Recent Publications

Dilling, L., 2007. Toward Carbon Governance: Challenges across Scales in the United States.  Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 7, No. 2, Pages 28-44, May.

Abstract:  Public and private sector actors increasingly recognize the need for action to address climate change. With the introduction of “carbon sinks” into the policy dialogue, the notion of managing human activities to mitigate climate change has extended beyond energy systems and emissions of carbon dioxide to include management of the carbon cycle itself, through manipulation of the terrestrial and oceanic realms. The number of decision makers involved and scope of managing the carbon cycle deliberately for climate purposes raises enormous challenges to governance including identifying appropriate mechanisms where they do not yet exist and adding additional criteria onto existing mechanisms that are already affecting the carbon cycle. In this paper, I define effective carbon governance as limiting the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This paper outlines a number of challenges to effective carbon governance at multiple scales using the example of land use in the United States and elsewhere. Read more.

Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2007.  Late Action by Lame Ducks.  Bridges, Vol. 15, September.

Excerpt:  The administration of George W. Bush seems to have discovered a new interest in the issue of climate change, starting just before the G8 summit last summer in Germany. Common wisdom holds that this interest is either shallow or, more cynically, an effort to derail ongoing international negotiations via distraction. But when President Bush proposed that a new international framework for climate change be developed by the end of 2008, his last year in office, he had no trouble getting other world leaders to agree enthusiastically, and a first meeting is scheduled for this week in Washington.

The dynamics of late-term lame-duck presidencies (i.e., those ineligible to run again for office) suggest that the climate issue is indeed ripe for action at the end of 2008, especially if a Democrat is elected in November. These dynamics give at least some reason for thinking that action on climate change under the Bush Administration may not be so far-fetched a possibility… Read more.