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Full-Text Articles in Law
Energy And Climate Change: Key Lessons For Implementing The Behavioral Wedge, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Paul C. Stern, Gerald T. Gardner, Thomas Dietz, Jonathan M. Gilligan
Energy And Climate Change: Key Lessons For Implementing The Behavioral Wedge, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Paul C. Stern, Gerald T. Gardner, Thomas Dietz, Jonathan M. Gilligan
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The individual and household sector accounts for roughly 40 percent of United States energy use and carbon dioxide emissions, yet the laws and policies directed at reductions from this sector often reflect a remarkably simplistic model of behavior. This Essay addresses one of the obstacles to achieving a “behavioral wedge” of individual and household emissions reductions: the lack of an accessible, brief summary for policymakers of the key findings of behavioral and social science studies on household energy behavior. The Essay does not provide a comprehensive overview of the field, but it discusses many of the leading studies that demonstrate …
Climate Change, Dead Zones, And Massive Problems In The Administrative State: A Guide For Whittling Away, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Climate Change, Dead Zones, And Massive Problems In The Administrative State: A Guide For Whittling Away, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Mandates that agencies solve massive problems such as sprawl and climate change roll easily out of the halls of legislatures, but as a practical matter what can any one agency do about them? Serious policy challenges such as these have dimensions far beyond the capacity of any single agency to manage effectively. Rather, as the Supreme Court recently observed in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, agencies, like legislatures, do not generally resolve massive problems in one fell swoop, but instead whittle away over time, refining their approach as circumstances change and they develop a more nuanced understanding of how best …
The Limits Of A National Renewable Portfolio Standard, Jim Rossi
The Limits Of A National Renewable Portfolio Standard, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In this Commentary Article, Professor Rossi highlights some of the distributional and operational problems presented by a national renewable portfolio standard ("RPS") in electric power. He also offers several solutions to these problems as a way of advancing a cautionary defense of a national RPS. Ultimately, Professor Rossi concludes that addressing climate change will need to involve more systemic and larger scale modifications to regulation of the electric power industry, including addressing infrastructure issues such as transmission and carbon pricing.
Keeping The Endangered Species Act Relevant, J.B. Ruhl
Keeping The Endangered Species Act Relevant, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has long been the workhorse of species protection in contexts for which a species-specific approach can effectively be employed to address discrete human-induced threats that have straightforward causal connections to the decline of a species, such as clearing of occupied habitat for development or damming of a river. Its resounding success there, however, has led to the misperception that it can duplicate that record anywhere and for any reason a species is at risk. Yet, is the statute adaptable to the sprawling, sometimes global, phenomena that are wearing down our environmental fabric on landscape scales …
Micro-Offsets And Macro-Transformation: An Inconvenient View Of Climate Change Justice, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Brooke A. Ackerly, Fred E. Forster
Micro-Offsets And Macro-Transformation: An Inconvenient View Of Climate Change Justice, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Brooke A. Ackerly, Fred E. Forster
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
We have been asked to examine climate change justice by discussing the methods of allocating the costs of addressing climate change among nations. Our analysis suggests that climate and justice goals cannot be achieved by better allocating the emissions reduction burdens of current carbon mitigation proposals — there may be no allocation of burdens using current approaches that achieves both climate and justice goals. Instead, achieving just the climate goal without exacerbating justice concerns, much less improving global justice, will require focusing on increasing well-being and inducing fundamental changes in development patterns to generate greater levels of well-being with reduced …
The Political Economy Of Energy And Its Implications For Climate Change Legislation, Jim Rossi
The Political Economy Of Energy And Its Implications For Climate Change Legislation, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Public choice themes have arisen throughout the history of U.S. energy regulation and continue to be relevant today, particularly with widespread discussion of deregulation and increased attention to climate change. This Article surveys how public choice themes are relevant to understanding a host of issues of importance to the electric power industry today, including the structure of the industry, the significance of wholesale markets, and the division of regulatory power between state and federal authorities. The Article highlights how an understanding of how public choice has contributed to these features of the electric power industry will prove important to the …
