Carbon pricing in the form of carbon taxes or cap-and-trade has been broadly embraced by economists for decades as the best policy option for mitigating the threat of climate change. But carbon pricing has struggled politically in the United States and abroad. It remains among the least likely climate policies to be adopted and among the most likely to be reversed if approved.

This lecture by Professor Barry Rabe will examine political challenges across each stage of the policy life-cycle, considering not only the impediments to carbon pricing, but also key design elements of the more successful and durable policies to date.

Professor Barry Rabe, J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, is a political scientist trained at the University of Chicago. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He is also the author of five books, including “Can We Price Carbon?” (MIT Press, 2018) and is the recipient of four research awards from the American Political Science Association.

This is lecture #2 in five-part series "Facing the Future: The Challenge of Climate Change" which explores how climate change is impacting every corner of our earth, and every aspect of our lives.