Leah Stokes wrote an op-ed about the recent disasters in Santa Barbara, connecting them to climate change. The article reminds us that climate change is here now, and affects all of us. If we do not connect the dots and talk about climate change during disasters, we won't change policy. If victims understand that climate change is to blame for their personal tragedies, they may take action to address the growing climate crisis.
You can read the full op-ed here.
New research from Matto Mildenberger, and his co-authors at other universities is on the cover of the New York Times today. For those who are counting, that is twice in one year!
The research demonstrates that a majority of Republicans want climate policy regulation. Further half of all Republicans believe that climate impacts are already happening. This is particularly true along the coasts, where hurricanes and wildfire have intensified.
Stokes recently published new research with colleague Hanna Breetz in Energy Policy. The article aims to comprehensively document attempts to decarbonize the US energy system, across both the transportation and electricity sectors. Typically, both of these sectors are not examined together in a single research project, creating limitations for what we know about policies driving the energy transition to date.
In this paper, we examine the politics of US state and federal policy supporting wind and solar in the electricity sector and biofuels and electric vehicles in the transportation sector. For each technology, we provide two policy case studies: the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) and state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) for wind; state Net Energy Metering (NEM) and the federal investment tax credit (ITC) for solar; federal excise tax incentives and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) for biofuels; and California's Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate and federal tax incentives for electric vehicles. Each case study traces the enactment and later revision of the policy, typically over a period of twenty-five years.
We use these eight longitudinal case studies to identify common patterns in the politics of US renewable energy policy. Although electricity and transportation involve different actors and technologies, we find similar patterns across these sectors: immature technology is underestimated or misunderstood; large energy bills provide windows of opportunity for enactment; once enacted, policies are extended incrementally; there is increasing politicization as mature technology threatens incumbents.
Research by Matto Mildenberger was just published in the British Journal of Political Science. The article, entitled "Beliefs about climate beliefs: the importance of second-order opinions for climate politics" was co-authored with Dustin Tingley.
The research examines how political participation depends on an individual’s perceptions of others’ beliefs. The article provides the first comprehensive survey of Chinese and American beliefs about the climate belief of others, drawing from six new opinion surveys of mass publics, political elites and intellectual elites.
The research finds that all types of political actors have beliefs characterized by egocentric bias: people who believe in climate change assume more people agree with them; people who disbelieve climate change assume the same. Both climate change believers and disbelievers also underestimate the share of the US or Chinese publics that believe climate change is happening and support various climate policies.
The article also shows experimentally that individual support for pro-climate policies increases after respondents learn about the true distribution of other peoples' climate beliefs.
You can read the full research article here.
New research by Matto Mildenberger was just published in the journal Climatic Change. Working with co-authors at Yale University and Utah State University, the Matto created the first maps of partisan climate and energy beliefs at the US state and congressional district levels. The research finds substantial variation in Republican climate beliefs - including substantial support among Republicans for some climate policies that appears out of step with elite climate policy messaging within the party.
To read the full research paper, you can click here.
These data are also available for download as part of an interactive visualization tool you can access here: http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/partisan-maps-2016/
New online visualization tool to map Democratic and Republican climate beliefs.
This research has been covered by Scientific American and the Independent.
Leah Stokes gave a webinar in early October with the Clean Energy States Alliance. In the webinar, she discussed her recent publication with Chris Warshaw in Nature Energy.
The webinar was recorded and can be watched here.
In the Fall issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Leah Stokes' research on Texas' adoption of its renewable energy laws was profiled. As the article summarizes, this research shows that effective philanthropic work uses a combination of insider and outsider funding strategies to drive policy change. Outsider, grassroots groups help get policies on the agenda and build support for their passage. Insider, technical groups are necessary to negotiating specific policy provisions
You can read the full article in the magazine, on the SSIR website, or here.
Duck of Minerva is a prominent academic blog on world politics. Leah Stokes and Matto Mildenberger recently coauthored comments for a forum post on the blog on the likely effects of Harvey and Irma on US politics. The full post can be read here, and a summary of their comments is below.
Q: What are the most important political consequences of Harvey and Irma? Are they a “game changer” for US climate discourse?
No, Harvey and Irma are not game-changers. US climate discourse will only change systematically when Republican elites decide it is in their political interest to engage sincerely with the climate crisis. This is not to say they need agree with Democrats on policy solutions; they simply need to share belief in climate change as a policymaking starting point.
