Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Special to Ps: The 2014 James Madison Lecture
I am honored to have been chosen as the James Madison Lecturer for 2014. In considering my topic I quickly decided on the global politics of climate change because it is becoming increasingly clear that climate change is one of the major political and institutional, as well as ecological, challenges of our time. When--not if--the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica melt significantly and the warming oceans expand, sea levels will rise. Climate warming probably will also cause stronger storms and other forms of extreme weather; agricultural production will suffer, especially at extreme levels of climate change. Such sea level rise could lead to the inundation of areas in which more than a billion people live, mostly in Asia. The implications of climate change are not simply minor adjustments in life-style, increased seasonal discomfort, and shifts of flora and fauna toward the poles, but major disruptions in human life as well as in natural ecology.1
In view of the magnitude of climate change, it is distressing to observe the slow response from political science as a discipline. Debra Javeline has documented the unhappy fact that although extensive work is being done on adaptation to climate change, virtually no contributions have been made by political scientists--despite the importance of politics in adaptation. Javeline lists 15 relevant topics, none of which is explored in any depth in the published literature (Javeline 2014, 420-34).
With respect to mitigation--reduction of emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses--the situation of contemporary political science in the United States has until recently not been much better. Economists have made important contributions (Barrett 2003; Aldy and Stavins, ed., 2007; Nordhaus 2014). The late Elinor Ostrom was a pioneer in studying issues involving the global commons (Ostrom 1990), and toward the end of her life she turned her attention to polycentric approaches to climate change (Ostrom 2009). And some European political scientists have been more active in analyzing these issues (see, for instance, Battig and Bernauer 2009; Biermann, Patterg, and Zelli 2010). In the United States, however, although there has been some outstanding work by senior political scientists, the list is short. David Victor has been a...