The vast majority of scholarly literature addressing climate policy examines carbon dioxide. But more than two-fifths of current global warming is attributable to “the other gases,” including methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and nitrous oxides. These gases do not remain as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide but pack intensive short-term climate impacts. This talk will examine the politics of addressing such shorter-lived climate pollutants, focusing on current American domestic policy and support for emerging international governance. It will first consider robust domestic legislation addressing hydrofluorocarbons and rapid cooling sector transition and Senate ratification of the global Kigali regime, both of which retain bipartisan backing. But it will then pivot to explore two major sources of human-caused methane, oil and gas production and transport as well as landfill waste management that primarily entails food waste. In the oil and gas case, far-reaching federal domestic policy has been adopted with single-party support but remains vulnerable to political and legal reversal. This fragility is also evident in support for a modest global regime, the Global Methane Pledge that the United States initiated with the European Union in 2021. In the landfill case, domestic policy steps remain quite minimal and are largely reliant upon single party support. There will also be brief concluding discussion of other major methane sources, such as agriculture and livestock, where American policy moves at a glacial pace and is largely confined to incentive payments for voluntary efforts. The talk will review each case in exploring the political factors explaining these distinct outcomes and consider possible American post-election steps in linking domestic climate policy with trade, including proposed border adjustment mechanisms for carbon and methane.
About the Speaker
Professor Rabe is Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School, University of Michigan, where he holds the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Chair of Public Policy in honor of his research and policy engagement and the Arthur Thurnau Professorship of Environmental Policy in honor of his contributions to undergraduate education. He has an extensive record of research, publication, and policy engagement in environmental and climate policy over the past three decades, with his research now focused on short-lived climate pollutants. Prof. Rabe’s large and diverse set of peer-reviewed publications has been recognized with four awards from the American Political Science Association, as well as research honors from the National Academy of Public Administration, the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Prof. Rabe is also Nonresident Senior Fellow, Governance Studies at Brookings Institution where he has produced policy reports for the Center for Technology Innovation and its TechTank blog series. He has also maintained a long-term partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, particularly its Canada Institute and Environmental Change and Security Program; he received a Wilson Policy Fellowship in 2015 and was recently named a Global Fellow in the Canada Institute.
A roundtable discussion will follow this talk. The roundtable will explore the implications of these developments for sectoral methane reductions, the role of technological barriers and advancements, global efforts to reach Net Zero by 2050, and Canadian climate policy. We will also explore potential avenues for a collaborative research agenda centered at the Balsillie School of International Affairs under the Environment and Resources Research Cluster. A light lunch will follow this discussion.
