Six Minutes to Midnight – Can Intellectual Property Save the World?

Abstract

Can we harness intellectual property institutions for the purpose of innovating to save the world from the worst climate change scenarios? The standard optimization view of intellectual property suggests that intellectual property can play an important role. The paper argues that the standard view ignores real-world problems of opportunistic uses of intellectual property by private actors. Globalized intellectual property standards are a poor way in which to manage the nested complexity of climate change. The paper concludes by looking at the lessons of the Manhattan Project for climate change.