Climate Change: Risks, Sources, and Motivations

• Pages: 131-147
• Author: Michael P. Vandenbergh,Sarah E. Light,James Salzman

131

Chapter 7

CLIMATE CHANGE: RISKS, SOURCES,

AND MOTIVATIONS

PEG initiatives have played an important and growing role in

reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, so it is appropriate that

climate change is the first environmental problem we address in this

book.

When government policymakers tackle pollution problems, they

typically focus on what to regulate, how much to regulate, where to

regulate, and how to regulate. In a top-down system with a

comprehensive federal climate statute, an agency such as EPA has

the responsibility to develop top-down answers to each of these

questions. But climate change has been described as “the mother of

all collective action problems” and no government authority—

international, national or subnational governments—has developed

adequate responses. GHG emissions continue to rise.

In contrast to the traditional top-down approach of

environmental law, PEG climate initiatives have emerged bottom-

up, with no individual policymaker or group of policymakers

developing an overall strategy and guiding resources to the most

important problems. This ad hoc approach makes comprehensive

answers to the what, how much, where, and how questions elusive

for PEG climate initiatives. But it also makes understanding the role

of PEG in addressing climate change a dynamic, exciting, and

rewarding topic. A system of PEG climate initiatives has emerged

that uses the same types of tools as public governance, filling

important gaps in government responses to climate change and

expanding the options available to many environmental lawyers,

managers, and advocates.

We explore private climate governance over the next three

chapters. This chapter begins by explaining climate change basics—

the climate science, the types and sources of greenhouse gas (GHG)

emissions, and the impacts of climate change. The chapter then lays

the foundation for our exploration of PEG climate mitigation

initiatives by discussing the motivations or drivers of private sector

decarbonization and the interactions between public and private

climate governance. We turn in Chapters 8 and 9 to the governance

tools deployed by PEG climate initiatives. Along the way, we identify

the reasons why PEG is addressing many of the mismatched

boundary, collective action and other problems that make climate

change the most challenging environmental threat.

132

PEG IN ACTION: CLIMATE AND ENERGY

Pt. II

I.Climate Change Risks

Climate change has become the top environmental priority for

many governments, advocacy groups, and companies because it

threatens the very stability of the natural, social, economic, and

political systems that human societies rely upon. Even with our best

efforts, some climate impacts are essentially irreversible.

Unfortunately, climate change has also become a polarizing issue.

Climate change often ranks low on the list of voters’ priorities yet

high on the list of the most polarized issues in the United States and

some other countries, and misinformation is widespread. To make

sound judgments about the risks and the tradeoffs necessary to

respond to climate risks and to understand the role of PEG, we need

to know the facts—the basic science and the likely causes and effects

of climate change.

A.Greenhouse Gases

There is nothing mysterious or uncertain about the basic

greenhouse effect. Understanding it only requires a straightforward

application of the same principles of heat flow used by engineers

every day to design practical technologies. In short, more of the sun’s

energy is being trapped by the Earth’s atmosphere than is released

into space, causing the globe to warm and disrupting the climate.

The most important human-made (or “anthropogenic”) GHGs

contributing to this warming are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane

(CH4), nitrous oxide (NOx), and several fluorinated gases. For

simplicity, we often refer to these gases as “carbon emissions”

although not all of these gases include carbon. These gases only

account for about 3% of the earth’s atmosphere, but they trap large

amounts of heat that the earth radiates after absorbing the warmth

of the sun’s heat. GHG concentrations have been rising over the last

century, particularly rapidly in the last few decades. For instance,

the pre-industrial concentration of CO2 was 280 parts per million or

ppm (imagine a jar of outdoor air that contains one million molecules,

of which 280 molecules are CO2). Concentrations in recent years have

exceeded 420 ppm and may exceed 450 ppm by 2050. Since the 19th

century industrial revolution, the fossil fuel-based economy has been

burning oil, gas and coal for energy. This releases GHGs that natural

processes transferred from the atmosphere to organic matter in

prehistoric times (and that transformed over millions of years into

today’s fossil fuel deposits). Deforestation and agricultural practices

are releasing GHGs as well.

Some GHGs contribute more to warming the atmosphere than

others. Carbon dioxide accounts for roughly 80% of global warming

from GHGs, and methane is second with roughly 10%. Some GHGs