Facing and Managing Climate Change: Assumptions, Science, and Governance Responses

Abstract

Too often the debate over climate change is overly simplistic. Given the scale of the problem and the assumption of catastrophic harm, the tendency is to rely on top-down, one-size-fits-all governance solutions, centralized authoritative and coercive governance structures and policies, or a centralized global 'contraction and convergence’ carbon trading scheme. These approaches leave little room for robust democratic debate and choice with respect to governance institutions and policies. This article seeks to more fully engage the debate over climate change and governance responses in order to develop a more nuanced, sophisticated understanding, of use to scholars and decision-makers. It does so by employing the two most basic assumptions underlying the climate change and governance debate - the speed of change and the expected severity of climate change effects - as a tool to demonstrate how differing assumptions are likely to affect our understanding of the climate change problem set and thus our preferences and choices concerning governance responses to climate change. Attacking the climate change issue in this way allows us to illuminate key tradeoffs associated with our potential choices and provides us with a far more robust set of governance possibilities than much of the current climate debate allows. Finally, approaching climate change in such a fashion also introduces the possibility that key values associated with democracy (liberty and equity, for example) might have a critical role in building the kind of societal and community resilience to climate change that leads toward long-term environmental sustainability.