Much of the risk perception literature relies on the important but unstated assumption that manipulating public opinion to conform to scientific assessments of risk could help the public and, in turn, policymakers make better decisions about whether and how to regulate. This paper argues that the assumption fails in the context of certain multilayered risks, or risks that pose tiered policy choices - not just whether to regulate in the first instance, but how to respond to derivative risks arising from the first set of regulatory changes. Examining the debate about the role of nuclear power in the United States' approach to climate change, the paper observes that first- and second-tier risks often differ in character, or require different types of regulatory solution (market-based versus command-and-control). Due to these variations, the public may hold starkly different views about regulation of each tier, and those views may be differently - that is, differently susceptible to persuasion. In the context of the nuclear power debate, this tiering of opinion has perverse implications. The first-tier risks of nuclear power are those associated with individual reactors, including the risks of accident or terrorist attack; the second-tier risks are those associated with mining, transport, processing, storage, and disposal of radioactive materials. Recent work asserts that despite entrenched public fear of nuclear power, it may be possible to induce people to support construction of low-emissions reactors as a strategy for mitigating climate change. But even if policymakers could employ the risk education strategies discussed in the literature to shift public opinion in favor of economic incentives for nuclear reactor development, there is no reason to think such strategies would be equally effective at changing attitudes toward second-tier risks and the command-and-control regulations necessary to address them. To the contrary, many people would likely continue to oppose certain types of government action on these latter problems, even assuming the complete success of the hypothesized first-tier education strategy. As a result, the United States could find itself with a thriving nuclear power sector, but without the political will to address the grave collateral risks. These observations lead to two conclusions, one related to the nuclear power example, and one to risk regulation more broadly. First, differently sticky public attitudes toward first- and second-tier nuclear risks and their regulatory solutions may defeat any effort to respond to climate change by significantly and safely increasing U.S. reliance on nuclear power. Second, efforts to change public risk perceptions may not advance a regulatory agenda, and may even prove counterproductive. Specifically, where multiple risk layers exist, a successful first-tier education effort and consequent policy changes could create or expose second-tier risks that defy regulatory solution, leaving policymakers stranded at the abrupt and unexpected end of a half-built bridge. Depending on the gravity of the second-tier risks, this regulatory dead end could be one that neither policymakers nor the public would have chosen ex ante.

Notwithstanding adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions appears unlikely to achieve the stated goal of limiting the mean global temperature increase to 2°C. Under many scenarios, achieving this goal would require not only vigorous mitigation efforts, but also the deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies or solar geoengineering. While serious consideration of solar geoengineering remains fraught with peril, the use of CDR to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it elsewhere appears increasingly likely. CDR techniques generally would have to be undertaken on a massive scale to be effective. However, the techniques are not ready for deployment, and their widespread use would impact land use, biodiversity, food security, water availability, and other resources. The potential impacts of widespread CDR deployment demand greater attention to managing CDR efforts and their effects. The Paris Agreement does not directly mention CDR, however, and relatively little attention has been directed to CDR governance thus far. This Article explores key issues of CDR governance, such as promoting the generation of information, mainstreaming CDR into public and policy discussions, and furthering CDR development while avoiding lock-in of suboptimal technologies.

Complaints about excessive economic burdens associated with regulation abound in contemporary political and legal rhetoric. In recent years, perhaps nowhere have these complaints been heard as loudly as in the context of U.S. regulations targeting the use of coal to supply power to the nation’s electricity system, as production levels in the coal industry dropped by nearly half between 2008 and 2016. The coal industry and its political supporters, including the president of the United States, have argued that a suite of air pollution regulations imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration seriously undermined coal companies’ bottom lines, presenting an existential threat to the industry. Under the Trump administration, industry players have lobbied hard for (and sometimes received) financial subsidies and regulatory changes, with the president seemingly all too happy to play the role of the industry’s savior. Stepping back, we consider the extent to which regulations have really led to the decline in demand for coal and how much the coal industry can actually expect to gain from the deregulatory policies of the current administration. To illuminate these questions, we statistically analyze stock market reactions to important events in what critics called the regulatory “war on coal” during the Obama administration. Using an event-study framework that measures abnormal market activity in the immediate wake of these events, we are able to isolate any potential impact of regulatory developments above and beyond market factors, such as secular trends in natural gas prices and market performance as a whole. Surprisingly, we find no systemic evidence consistent with a “war on coal” based on investor assessments of the industry’s financial prospects in the wake of new regulatory developments, even though our methods do find evidence of stock market reactions to other events, such as bankruptcies of other companies. Coal firms’ investors—the very actors with financial stakes in understanding the impact of regulation on the industry—appear to have behaved as if they never actually bought into the regulatory “war on coal” narrative. Our findings are consistent both with broader evidence about the effects of regulation and with an underlying political economy of regulatory scapegoating, according to which actors in a declining industry prefer to blame regulation rather than competitive factors for their businesses’ decline. By calling attention to the pervasive incentives for scapegoating and cheap talk by politicians seeking to be saviors, we offer an account that can explain the mismatch between our findings and the rhetoric of the “war on coal.” Along the way, our account reinforces how important it is for courts, elected officials, and the public to demand that government agencies base their regulatory decisions on evidence instead of relying on political rhetoric.

Farmland preservation has become an important pursuit for those seeking to protect the working landscape. One of the most common approaches for securing this protection is through the targeted use of agricultural conservation easements, typically perpetual land use agreements designed to limit incompatible activities in order to preserve future agricultural viability. Since the 1990s, agricultural conservation easements have protected millions of acres of land, and many of these donations have relied on the federal tax incentives provided by section 170(h) of the Internal Revenue Code to facilitate these transactions. Perhaps surprisingly given this high rate of utilization, securing farmland for future productive use is not an express objective of the Internal Revenue Code, which requires these donations to qualify on other grounds. This Article explores the impacts of this disconnect and examines options for how farmland preservation objectives could be better integrated into the current tax-incentivized conservation easement framework.