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Full-Text Articles in Law
Governance Of Public Lands, Public Agencies, And Natural Resources, Robert L. Glicksman
Governance Of Public Lands, Public Agencies, And Natural Resources, Robert L. Glicksman
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Climate change presents serious challenges to the agencies that manage the federal public lands. These changes require new management strategies that may be difficult to design and implement because of internal agency resistance to altering traditional ways of doing business. In addition, there is likely to be a lack of fit between some of the laws from which the agencies derive their management authority and the problems posed by climate change, which differ from those Congress envisioned when it adopted those laws and which undermine some of the key assumptions underpinning those laws. This chapter describes the manner in which …
The Polarizing Impact Of Science Literacy And Numeracy On Perceived Climate Change Risks, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Ellen Peters, Maggie Wittlin, Paul Slovic, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Gregory N. Mandel
The Polarizing Impact Of Science Literacy And Numeracy On Perceived Climate Change Risks, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Ellen Peters, Maggie Wittlin, Paul Slovic, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Gregory N. Mandel
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Seeming public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension. The public knows too little science, it is claimed, to understand the evidence or avoid being misled. Widespread limits on technical reasoning aggravate the problem by forcing citizens to use unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. An empirical study found no support for this position. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over …
International Trade And Investment Law And Carbon Management Technologies, Steve Charnovitz
International Trade And Investment Law And Carbon Management Technologies, Steve Charnovitz
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases will require the development of carbon management technologies that are not currently available or that are not currently cost-effective. While market mechanisms such as carbon pricing must play a central role in stimulating the development of these technologies, governmental policy aimed at fostering carbon management technologies and lowering their costs must also play a part. Both types of policies will form part of an optimal greenhouse gas control portfolio. This article develops a framework of international trade and investment law insofar as they may affect carbon management technologies. While it is commonly perceived that international …
Geoengineering And The Science Communication Environment: A Cross-Cultural Experiment, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, Tor Tarantola, Carol L. Silva
Geoengineering And The Science Communication Environment: A Cross-Cultural Experiment, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, Tor Tarantola, Carol L. Silva
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
We conducted a two-nation study (United States, n = 1500; England, n = 1500) to test a novel theory of science communication. The cultural cognition thesis posits that individuals make extensive reliance on cultural meanings in forming perceptions of risk. The logic of the cultural cognition thesis suggests the potential value of a distinctive two-channel science communication strategy that combines information content (“Channel 1”) with cultural meanings (“Channel 2”) selected to promote open-minded assessment of information across diverse communities. In the study, scientific information content on climate change was held constant while the cultural meaning of that information was experimentally …
Natural Gas: A Long Bridge To A Promising Destination, Richard J. Pierce Jr
Natural Gas: A Long Bridge To A Promising Destination, Richard J. Pierce Jr
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In this essay, Professor Pierce argues that the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of shale formations that has nearly doubled US gas supplies over the last six years has the potential to yield a century of enormous environmental and economic benefits to the US and to the world.