As climate change impacts intensify, climate protests are gaining momentum. When do state authorities perceive these protests as threatening and repress them? Despite growing concern about activist safety, cross-national observational evidence on climate protests and repression is limited. We argue that authorities generally view climate protests as innocuous but encounter a “leadership trap” when protests persist during periods of stronger climate performance: As satisfying activists’ demands for further action becomes increasingly costly, while dismissing them risks undermining the government’s credibility, repression becomes relatively attractive. Using Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), we identify climate protests worldwide from 2020 through March 2025 and focus our analysis on 62 major-emitting countries, where the vast majority of events were observed. We find that, on average, climate protests are repressed less frequently than other protests. This difference, however, reflects contingent characteristics of climate protest participants and tactics, rather than an inherently unthreatening nature of climate-related claims-making. Instead, the relationship between such claims-making and repression depends on national climate performance. Consistent with our leadership trap hypothesis, authorities become more likely to repress climate protests as they make costly investments in mitigation during periods of higher climate performance, accounting for event-level characteristics and national and temporal context. There is thus a trade-off for climate activists: as governments embrace climate action, they become less tolerant of dissent on the issue. 

Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) are meritless cases filed by powerful actors seeking to silence their critics through costly, protracted litigation. As climate change litigation (CCL) against corporations has surged since the Paris Agreement, so too has the threat of retaliatory SLAPPs against climate activists. In the US, activists must weigh the threat of being entangled in a resource-depleting SLAPP in decisions around whether, and where, to file strategic CCL. SLAPPs so burden the courts and contravene democratic values that 35 states and the District of Columbia have laws attempting to restrict them. How does spatial and temporal variation in legal protections afforded by state anti-SLAPP laws affect activists’ willingness to sue corporations over climate change? Analyzing CCL caseloads in American courts between 2015 and 2024, I find jurisdictions with anti-SLAPP protections attract corporate CCL, indicating that legislative action on free speech helps shape the development of climate law.

The carbon neutrality goal has emerged as the most popular way for institutions of all types and scales to frame policy responses to climate change. The popularity of carbon neutrality stems in large part from its flexibility as a net-zero emissions target: rather than requiring the complete elimination of an institution’s own greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it allows for counterbalancing one’s own GHG emissions with the elimination (or capture) of emissions elsewhere (“nonlocal action”). However, GHG accounting is often complex and opaque, it is difficult to verify that an action reduces GHGs relative to business as usual (i.e., is additional), and nonlocal action may be viewed unfavorably on political or ethical grounds. There is ongoing debate over the merits of carbon neutrality goals and the means to achieve them. We highlight key elements of the promise and peril of carbon neutrality goals. We begin by describing two desirable features of nonlocal action: the potential for reducing (abating) emissions at a lower cost (the traditional economic logic) and the potential for a preferred distribution of outcomes. Next, we describe the primary concerns with nonlocal action—namely, issues with additionality and ethics. Finally, we discuss several implications for carbon neutrality planning.

Three years after Brexit, long-term economic, social, and environmental implications for the UK remain uncertain and subject to political debate. In this paper, I draw on a set of contemporaneous discussions during the Brexit negotiations with academic experts in British environmental policy and law to argue, narrowly, that withdrawal from the EU presents a transformative opportunity for the UK to redesign its agriculture policy to better manage diffuse water pollution. First, I introduce long-standing monitoring and enforcement challenges under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, and their impacts on UK water quality. I then propose a roadmap for regulating the British agriculture sector given its unique characteristics including farm size and stewardship values. I argue that favorable lobbying dynamics after Brexit create an opportune moment for policy reform. Finally, I offer recommendations toward a set of policy tools that center the polluter-pays principle, offer local adaptability, enable farmer participation in stewardship, and align with long-term ecological goals.

The recent COP26 climate summit in Glasgow took place amid intensifying scrutiny on global leaders for collective failures of ambition and resolve in mobilizing climate action. Despite the daunting path ahead, recent landmark UN Human Rights Council (HRC) resolutions recognizing the right to a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment and appointing a Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change give reason for cautious optimism at this juncture. As illustrated throughout the Health and Human Rights Journal special section on the climate crisis, rights-based frameworks are among the most effective and promising “swords” for climate litigation, policy-making, and advocacy. Building on the energy of COP26, we must now fully leverage these tools in pursuit of climate justice at all levels. 

We discuss how recent trends in climate change and energy litigation and arbitration can support implementation of the Paris Agreement, with an emphasis on the Article 2.1(c) goal of "making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development."  

Carbon pricing mechanisms overwhelmingly endorsed by economists across the ideological spectrum have been, with a few notable exceptions, resoundingly rejected by legislators and political constituencies. Assessment of partisan, policy design, public opinion, and interest group pressures counteracting momentum for carbon pricing is critical in the deployment of a politically durable climate change agenda. I assess these dimensions through the re-examination of three case studies initially discussed by Barry G. Rabe in “Can We Price Carbon?” (MIT Press, 2018)—British Columbia’s carbon tax, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the northeast United States, and California’s cap-and-trade system for GHGs. Drawing out lessons from these case studies and applying political theories to develop Rabe’s analysis, I comment on the feasibility of a U.S. federal carbon tax.