Theses and Dissertations

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The "power" of coal: the US Diplomatic Coal Regime under the current global environmental discourse
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Batty, Evan, author; Taylor, Peter, advisor; Mahoney, Pat, committee member; Malin, Stephanie, committee member; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member
Considering the scientific consensus that anthropogenic forces intensify climate change, addressing this "wicked" problem requires international cooperation to mitigate disastrous future global impacts. The increasing rate of international treaties and agreements focused on addressing climate change emphasize sustainable development as the global discourse for the environment. This thesis describes the global discourse, or more specifically a global environmental regulatory regime, as it emerges from the annual meetings of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change parties. Although it has been argued that these Conferences of Parties lack the enforcement mechanisms needed to directly affect the environmental regulations of nation-states, I argue that the international discourse on sustainable development has an indirect effect on state sovereignty, specifically related to domestic energy development and the US coal industry. In an effort to highlight this point, I discuss the alignment of recent attempts at environmental regulation in the United States related to the coal industry to the global environmental discourse.