Articles

13 Items

Students marching in Milan

Wikimedia CC/Mænsard vokser

Journal Article - Global Environmental Politics

Is Democracy the Answer to Intractable Climate Change?

| 2023

While research suggests that democracy offers an answer to the climate crisis, evidence of the effect of regime type on greenhouse gas emissions is mixed and yields inconclusive findings. This article investigates the effect of regime type on carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane emissions and presents new evidence showing that when it comes to climate change mitigation, democracies are no greener than autocracies.

Students at left watch as student activists take positions in the Cathedral of Learning

AP/Keith Srakocic

Journal Article - Environmental Politics

Fossil Fuel Divestment and Public Climate Change Policy Preferences: An Experimental Test in Three Countries

| 2023

Divestment is a prominent strategy championed by activists to induce positive social change. For example, the current fossil fuel divestment movement includes over 1,500 institutions that control $40 trillion in assets. A primary pathway through which divestment is theorized to be effective is by influencing public beliefs and policy preferences, thus pressuring policymakers to take action. However, prior research only tests this argument via qualitative case studies. The authors assess the impact of exposure to information about fossil fuel divestment on public opinion through the use of national survey experiments in three major greenhouse gas emitters: the U.S., India, and South Africa.

Journal Article - Science and Engineering Ethics

On Effectiveness and Legitimacy of 'Shaming' as a Strategy for Combatting Climate Change

| Forthcoming

While states have agreed to substantial reduction of emissions in the Paris Agreement, the success of the Agreement strongly depends on the cooperation of large Multinational Corporations. Short of legal obligations, the authors discuss the effectiveness and moral legitimacy of voluntary approaches based on naming and shaming. They argue that effectiveness and legitimacy are closely tied together; as voluntary approaches are the only alternative to legally imposed duties, they are most morally defensible particularly if they would be the most effective in reducing the harmful greenhouse gases

U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-7th, carries a copy of the House health care bill inside the <em>Richmond Times-Dispatch</em> in Richmond, Va. on Sep. 21, 2009 before the Public Square on health care reform, sponsored by the newspaper.

AP Photo

Magazine Article - Democracy: A Journal of Ideas

Three Fights We Can Win

| Spring 2011

Mammoth, "comprehensive" change is so murky and fraught with uncertainty that the public is predisposed to turn against it. It's difficult for a member of Congress to walk into a town-hall meeting and persuade people that there really aren't death panels in the health-care bill while brandishing a 1,000-page monstrosity in front of skeptical voters. Complexity breeds suspicion in a country where 40 percent of the population is ideologically opposed to government, and 70 to 80 percent at any given time in recent history don't trust it.

Journal Article - Innovations

Enabling a Nuclear Revival—and Managing Its Risks

| Fall 2009

Matthew Bunn and Martin B. Malin examine the conditions needed for nuclear energy to grow on a scale large enough for it to be a significant part of the world’s response to climate change. They consider the safety, security, nonproliferation, and waste management risks associated with such growth and recommend approaches to managing these risks. Bunn and Malin argue that although technological solutions may contribute to nuclear expansion in the coming decades, in the near term, creating the conditions for large-scale nuclear energy growth will require major international institutional innovation.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, left, and Israeli-U.S. entrepreneur, Shai Agassi, founder a project developing electric cars and a network of charging points, next to an electric car and its charging station in Jerusalem, Oct. 22, 2009.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Innovations

Energy for Change: Introduction to the Special Issue on Energy & Climate Change

| Fall 2009

"Without energy, there is no economy. Without climate, there is no environment. Without economy and environment, there is no material well-being, no civil society, no personal or national security. The overriding problem associated with these realities, of course, is that the world has long been getting most of the energy its economies need from fossil fuels whose emissions are imperiling the climate that its environment needs."

Journal Article - Survival

Recovering American Leadership

| February-March 2008

"Leaders are those who help groups create and achieve shared goals. Traditionally, the leaders in international politics have been the most powerful states. However, while hard military power counts for more in the context of international politics than it does in democratic domestic politics, even in international relations conquest, or pure coercion, is not leadership, but mere dictation. Disproportionate power, sometimes called 'hegemony', has been associated with leadership, but appeals to values and ideology also matter, even for a hegemon...."

Magazine Article - Harvard Magazine

Toward a Liberal Realist Foreign Policy: A Memo for the Next President

| March-April 2008

"On January 20, you will inherit a legacy of trouble: Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, North Korea for starters. Failure to manage any one of them could mire your presidency and sap your political support—and threaten the country’s future. At the same time, you must not let these inherited problems define your foreign policy. You need to put them in a larger context and create your own vision of how Americans should deal with the world."

teaser image

Journal Article - Science & Global Security

Using Commercial Imaging Satellites to Detect the Operation of Plutonium-Production Reactors and Gaseous-Diffusion Plants?

| September 2000

The operation of dedicated plutonium-production reactors and large gaseous-diffusion uranium-enrichment plants (GDPs), can be detected remotely using commercial observation-satellite imagery. Declassified Corona imagery is used to demonstrate that the new generation of commercial observation satellites with 1-meter spatial resolution will be able to detect vapor plumes inside and downwind from large operating natural-draft cooling towers. Low-resolution Landsat-5 thermal infrared images have been shown by other authors to be able to detect warm water discharges from reactors into lakes, rivers, etc. Here, the same systems are shown to be able detect the elevated temperature of the roofs of large operating GDPs. Commercial-satellite observations could therefore play an important role in increasing confidence in declarations that plutonium-production reactors and GDPs have been shut down as a result of a fissile material-production moratorium or Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty.

teaser image

Journal Article - Disarmament Forum

Building Confidence in a Fissile Materials Production Moratorium Using Commercial Satellite Imagery

| Aug. 01, 2000

 

One key building block in a comprehensive strategy to contain and eliminate nuclear weapons is the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), which would ban the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear weapons. However, negotiations on this treaty have been at an impasse in Geneva since 1993. Since realistically a FMCT will probably not come into force for some years, a moratorium on the production of fissile material for weapons should be encouraged in order to capture as many of the benefits of an FMCT in the interim.