That said, Harvey and Irma do matter. They can create a moment where media attention returns to the dangers of climate change, and brings the issue to the top of the policymaking agenda. Unfortunately, most mainstream news outlets failed to mention climate change during their extensive media coverage, an act activists have dubbed “climate silence.” Thus, a key science communication moment was largely squandered.
The hurricanes also raise the salience of the climate crisis for many Americans–at least in the short term. However, political science research generally shows that experience-induced shifts in climate beliefs and risk perceptions are not durable. Real shifts in discourse and partisan beliefs requires systematic messaging by political elites. So far, it doesn’t seem that Republican elites have revised their messages in response to Harvey and Irma.
Q: What is the role of scientific agencies and organizations is in this “post fact” era?
Facts and science still matter a lot in the post-fact era. For one, scientists and scientific agencies continue to describe and profile human-caused climate change’s real and accelerating dangers. Denying climate change does not change the material facts at hand: increased wildfires, droughts, and severe weather are already disrupting the lives and economic well-being of Americans today. Secondly, once we move below the noise and bluster of federal political debates, scientific assessments and perspectives still shape bureaucratic implementation, regulatory decisions, state and local policy goals and more.
Q: What are the most promising levers for promoting better adaptation policies?
Many adaptation policies can be implemented without specific mention or discussion of climate change—they often fall under infrastructure policy, which tends to be bipartisan. That may be the best option available for planners in some parts of the US today. However, robust mitigation policies are still the most promising way to fund adaptation policies and prevent the need for more costly adaptation.
A focus on adaptation is important – but cannot shortcut the need for the US political system to grapple with an essential fact: human activity is causing climate change and it will damage human health and the economy. Only efforts to reshape this human activity can cost-effectively protect Americans from the social and economic risks associated with global warming.
Matto Mildenberger just published a new policy brief with Mark Lubell at the UC Davis Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior. The brief reports some initial results from a household survey of SF Bay residents regarding their perceptions of sea-level rise and floodrisks, as it relates to various types of political behavior such as voting for ballot propositions that will protect against sea-level rise.
Sea-level rise is psychologically distant concept; the majority of SF Bay residents think it will not harm them personally, while the most significant harm is for future generations and developing countries. People are more likely to support political measures to combat sea-level rise if they perceive more harm from sea-level rise, of if they have a high subjective perception of sea-level rise flood risk. However, objective flood risk based on zip-code level hydrodynamic models appears to have little influence on support for sea-level rise ballot propositions except among more politically sophisticated respondents. This highlights the importance of understanding the origins of sea-level rise risk perceptions, which are a function of both geography and individual psychological and social factors.
As part of the Public Administration Review's (PAR) symposium on Climate Change and Public Administration, Matto Mildenberger published a commentary on the political benefits of inefficient climate policies. Matto argues that, instead of uncritically enacting climate policies with the least marginal costs, policymakers must consider how climate policy options shape the relative political strengths of different actors over time. As he writes:
"Our atmosphere makes no distinction between a molecule of carbon dioxide released by a coal-fired power plant in Wyoming or by a rainforest fire in Brazil. Yet, the choice to target Wyoming coal or Brazilian deforestation has substantial political repercussions: decisions about who should bear the cost of climate mitigation today reshapes who will have political voice during future rounds of climate policymaking."
One counterintuitive result of this research: policies that are inefficient in the short-term may ultimately produce stronger pro-climate coalitions, and consequently stronger climate policy, over the long-term.
Here is the full commentary:
The political benefits of inefficient climate policies
By: Matto Mildenberger
Climate policy instruments tend to be judged by their efficiency: the ability to reduce carbon pollution at the lowest marginal cost. At first glance, this seems sensible. Transitions to a low-carbon economy will involve substantial adjustment costs. Businesses, workers and publics will face economic disruption and shifting prices. How could we ever justify Pareto-dominated policy designs that impose more costs and spend more money to deliver the same level of carbon pollution reduction? Quite reasonably, it turns out. In fact, serious decarbonization efforts may benefit from inefficient climate policies in the short run when these policies also nurture the growth of pro-climate political coalitions over time.
A move away from “efficiency” can be unsettling. Rhetoric about cost efficiency is deeply engrained within climate policymaking debates. Emissions trading schemes promise to deliver carbon pollution reductions at the point of lowest marginal cost. Carbon offsets and other flexibility-increasing policy mechanisms offer attractive alternatives to costly domestic abatement targets. An undifferentiated carbon tax promises to efficiently price the true costs of carbon pollution into various energy sources. These policies, economists argue, mitigate climate risks in a way that minimizes adjustment costs. Underlying their arguments is an assumption that a ton of carbon pollution abated in one part of the world or in one part of the economy is equivalent to a ton of carbon pollution abated in another part of the world or another part of the economy.
