Institute for Trade, Standards, and Sustainable Development (ITSSD)
The Institute for Trade, Standards, and Sustainable Development (ITSSD) is a nonprofit organization established in 2001 and based in Princeton, New Jersey. It focuses on promoting sustainable development while advocating against what it considers scientifically and economically unjustified anti-global warming measures. The ITSSD seeks to educate various stakeholders—including government, industry, and the public—on topics related to science, technology, innovation policy, private property rights, and international trade.
Led by a team of executives and an advisory board comprised of experts in diverse fields, the organization produces white papers, engages in public discussions, and conducts educational programs for university students. Its principal policy emphasizes the importance of property rights, free market economics, and local governance over supranational regulations. The ITSSD argues for the development of regulations based on empirical science and economic analysis, arguing that many current climate change policies stem from unfounded fears rather than scientific consensus. The organization also critiques mainstream narratives on climate change, citing voices that advocate for skepticism regarding the human impact on global warming.
Institute for Trade, Standards, and Sustainable Development (ITSSD)
- DATE: Established 2001
Mission
The Institute for Trade, Standards, and (ITSSD) advocates sustainable development without absolute protection of natural resources and discounts anti-global warming measures as not scientifically or economically justified. Headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, the ITSSD is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating government, industry, and the public about science, technology and innovation policy, private property rights, and international trade. It is operated by its chief executive officer-president, vice president, and secretary and has an advisory board consisting of professionals in science, economics, law, and politics. The officers write white papers and articles, serve on a variety of discussion panels, administer an internship program for university students, and publish journals on economic freedom, intellectual property rights, trade barriers, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, “pathological communalism,” and women’s property rights.
The ITSSD’s principal policy calls for positive sustainable development, which, it argues, has a general capacity to create well-being for present and future generations. This sustainable development is positive in that it eschews regulation “devoid of scientific and economic benchmarks” and“disguised trade barriers premised solely on cultural preferences” in favor of strongly protected property rights, free market (neoliberal) economics, decentralization, economic growth, and local, regional, or national (rather than supranational) institutions encouraging individual initiative. The ITSSD contends that regulations and standards must be developed “based on empirical science and economic cost-benefit analysis” under public scrutiny and free of the dominating influence of scientific fashion or sociopolitical ideology.
Significance for Climate Change
Informing its stance on climate change, ITSSD relies on the arguments of global warming critics, including (according to ITSSD) “established scientists.” Most prominently cited is British businessperson, politician, and inventor Christopher Monckton, who argues that global warming derives from natural cycles and is misrepresented by the scientific community. In the white paper “Europe’s Warnings on Climate Change Belie More Nuanced Concerns” (2007), ITSSD president Lawrence A. Kogan accuses leaders of sidestepping what he portrays as the ongoing scientific debate. This debate concerns the extent to which certain human activities can be shown to cause measurable global warming or merely to correlate with a barely observable rise in global temperatures that may or may not prove to be cyclical in nature. The failure of European leaders to discuss this issue in the ITSSD’s eyes suggests a nuanced effort to base intergovernmental regulatory policy on popularly fanned fears about largely hypothetical, unpredictable or unknowable future natural and hazards that have not yet been shown to pose direct ascertainable risks to human health or the environment.
"ITSSD Steps Up Battle Against GHG Endangerment Findings." World Coal, 30 Sept. 2014, https://www.worldcoal.com/power/30092014/world-coal-itssd-challenges-thethe-legality-of-the-scientific-basis-for-epa-greenhouse-gas-regulation-coal1375/. Accessed 26 Dec. 202
"Welcome to ITSSD." ITSSD,www.itssdusa.org/. Accessed 26 Dec. 2024.