Climate Policy Blog

Society has four general options for addressing human caused changes in climate. We could take no upfront preventative action. I’ll call this the wait-and-see approach. We could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation). We could improve our ability to cope with climate impacts (build our adaptive capacity). For example, building codes could require structures to withstand more severe storms, or we could restrict development in flood prone areas. Finally, we could deploy global changes that attempt to counteract the effects of our greenhouse gas emissions (geoengineer). One prominent geoengineering idea is to inject reflective particles into the atmosphere to decrease slightly the amount of the sun’s energy that reaches the earth’s surface.

Each of the four options has proponents and critics, advantages and disadvantages. A full treatment will take many posts, but for today I’ll set the stage with a broad overview. (more…)

Society faces complex choices in dealing with climate change. The policies we adopt have the greatest chance to benefit society if they are grounded in the best available knowledge. Unfortunately, gaps in understanding among scientists, policy makers, journalists and the public permeate nearly all aspects of the issue and constitute a major barrier to the adoption of well-informed responses to the threats posed by climate change.

ClimatePolicy will be a source of information and will work toward a more fully informed debate. We’ll discuss a wide range of topics that span scientific understanding, impact assessment, policy analysis, and the value judgments that shape people’s policy preferences. This will improve the policy process by explicitly identifying existing knowledge and exploring the limits to it. Our goal is to inform policy, rather than to advocate for specific policy solutions. (more…)