Efficiency or Equity?
At one level this is self-evidently true. Our atmosphere makes no distinction between a molecule of carbon dioxide released by a coal-fired power plant in Wyoming or by a rainforest fire in Brazil. Yet, the choice to target Wyoming coal or Brazilian deforestation has substantial substantial political repercussions: decisions about who should bear the cost of climate mitigation today reshapes who will have political voice during future rounds of climate policymaking. Contrary to the constructed reality of economic models, this means one ton of CO2 reduced in one sector in one part of the world is not the same as a ton of CO2 reduced in a different sector in a different part of the world. Why? These tons may have the same direct effect on atmospheric carbon stocks; however, they have different indirect effects on long-term political support for future climate reforms. The right to release carbon pollution into the atmosphere provides an economic subsidy to particular economic actors. When a carbon polluter is exempted from a carbon tax or given generous emissions allowance allocations, or when a country decides to invest in foreign carbon pollution reduction efforts over domestic reductions, this helps maintain that actors’ profitability and enhances their longevity. In other words, policies that eschew cost imposition on carbon polluters risk entrenching the climate-unfriendly economic and political status quo.
For example, Norway was the second country in the world to enact a carbon tax in 1991 but systematically exempted onshore process industries from any costs for over two decades. (While these industries are now part of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, they joined as clear economic winners under that policy’s allowance distribution scheme). At the same time, carbon taxes on the offshore oil industry were calibrated to avoid radical disruption to that industry’s growth. These exemptions stemmed from the outsized political influence of carbon-intensive industries within Norwegian policymaking debates. Reluctant to impose significant costs on domestic producers, more recent Norwegian governments have championed such initiatives as the Climate and Forestry Initiative, policies explicitly designed to fund low marginal cost carbon pollution abatement opportunities outside of Norway. In this way, efficiency rhetoric has allowed successive Norwegian governments to maintain the political and economic status quo. Current carbon pricing reform efforts face the same political opponents as climate reformers faced in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, domestic emissions have increased 3.3% since 1990.
By contrast, inefficient policies can sometimes reshape the distribution of political power when they explicitly redirect resources to new climate policy winners. For example, consider debates over whether renewable energy support policies are desirable after a country passes an emissions trading scheme. In the United States, conservative Democrats opposed the inclusion of a renewable energy standard in the 2009 Waxman-Markey bill because they believed it inefficient and superfluous. Critics suggested the same of Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a government-initiated effort to finance clean energy deployment set up in parallel to the country’s emissions trading scheme. According to these critics, mandates for clean energy under a national carbon cap don’t reduce net national emissions; instead, renewable energy deployment simply creates “slack” within allowance markets. In this way, government expenditures on clean energy are wasted on a game of abatement musical chairs without any net mitigation benefits.
Again, this is true in a direct sense. Yet, this criticism neglects a key fact: decisions about the distribution of climate policy costs, even under a cap, have significant political repercussions. When policymakers promote the existence of clean energy businesses, regardless of whether a national carbon cap exists, they nurture new political actors who will mobilize in support of more ambitious future climate policies. Renewable energy support policies promote new political actors that mobilize to support and expand climate and energy reforms. This political benefit can be crucial to long-term decarbonization efforts even if renewable energy support policies are narrowly inefficient in the presence of carbon cap.
Moving beyond marginal abatement costs
In conclusion, public administration scholars need to go beyond merely comparing the marginal abatement costs of different policy instruments, the declaring the one with the lowest to be winner or the desired one. We need to ask whether in some contexts efficiency arguments offer cover for established carbon polluters to avoid domestic costs. Might policies that target higher-cost abatement opportunities facilitate the emergence of new political coalitions to reform existing policies? If it takes inefficient policies in the short-term to support the redistribution of political power in a given economy, will long-term efficiency gains (from the increased political power of pro-climate coalitions) dominate these short-term costs?
The climate threat is not a single-round policy game. It will instead involve repeated rounds of policy bargaining over decades. Consequently, short-term policies must be designed and implemented in a way that generates strategic opportunities for future climate reformers. We must remain open to the possibility that reshaping the balance of domestic political power will cost more than an economist’s estimated least marginal abatement cost. Sometimes it’s the inefficient policies that unlock more effective – and eventually more efficient – decarbonization opportunities over time.
Matto Mildenberger is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University California Santa Barbara.