Climate Rationality

Jason Scott Johnston is the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation Professor of Law and Director of the Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Virginia Law School. He has been awarded a Bosch Fellowship at the American Academy of Berlin and a Simon Fellowship at the Property and Environment Research Center. Johnston has also served on the Board of the American Law and Economics Association, the Searle Civil Justice Institute, and the Social Science Grant Review Panel of the National Science Foundation. His research has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization and the Yale Law Journal, and he is the editor of the Institutions and Incentives in Regulatory Science (2012).

Johnston unpacks and critiques the legal, economic, and scientific basis for precautionary climate policies pursued in the United States.

1. Introduction; Part I. The Costs of Precautionary Policy: 2. The endangerment game; 3. The precautionary principle: what it does and doesn't do; 4. EPA's newfound role in regulating automobile mileage; 5. 'It will bankrupt you' - using environmental regulations to end the mining and use of coal in the United States; 6. The clean power plan, the rule of law, and EPA's takeover of state and regional electricity systems; 7. Renewable power and the reliabilty and cost of electricity; 8. Renewable power subsidies and mandates: harming today's environment and punishing the poor; 9. Spinning the tort liability roulette wheel; Part II. The Other Side of the Story: the Structure, Process and Output of Climate Science Assessment Institutions and the Science they Neglect: 10. But is it true? The case for taking a critical look at the economic and physical science underlying estimates of the benefits of ghg emission reduction; 11. 'Born in politics': the rise of the climate change science production and assessment complex; 12. Settling science and propagandizing for action: the structure, process and products of the climate science production complex; 13. Recent observed climate change in longer term perspective; 14. Beyond co2: causes of regional climate change that the IPCC has ignored; 15. Projecting future climate from computer models and far, far distant earth history; 16. The precautionary social cost of carbon; Part III. Toward Rational Climate Policy: 17. Adapt and prosper; 18. The surprising sahel; 19. Selected policy implications.