Environmental Law Commons^™

Climate Change And Human Trafficking After The Paris Agreement, Michael B. Gerrard

University of Miami Law Review

At least 21 million people globally are victims of human trafficking, typically involving either sexual exploitation or forced labor. This form of modern-day slavery tends to increase after natural disasters or conflicts where large numbers of people are displaced from their homes and become highly vulnerable. In the decades to come, climate change will very likely lead to a large increase in the number of people who are displaced and thus vulnerable to trafficking. The Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 established objectives to limit global temperature increases, but the voluntary pledges made by nearly every country fall far short of …

Climate Change And The Challenges To Democracy, Marcello Di Paola, Dale Jamieson

University of Miami Law Review

This Article explores the uneasy interaction between climate change and democracy, particularly liberal democracy. Its central claim is that climate change and other problems of the Anthropocene—this new epoch into which no earthly entity, process, or system escapes the reach and influence of human activity—expose and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities in democratic theory and practice, particularly in their currently dominant liberal form; and that both democracies’ failures and their most promising attempts at managing these problems expose democracies to significant legitimacy challenges.

Voter Psychology And The Carbon Tax, Gary M. Lucas Jr

Gary M. Lucas Jr.

Economists across the political spectrum argue that a carbon tax is the most effective and economically efficient policy for addressing climate change. Voters, however, strongly oppose the carbon tax and instead favor “green” subsidies and command-and-control regulations. If carefully designed, these policies might complement a carbon tax, but by themselves, they will make global warming mitigation incredibly expensive and perhaps even infeasible. Moreover, if poorly designed, subsidies and regulations can be counterproductive.

This Article argues that the public dislikes the carbon tax because the tax possesses attributes that make it psychologically unappealing relative to other climate policy instruments. The Article …