Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for Futurity, Sonia Fernandez explores the effects of political lobbying on the potential of real policy enactment to fight climate change. 

· How does lobbying decrease the chances of political climate action? What can be done to bridge the disconnect between what is needed for climate change and what is already being done?

· Here's more on this topic and the role of human behavior in climate change and action.

Disturbingly few domestic climate change policies have been enacted around the world so far, report researchers. That’s despite all the evidence that the benefits of reducing greenhouse gases outweigh the costs of regulation.

“There is a striking disconnect between what is needed to avoid dangerous climate change and what has actually been done to date,” says Kyle Meng, a professor in the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and in the economics department. One common explanation for that disconnect, he adds, is that jurisdictions are reluctant to adopt climate policy when they can simply benefit from the reductions implemented by other jurisdictions.

However, say Meng and coauthor Ashwin Rode, a former UC Santa Barbara PhD student now at the University of Chicago, the political process that leads to climate change regulation can be a barrier to its own legislation.

Read the full article about how lobbying affects climate action by Sonia Fernandez at Futurity.