Webinar: Carbon Captured – How Business and Labor Control Climate Politics

Speaker: Matto Mildenberger

Climate change threatens the planet, and yet policy responses have varied widely across nations. Some countries have undertaken ambitious programs to stave off climate disaster, others have done little, and still others have passed policies that were later rolled back. In Carbon Captured, I offer a new theory to explain cross-national differences in climate reform timing and content. I show how the climate threat’s emergence revealed cross-cutting divisions within existing political and economic coalitions. Climate change divided workers in carbon-dependent industrial unions from workers in low-carbon sectors. It divided carbon-intensive businesses from businesses with small carbon footprints. And it split political actors on both the left and right with divergent ties to these divided labor and capital constituencies. The subsequent dispersion of carbon polluters’ political allies compounded status quo biases in public policymaking; it ensured that, no matter who controlled the government, carbon polluters were accommodated in policy design. I argue that this double representation of carbon polluters is the single most important feature of climate policy conflict across advanced economies. Understanding how national institutions and carbon polluters’ double representation interacted to shape these pathways helps explain cross-national differences in climate policy timing and content. It sheds new light on why climate reform opposition remains entrenched in many advanced economies. And it helps us understand if—and when—advanced economies will confront the civilizational threat of climate change.

To attend the Webinar, register here.