Climate Change: The China Problem, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Climate Change: The China Problem, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The central problem confronting climate change scholars and policymakers is how to create incentives for China and the United States to make prompt, large emissions reductions. China recently surpassed the United States as the largest greenhouse gas emitter, and its projected future emissions far outstrip those of any other nation. Although the United States has been the largest emitter for years, China's emissions have enabled critics in the United States to argue that domestic reductions will be ineffective and will transfer jobs to China. These two aspects of the China Problem, Chinese emissions and their influence on the political process …
Climate Change: The Equity Problem, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Brooke A. Ackerly
Climate Change: The Equity Problem, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Brooke A. Ackerly
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
A substantial proportion of the United States population is at or below the poverty level, yet many of the greenhouse gas emissions reduction measures proposed or adopted to date will increase the costs of energy, motor vehicles, and other consumer goods. This essay suggests that although scholarship and policymaking to date have focused on the disproportionate impact of these increased costs on the low-income population, the costs will have two important additional effects. First, the anticipated costs will generate political opposition from social justice groups, reducing the likelihood that aggressive measures will be adopted. Second, to the extent aggressive measures …
Climate Change And Consumption, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Douglas A. Kysar
Climate Change And Consumption, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Douglas A. Kysar
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
To achieve the level of greenhouse gas emissions reductions called for by climate change experts, officials and policy analysts may need to develop an unfamiliar category of regulated entity: the consumer. Although industrial, manufacturing, retail, and service sector firms undoubtedly will remain the focus of climate change policy in the near term, individuals and households exert a greenhouse footprint that seems simply too large for policymakers to ignore in the long term. This paper, written as a foreword for the Environmental Law Reporter's symposium issue, "Climate Change and Consumption," emerges from an interdisciplinary conference of the same title held at …
Climate Change And The Endangered Species Act: Building Bridges To The No-Analog Future, J.B. Ruhl
Climate Change And The Endangered Species Act: Building Bridges To The No-Analog Future, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article examines the challenges global climate change presents for the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and its primary administrative agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Climate change will reshuffle ecological systems in ways that will defy prediction using existing knowledge and models, posing threats to species through primary and secondary ecological effects and the effects of human adaptation to climate change. Even assuming global-wide regulation of greenhouse gas emissions eventually yields a more stable climate variation regime, it will differ from the recent historical regime and many species will not survive the transition regardless of human interventions using …
Individual Carbon Emissions: The Low-Hanging Fruit, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jack Barkenbus, Jonathan Gilligan
Individual Carbon Emissions: The Low-Hanging Fruit, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jack Barkenbus, Jonathan Gilligan
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The individual and household sector generates roughly 30 to 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and is a potential source of prompt and large emissions reductions. Yet the assumption that only extensive government regulation will generate substantial reductions from the sector is a barrier to change, particularly in a political environment hostile to regulation. This Article demonstrates that prompt and large reductions can be achieved without relying predominantly on regulatory measures. The Article identifies seven "low-hanging fruit:" actions that have the potential to achieve large reductions at less than half the cost of the leading current federal legislation, require …
The Carbon-Neutral Individual, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Anne C. Steinemann
The Carbon-Neutral Individual, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Anne C. Steinemann
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Reducing the risk of catastrophic climate change will require leveling off greenhouse gas emissions over the short term and reducing emissions by an estimated 60-80% over the long term. To achieve these reductions, we argue that policymakers and regulators should focus not only on factories and other industrial sources of emissions but also on individuals. We construct a model that demonstrates that individuals contribute roughly one-third of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. This one-third share accounts for roughly 8% of the world's total, more than the total emissions of any other country except China, and more than several …
The New Wal-Mart Effect: The Role Of Private Contracting In Global Governance, Michael P. Vandenbergh
The New Wal-Mart Effect: The Role Of Private Contracting In Global Governance, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.