Earth Commons X Mortara

Mortara received an ECo Impact Award from the Earth Commons, Georgetown University’s Institute for Environment & Sustainability. The ECo Impact Awards provide seed funding for Georgetown faculty across schools and campuses to support environmental and sustainability projects. These awards aim to foster new collaborations, interdisciplinary research, and actionable initiatives, making Georgetown a greener and more vibrant institution.

Investigators: Tim Bartley, Erik Voeten, Kathleen McNamara, Abraham Newman

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Project: The Political Economy of Decarbonization: Innovation, Contestation, and Backlash

Efforts to mitigate climate change have heated up in the past five years. Green industrial policy measures, the expansion of carbon markets, and attempts to develop critical minerals all promise to spur crucial innovation. But they are also highly contentious, both within countries and in international arenas. Decarbonization policies have spurred populist backlashes in some countries, and they have become intertwined with an increasingly contentious—and perhaps crumbling—global trade regime. This project will begin to answer some fundamental questions about climate change as an axis of social and political conflict. For instance, are climate policy projects generating new cleavages and coalitions, or are they mostly amplifying pre-existing patterns? Do existing theories of domestic politics, social movements, and international regimes provide sufficient explanations, or are new frameworks needed to explain the political economy of decarbonization? We will collect preliminary data on political contention surrounding climate mitigation policies (including green industrial policy, carbon pricing and border adjustments, anti-deforestation measures, and critical minerals) and convene a series of scholarly workshops at Georgetown. Our project will also provide an institution-wide subscription to the Carbon Pulse news site, enabling all Georgetown faculty, staff, and students to more closely follow developments in climate policy around the world.