Climate Governance

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Why would individuals, communities, countries, and firms invest resources to design, adopt, and implement policies to protect the global atmosphere? After all, this is an open access resource in that no government, firm, or individual can be prevented from benefitting from somebody else’s action. Hence, it makes most sense to simply wait for others to do the work (incentives for freeriding are imminent). For example, the data from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions indicate that only thirteen U.S. states and the District of Columbia have enacted carbon pricing to signal the social cost of carbon. Furthermore, mitigation efforts are likely to impose non-trivial costs on the economy, with costs concentrated in specific sectors that have the incentives to organize and oppose climate change regulation. For example, 25% of U.S. counties have enacted local regulations restricting wind farms (map above). Between 2008 and 2021, over fifty utility-scale wind, solar, and geothermal energy projects were delayed or blocked in U.S. At the federal level, the Trump administration is derailing renewable energy progress and challenging the 2009 Endangerment Finding. In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney, as his first move after the election, ended federal carbon tax. At the same time, adaptation to global climate change is an easier sell for individuals, communities, and firms. An entity funding adaptation only funds the adaptation needed for its unit, not for everybody else around the globe. Further, if mitigation and/or adaptation efforts result in the development of a new technology that can be protected by intellectual property rights, acting fast can lead to the creation of a marketable product and future revenues. Communities, individuals, and firms, therefore, balance the costs and benefits of mitigating and adapting to global climate change. However, decision-makers are not guided only by cost considerations. They respond to ethical principles and opportunities for leadership created by pressures from voters and/or consumers, demanding cleaner, more resilient and sustainable communities, and sustainable products. As expressing these preferences requires overcoming collective choice dilemmas, non-governmental organizations frequently step in to frame the issues, organize and mobilize collective action (e.g., Climate Strike), and frequently even develop policy solutions. To study and impact climate change mitigation and adaptation governance, we need to draw on multiple academic disciplines that enable us to understand the problem of climate change, its impacts across communities, the framing of this problem for policymakers, the solutions available, and the policy instruments likely to lead to the implementation of these technologies and change of behavior. Learning Objectives: (1) Advance the understanding of the nature of global climate change problems and how they are framed in a policy discourse; (2) Understand how such (i) frames, (ii) interests and (iii) power of various policy actors, as well as (iv) political institutions, influence political feasibility of climate policies in the U.S., their adoption and implementation; (3) Increase the capacity for democratic dialogue and civic engagement by learning how to speak/write about climate change governance. Course organization: This course takes a two-prong approach to the study of climate change governance: theoretical and applied. We will learn how policy process theories suggest a policy problem emerges, how policy solutions are devised and negotiated, as well as how they are implemented. At the same time, we will examine how these theoretical elements manifest themselves in climate change governance.