In February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) promulgated climate-resilient development (CRD), which combines adaptation and mitigation as a principal strategy for managing climate change. This Article discusses local land use law in the context of CRD and provides a methodology for identifying and evaluating strategies that address the global climate crisis at the local level. Local governments have the power to integrate land use strategies that include CRD components, and the IPCC identified these strategies as effective tools for implementing CRD. This Article provides a framework that defines the evolving field of CRD and facilitates its implementation.

Economic theory suggests that pollution tax and cap-and-trade regulations can be functionally equivalent. Environmentalists tend to prefer the firm emissions cap in cap-and-trade programs, while economists and business interests tend to prefer the price certainty of tax programs. But both may be overlooking behavioral distinctions between the two policies. Using a novel randomized case experiment, this Article tests whether the framing changes negotiated policies. It finds that negotiators reach more environmentally protective policies under the tax rather than the cap-and-trade frame, a finding which comports with real-world observations that carbon taxes tend to be higher than permit prices in carbon cap-and-trade programs. The findings have two important implications. First, negotiators treat pollution tax and cap-and-trade regulations differently—they are not psychologically equivalent. Second, contrary to the general environmentalist preference for cap and trade, taxes may generate greater environmental protection.