Beyond Politics Webinar at the Environmental Law Institute
Michael Vandenbergh and I participated in a webinar hosted by the Environmental Law Institute on our book, Beyond Politics: The Private Governance Response to Climate Change. Cassie Phillips (director of the Private Environmental Governance Initiative at ELI) moderated. Stephen Harper (Global Director of Environment and Energy Policy at Intel) and Jackie Roberts (Chief Sustainability Officer at the Carlisle Group) provided private industry perspectives.New paper on employers who offer energy efficiency benefits to their employees
I have a new paper in the journal Energy Efficiency, co-authored with Alex Maki, Emmett McKinney, Mike Vandenbergh, and Mark Cohen, about employers who offer employee benefits to promote energy efficiency.
Beyond Politics: Private industry needs to step up on climate change
When the United States pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, environmentalists were disappointed, but then businesses stepped up on their own to fight global warming. Two Vanderbilt experts say evidence shows that progress can continue to be made regardless of what the government is doing.
Government action isn't enough for climate change: The private sector can cut billions of tons of carbon
With President Trump’s announcement to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, many other countries around the world—and cities and states within the U.S.—are stepping up their commitments to address climate change.
But one thing is clear: Even if all the remaining participating nations do their part, governments alone can’t substantially reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change.
Private industry, better messaging can help overcome damage from Paris withdrawal
President Donald Trump’s announcement on Thursday that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement phases out U.S. commitments to achieve carbon reduction targets and make financial contributions to slow climate change.
It was a move environmentalists found disappointing, at best. But Vanderbilt University law and earth science professors contend initiatives that reduce carbon emissions from corporations and households can fill some of the gap.
They point to the example of Walmart, which reduced carbon emissions worldwide by more than 20 million metric tons by focusing on efficiency in its global supply chain. Google agreed to locate its massive data center in Clarksville, Tennessee, only after the Tennessee Valley Authority agreed to supply it with renewable power.
Gilligan, Vandenbergh win Morrison Prize for climate change article
Research examining the role that private governance can play in bypassing government gridlock on climate change has earned a pair of Vanderbilt University professors this year’s $10,000 Morrison Prize, which recognizes the most impactful sustainability-related legal academic article published in North America during the previous year.
Michael P. Vandenbergh and Jonathan Gilligan were recognized for their paper, “Beyond Gridlock,” which was published in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law. They will present the paper at the Third Annual Sustainability Conference of American Legal Educators, held in May at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. The Morrison Prize, which is administered through the O’Connor College of Law’s Program on Law and Sustainability, is named for its funder, Richard N. Morrison, co-founder of Arizona State’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy.
Morrison Prize
The Program on Law and Sustainability at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University has awarded the Morrison Prize to Mike Vandenbergh and me for our article “Beyond Gridlock,” 40 Columbia Environmental Law Journal, 217–303 (2015). The Morrison prize recognizes the paper published in the previous year in North America that is “likely to have the most significant positive long-term impact on the advancement of the environmental sustainability movement.”