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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 …
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 …