A
major new paper
in the journal One Earth
from a collaboration between U.S. and European authors on the importance of
incorporating behavioral, cultural, social, and political considerations into
integrated assessment models of greenhouse gas emissions pathways, especially
in the context of the IPCC process.
Abstract:
Limiting global warming to 2°C or less compared with pre-industrial
temperatures will require unprecedented rates of decarbonization globally.
The scale and scope of transformational change required across sectors and
actors in society raises critical questions of feasibility.
Much of the literature on mitigation pathways addresses technological and
economic aspects of feasibility, but overlooks the behavioral, cultural, and
social factors that affect theoretical and practical mitigation pathways.
We present a tripartite framework that “unpacks”" the concept of mitigation
pathways by distinguishing three factors that together determine actual
mitigation: technical potential, initiative feasibility, and behavioral
plasticity.
The framework aims to integrate and streamline heterogeneous disciplinary
research traditions toward a more comprehensive and transparent approach that
will facilitate learning across disciplines and enable mitigation pathways to
more fully reflect available knowledge.
We offer three suggestions for integrating the tripartite framework into
current research on climate change mitigation.
Annie Lowery has a new article in The Atlantic,
“All That Performative Environmentalism Adds Up,”
in which she considers the ways in which actions by individuals and households
can play important roles in promoting effective policy actions to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.
What communities do, laws reflect—this is another reason to act on
climate change, and urgently. “We’re part of a society, where people
interact with companies, companies interact with the government, and people
interact with the government. And in all of these cases, the interactions go
both ways,” Jonathan Gilligan, a physicist and a climate-change researcher at
Vanderbilt University, told me. “Each part influences another.” Many climate
activists believe that changing social norms around carbon-intensive
behaviors makes the likelihood of dramatic climate-change legislation in the
future more likely, not less.
Mike Vandenbergh and I have
a new paper out, in the journal
Energy Research & Social Science, on our three-part framework for assessing
the impacts of private climate governance.
We discussed our three-part framework in previous writing, such as
“Accounting for Political Feasibility”,
“Beyond Gridlock”,
and
Beyond Politics.
Here, we discuss some practical steps toward applying the framework to assessing
the prospects and potential impacts of private climate governance and some of
the research needs and priorities for using our framework more broadly.
Michael Vandenbergh and I were interviewed by Aaron J. Freiwald for the
Good Law/Bad Law podcast. We discussed our recent book and the role of the
private sector in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
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.
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.
For people working to address climate change, there is certainly no viable alternative to reading this book.
Beyond Politics presses readers to think beyond their current conception of climate change solutions and, while
laying out a reasoned private governance response accompanied by a realistic assessment of its limitations, provides
the groundwork for future research and initiatives to reduce emissions.
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.
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.
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.