Bypass Climate Polarization

Abstract:
Understanding the tools available to environmental law and policy in a polarized era requires new mental models and tools. The remarkable framework of constitutional interpretations, statutes, regulations, policies, agencies, and courts that developed over the last half century still dominates how we think about environmental law and policy-but the political system that gave birth to it no longer exists. In its place is a political system characterized by polarization, sorting, and gridlock. This talk will examine the role that group identity plays in creating gridlock over environmental policy and will draw on insights from the social and behavioral sciences as well as law and policy to identify reasons for optimism, including the opportunities for de facto national standards, the behavioral wedge, and the private sector wedge.
Bio:
Michael Vandenbergh is the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law at Vanderbilt University Law School, Director of the Climate Change Research Network, and Co-Director of the Energy, Environment and Land Use Program. An award-winning teacher, Vandenbergh has published widely on bypassing climate polarization, private environmental governance, and the opportunity to harness law and social science to achieve a behavioral wedge of carbon emissions reductions. Before joining the Vanderbilt faculty, Vandenbergh was a partner at Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C., and he served as Chief of Staff of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993-95. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and the Wharton School. His research has been discussed in major media outlets such as National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, National Geographic, USA Today, Psychology Today, and the Washington Post. He is a 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and a member of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, and he chairs the Board on Environmental Change and Society of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, and the board of directors of the Nashville Electric Service.