Political Science for a Changing Planet

Political science has had surprisingly little to say about the most important challenge of our time - global climate change.

Professor Michael L. Ross of the University of California Los Angeles argue that to make a meaningful contribution to this issue political scientists should develop better ways to measure, model, and understand the policies that affect greenhouse gas emissions. He will explain why this is important, how it differs from other approaches, and use an original dataset on monthly fossil fuel taxes and subsidies in 157 countries to illustrate how it might be done.