Explaining Environmental Successes and Failures

Why has the world performed so poorly in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting climate change? Humanity has performed far better in addressing other environmental challenges: protecting the ozone layer, mitigating acid rain, improving air quality, and reducing people's exposure to dioxins and lead. In this talk I will consider different environmental outcomes in comparative perspective, and conditions leading to better versus worse outcomes. I will argue, contrary to other perspectives, that there have been two key differences between climate change and more successfully mitigated problems. First, polluting industries have resisted regulation more strongly in the case of climate change, with exceptional political efforts to deny and delay in turn due to the uniquely unconvertible character of key industrial assets. Second, in all the success cases, ordinary people were asked to make little or no material sacrifice, whereas in the case of climate change there is more of a price to be paid--and most people appear unwilling to pay a price, even though it is modest. After elaborating these arguments, I will outline what I see as their implications for how we should seek to confront the daunting political challenge of climate change.

Malcolm Fairbrother is a professor of sociology at Uppsala University and the Institute for Futures Studies, Sweden. His research focuses on climate and environmental policy and politics, social and political trust, and social science research methods. His current projects investigate the decoupling of greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth, and public attitudes towards policies for environmental protection.