scholarly journals Tree planting has the potential to increase carbon sequestration capacity of forests in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (40) ◽  
pp. 24649-24651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant M. Domke ◽  
Sonja N. Oswalt ◽  
Brian F. Walters ◽  
Randall S. Morin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Carbon Sequestration ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Forest Inventory ◽  
Wood Products ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Change Mitigation

Several initiatives have been proposed to mitigate forest loss and climate change through tree planting as well as maintaining and restoring forest ecosystems. These initiatives have both inspired and been inspired by global assessments of tree and forest attributes and their contributions to offset carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Here we use data from more than 130,000 national forest inventory plots to describe the contribution of nearly 1.4 trillion trees on forestland in the conterminous United States to mitigate CO2 emissions and the potential to enhance carbon sequestration capacity on productive forestland. Forests and harvested wood products uptake the equivalent of more than 14% of economy-wide CO2 emissions in the United States annually, and there is potential to increase carbon sequestration capacity by ∼20% (−187.7 million metric tons [MMT] CO2 ±9.1 MMT CO2) per year by fully stocking all understocked productive forestland. However, there are challenges and opportunities to be considered with tree planting. We provide context and estimates from the United States to inform assessments of the potential contributions of forests in climate change mitigation associated with tree planting.

scholarly journals Business Case for Energy Efficiency in Support of Climate Change Mitigation, Economic and Societal Benefits in the United States

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Bojda ◽  
Jing Ke ◽  
Stephane de la Rue du Can ◽  
Virginie E. Letschert ◽  
James E. McMahon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Business Case ◽  
The United States ◽  
Societal Benefits ◽  
Change Mitigation

scholarly journals Determinants of Corporate Climate Change Mitigation Targets in Major United States Companies

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haoyu Yin ◽  
Fei Mo ◽  
Derek Wang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Firm Growth ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emission ◽  
Absolute Intensity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Corporate Managers ◽  
Change Mitigation

Setting greenhouse gas emission target is a critical step to meet the challenge of climate change. While the debate on global and national carbon emission targets has dominated every major climate change conference, little is known about how the firms set emission targets. Using a dataset on S&P 500 companies in the United States, we investigate the determinants of firm-level climate change mitigation targets, including target adoption and target metric (intensity target vs. absolute target). We find that companies with larger size, higher growth, better innovation, weaker capital constraint, and higher government pressure are more likely to establish emission targets. Further, firm growth has a negative (positive) and significant association with the use of absolute (intensity) target. This may be due to the fact that intensity target can better accommodate growth than absolute target. Policymakers and corporate managers may resort to those determinant factors in designing climate change policies to induce desirable firm-level target-setting behaviors.

The Polluter Pays Principle as an Instrument of Municipal and Global Environmental Governance in Climate Change Mitigation Law: Lessons from China, India, and the United States

Climate Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-93
Author(s):  
Paul A. Barresi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Change Mitigation

The disparate fates of the polluter pays principle (ppp) as an instrument of municipal environmental governance in the environmental law of China, India, and the United States illustrate how institutions and culture can shape its use. In China, essential elements of the Chinese legal tradition and an institutionalized devolution of power from the central government to local governments essentially neutralized the Chinese variant of the ppp in one important context by mobilizing certain culturally defined behavioural norms at the local level. In India, the Supreme Court has behaved in accordance with the socially revolutionary role intended for it by the framers of India’s Constitution by recognizing a maximalist conception of the ppp as part of Indian law, although other features of India’s unique legal culture and institutions have reduced the impact of this development. In the United States, the institutionalized fragmentation of the law-making process within the Federal Government has undermined even the implicit implementation of the ppp, to which US environmental statutes do not refer. The implications of these developments for the ppp as an instrument of municipal but also global environmental governance in climate change mitigation law flow less from the nominal status of the ppp in the laws of China, India, and the United States than from the unique institutional and cultural conditions that prevail there. The result is a case study in how institutions and culture can transform the implementation of a principle of environmental governance that at first glance might seem to be a simple exercise in economic rationality into a different exercise that is not simple at all.

Coaxing Climate Policy Leadership

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Vanderheiden
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
International Policy ◽  
Cooperative Scheme ◽  
Change Mitigation ◽  
The U.S

The United States and China have recently been called upon to exercise more leadership in developing an effective international policy response to climate change, but without giving attention to either the risks inherent in taking on such a role or the mechanism by which leading can mobilize others to act in response. Here, I understand leadership as action by a sufficiently powerful actor in a cooperative scheme that is capable of triggering reciprocal actions by followers on behalf of that scheme, and argue that such leadership can be coaxed by potential followers through pledges of reciprocal action that are made conditional upon prior action undertaken by a leader. In the context of the current international impasse over post-Kyoto climate change mitigation commitments, I identify means by which leadership by the U.S. or China might be induced by such conditional pledges, potentially allowing some obstacles to international collective action on climate change mitigation to be overcome.

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