, to fundamentally rethink the way they understand the world and try to influence it.

Praise for How Change Happens:

• A splendid treatise on how to change the actual world - in reality, not just in our dreams’ Amartya Sen

• ‘An indispensable guide for activists and change-makers everywhere’ Francis Fukuyama

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