Press Release & News
Morrison Prize Winners Highlights the Importance of Private Action in Battling Climate Change
Feb. 10, 2017, PHOENIX – Research examining the role that private governance can play in bypassing government gridlock on climate change has earned a pair of Vanderbilt University professors this year’s $10,000 Morrison Prize, which recognizes the most impactful sustainability-related legal academic article published in North America during the previous year.
Michael P. Vandenbergh and Jonathan Gilligan’s winning paper, Beyond Gridlock, was published in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law and will be presented at the Third Annual Sustainability Conference of American Legal Educators in May at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.
According to Vandenbergh and Gilligan, their winning article “demonstrates how a private governance wedge of emissions reductions can be achieved by expanding current corporate and household private governance initiatives and by launching new initiatives that address climate beliefs, motivations, and behavior.”
“Beyond Gridlock is the culmination of about ten years of work together in which we have sought to call greater attention to the obstacles to government action on climate change at the national and international scales, and to the largely neglected potential of actions by the private sector — businesses, other private organizations, and private citizens — to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even when governments fail to act,” Vandenbergh said.
Gilligan added, “After last fall’s election, we face the prospect that the U.S. federal government will withdraw from most efforts to address climate change. We believe that Beyond Gridlock is more important than ever and we are very grateful for the Morrison Prize for recognizing this work and calling attention to it at this moment.”
The Morrison Prize is administered through the Program on Law and Sustainability at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. It is named after its funder, Richard N. Morrison, co-founder of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at ASU.
“ASU’s Program on Law and Sustainability is extremely fortunate that Richard Morrison has agreed to make this contest possible through his generous support,” said Troy Rule, faculty director of ASU Law’s Program of Law and Sustainability. “The Morrison Prize is drawing increased attention to sustainability-oriented legal academic research throughout the United States. This research plays a valuable role as federal, state, and local policymakers seek to integrate new sustainability technologies into their economies.”
The Morrison Prize is open to full-time law professors who have published environmental sustainability-related papers in printed U.S. or Canadian legal academic journals during the contest period. All eligible papers entered into the prize contest undergo independent review and scoring by a diverse group of full-time law professors who teach in environmental sustainability-related areas at four different accredited North American law schools.
Vandenbergh and Gilligan will collect their prize winnings at ASU’s Sustainability Conference on May 12, 2017, which will feature presentations by 50 law professors from throughout North America on their current academic legal research related to environmental sustainability.
“In three short years, the Sustainability Conference has emerged as an important contributing force on the legal and policy fronts of the environmental sustainability movement. Our selection process for presenting at the conference has become more competitive each year, and this increasing competition has elevated the quality of the conference content and the selectivity of our presenter list. We couldn’t be more proud of what this conference has already become,” said Rule.
About the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University is one of the country’s preeminent law schools. Ranked No. 25 nationally by U.S. News & World Report, ASU Law is a leading provider of comprehensive and personalized legal education. The law school ranks Top 20 in the nation for job placement and No. 1 in the state for student outcomes. Located in a new, state-of-the-art building in downtown Phoenix, ASU Law is steps away from the legal, political, and economic heart of Arizona. For more information, visit law.asu.edu.
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Press Release
MEDIA RELATIONS * Division of University Relations * 403 Olds Hall * Michigan State University * East Lansing, MI 48824-1047
Contact: Thomas Dietz, Sociology: (517) 353-8763, tdietz@msu.edu; or Mark Fellows, University Relations: (517) 884-0166, mark.fellows@ur.msu.edu
May 31, 2016
The Obama Administration’s aggressive climate change plan is failing to answer a critical question: Why do people do what they do? So say social scientists who are asking for a role in the effort to address global warming. David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law, Michael Vandenbergh, who also directs the Vanderbilt Climate Change Research Network is quoted.
Social scientists demand wider role in policymaking.
Jan. 22, 2015
The Washington Post notes that the US Marine Corps “is tapping into one of the hottest trends in academic energy research: looking to use psychology and the behavioral sciences to find ways of saving energy by changing people — their habits, routines, practices and preconceptions.”
The next energy revolution won’t be in wind or solar. It will be in our brains.
Dec. 29, 2014 and Jan. 6, 2015
Two Washington Post stories cite our work on why people idle their cars too much and what the environmental consequences are.
The biggest winter energy myth: That you need to idle your car before driving
This is why people still think they should idle their cars in winter
Oct. 26, 2009
Simple measures can yield big greenhouse gas cuts, Michigan State scientist says
EAST LANSING, Mich. — New technologies and policies that save energy, remove atmospheric carbon and limit greenhouse gas emissions are needed to fight global climate change — but face daunting technological, economic and political hurdles, a Michigan State University scientist said.
The good news: Basic actions taken by everyday people can yield fast savings at low cost, according to MSU Professor Thomas Dietz and colleagues.
Cutting consumer energy waste is a good place to start, said Dietz, a professor of sociology and environmental science and policy at MSU. Household energy consumption accounts for 38 percent of carbon emissions in the United States and 8 percent of world emissions, he said.
Activities such as home weatherization, routine vehicle maintenance and opting for the clothesline instead of the dryer could cut total U.S. carbon emissions by 5 percent over just five years and 7.4 percent in 10 years, Dietz said. That’s the equivalent of France’s total carbon output, or of total emissions by the U.S. petroleum refining, steel and aluminum industries.
“On the research end of things, we’ve invested mostly in engineering approaches — building better technology,” said Dietz, who is MSU’s assistant vice president for environmental research. “But the best technology we can devise doesn’t do any good if people don’t use it. We can make great progress with the technologies we already have if we pay attention to behavior — how people use the technologies they already have.”
Dietz and collaborators, writing in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, didn’t base their estimates on a best-case consumer behavior scenario. Instead, they used the best available information to calculate how many families could reasonably be expected to take such measures if they were provided information, offered financial assistance and could interact with others doing so.
They excluded potential emissions cuts from emerging technologies and from wholesale lifestyle changes, so their estimates are at the low end of potential greenhouse gas reductions, Dietz said.
“I’ve seen many analyses that make wild assumptions about how hard or how easy it is to get people to change their behavior, without any basis in science,” he said. “Our analysis is based on science. We look at what has been feasible in bringing about changes in energy consumption behavior.”
The conservation measures the researchers analyzed have the added benefit of a “demonstration effect,” Dietz said. That is, when people adopt the changes, their acquaintances are likely to do the same.
“We know from a lot of research that most people, companies and governments are most likely to change behavior when they see their peers change. So someone will weatherize their houses when they see others do it, and governments are most likely to develop policies when they see other governments doing it.”
The researchers’ insights could have implications for the international community as it approaches the United Nations’ December climate talks in Copenhagen.
Dietz’s co-authors are Gerald T. Gardner of the University of Michigan, Dearborn; Jonathan Gilligan and Michael P. Vandenbergh of Vanderbilt University; and Paul C. Stern of the National Research Council.
To learn more about the group’s research, visit https://my.vanderbilt.edu/alexanderhernandez/.
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