Michael Vandenbergh is professor and David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where he serves as director of the Climate Change Research Network and codirector of the Energy, Environment and Land Use Program.
Vandenbergh’s research draws on teams of social scientists to understand and bypass polarization and other barriers to climate change mitigation. His work has developed the concept of private environmental governance and identified opportunities to achieve major emissions reductions from the corporate and household sectors. His book with physicist Jonathan M. Gilligan, Beyond Politics: The Private Governance Response to Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, 2017), was identified as one of the top books in environmental law and policy of the past 50 years. Vandenbergh has won teaching awards at Vanderbilt University and at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as Environmental Protection Agency chief of staff and as a partner at Latham & Watkins. He is a member of American College of Environmental Lawyers and the Board on Environmental Change and Society of the National Academies.
Vandenbergh, along with Gilligan, also authored “Beyond Gridlock," winner of the 2017 Morrison Prize as the “most impactful sustainability-related legal academic article published in North America during the previous year.” His 2013 article, “Private Environmental Governance,” was selected for inclusion in 2014–2015 Land Use and Environmental Law Review as one of the six best environmental law articles of the year. Vandenbergh coauthored the article “Household Actions Can Provide a Behavioral Wedge to Rapidly Reduce U.S. Carbon Emissions” as well.
His project, “Bypassing Polarization: Engaging Conservatives to Achieve Climate Justice,” considers climate change as a “code red” problem. Democratic design in the U.S. requires support from moderates and conservatives — not just from progressives and liberals — to achieve major new climate actions. The project draws on insights from social psychology, law, and policy to bypass polarization and develop large-scale interventions to engage moderates and conservatives through a book, conference, and collaboration with a leading organization that reaches moderate-conservatives and conservatives.
Twitter:
@michaelvandenb6
