Final post

In the form of governance, I think that the actors, initiatives, and regulations all play a role and are interconnected in dealing with environmental issues. In my groups’ case, our environmental problem is regarding the adaptation and mitigation of climate change. In the blog posts posted by my blog teammates there is a diverse collection of actors, governance initiatives, and regulations that minimally overlap when addressing adaptation and mitigation of climate change.  I think with our strategy to do this has provided a good framework of climate change and the key components that reveal the strengths and limitations when dealing with such a monumental issue.  Not every actor, initiative, or regulation is unflawed and powerful in harnessing change, but as a collaborative network of different approaches in dealing with climate change, I think that we as a society have a better chance at solving this problem.

As far as the most promising ways forward in addressing climate change, I think that a network form of governance is key. When talking about trying to achieve the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions I think that the Clean Air Act and all of its amendments really stand a fighting chance in combating climate change in the United States by reducing billions of metric tons of GHG’s.  Through regulations that the EPA passes through the help of the CAA, it will hold the big actors and policy makers more accountable for their actions, which contribute to climate change.  Ideally, I would like to see other countries influenced by our laws and policies regarding the reduction in GHG’s and hold these entities with the most contribution in polluting to be held accountable.  My classmate Andy Boinski collected this information regarding the CAA.  Another promising way in addressing climate change is through giving businesses’ and the general public (residential entities) incentives to reduce their carbon footprint. The multifaceted organization that works on mitigating this is Focus on Energy (FOE).  As explained in detail in my past blogs, they do this by offering tax incentives to entities willing to use environmentally conscious technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels, just to name a few.  I think this has great potential because our whole way of life is dictated by economics and money. By having a program that is focused on the environment and climate change, while using an incentive approach, results in a cohesive relationship with a network and market form of governance. 

J.P. Evans “eight hypotheses”, hold some water to our group’s topic, mitigation and adaptation to climate change.  The first one that caught my eye was  “Governments matter”.   Governments obviously give a state structure by shaping markets, creating political views, and creating a sense of accountability to policy makers and the laws that they pass.  The book says, “Given the scale and speed of change required to address climate change, commentators are increasingly advocating direct government action, for example to pump money directly into research rather than incentivizing the market to deliver the right innovations through taxes and subsidies (Lomborg 2007)”. This is a direct parallel with the program, FOE, which I have been writing about in my previous blogs.  I think that having a mixture of the right approaches is critical as well.  Due to the fact that climate change is a global problem there are many institutions, initiatives, and regulations that have emerged to deal with this monumental environmental issue.  Sure it has its upsides and downsides but usually everything does. I also agree with the fact that we are all living in a world in which we don’t live habitually but rather in a way that is reflective upon our actions.