Posts | Jonathan Gilligan

Are Cops on the Science Beat?

1 October 2017, by Jonathan Gilligan science police, censorship, Keith Kloor, Roger Pielke, Jr

It is important to keep outright falsehoods out of journalism and the scientific literature. Creationism and fear-mongering about vaccine safety do not deserve equal time with biological and medical science. But in matters of regulatory science, where there is not a clear consensus on methods and where it is impossible to strictly separate factual judgments from political ones, the literature on science in policy offers strong support for keeping discourse open and free, even though it may become heated. But it also calls on individual scientists to consider how the results of their research and their public statements about it are likely to be used.

Government action isn't enough for climate change: The private sector can cut billions of tons of carbon

21 June 2017, by Jonathan Gilligan and Michael Vandenbergh climate change, climate policy, private governance, Paris agreement, greenhouse gases, green business, Michael Vandenbergh, The Conversation, behavioral wedge

With President Trump’s announcement to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, many other countries around the world—and cities and states within the U.S.—are stepping up their commitments to address climate change.

But one thing is clear: Even if all the remaining participating nations do their part, governments alone can’t substantially reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change.

Morrison Prize

9 February 2017 Michael Vandenbergh, Beyond Politics, Beyond Gridlock, private governance, behavioral wedge

The Program on Law and Sustainability at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University has awarded the Morrison Prize to Mike Vandenbergh and me for our article “Beyond Gridlock,” 40 Columbia Environmental Law Journal, 217–303 (2015). The Morrison prize recognizes the paper published in the previous year in North America that is “likely to have the most significant positive long-term impact on the advancement of the environmental sustainability movement.”