Book Talk: When Federal Climate Policy Works Benefits, Business, and Politics

Join us for a conversation with David Vogel, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, on his new book, When Federal Climate Policy Works: Benefits, Business, and Politics (MIT Press, 2026), co-authored with Roger Karapin.

When Federal Climate Policy Works challenges the widely held belief that the federal government has been unable to adopt policies that have effectively reduced greenhouse gas emissions The book describes and explains the climate policy accomplishments of the federal government in six policy areas: appliance energy efficiency standards, automotive fuel-economy standards, the promotion of renewable energy, restrictions on chemicals that function as GHGs, and restrictions on methane emissions from landfills and oil and natural gas production. 

What distinguishes these effective policies from the federal government’s better known policy failures? First, they focus on a single sector rather than the entire economy. Second, they are associated with politically popular non-climate benefits; in fact, those benefits were the reason why many of these policies were first adopted during the 1970s, with bi-partisan support and before climate change emerged as a policy concern. Third, they were designed in a way to make them broadly acceptable to the business sector directly affected by them.  Fourth, by not limiting the supply of fossil fuels, they have not directly challenged the interests of the politically powerful fossil fuel industry. 

The book’s analysis offers important lessons for the future of federal climate policies.

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