When do cap-and-trade programs survive?
Climate change is an “urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies.” So said national leaders at the Paris climate conference three weeks ago. But it has proved difficult to design durable programs to control greenhouse gas emissions. In the current issue of Governance, Barry Rabe observes that half of the U.S. states that made formal commitments to cap-and-trade programs by the end of 2008 had abandoned those commitments by 2013. Rabe identifies three features that explain why some commitments persisted: political resilience, administrative flexibility, and the capacity to produce demonstrable benefits that sustain constituency support. Open access to the article.
