Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, School of Public and Environmental Affairs/University Graduate School, 2020Climate change is a politically fraught policy domain. It is beset by complications including a long-term time frame, increasing severity, time-inconsistent preferences resulting in irrational economic discounting, low incentives for responsible parties to act, and more. Moreover, in the United States political polarization means resistance to climate policy action has been high for many years, for reasons unrelated to the substantive merits of actual or potential policy proposals. Most scholarship on climate policy focuses on traditional metrics, notably economic efficiency and/or scientific effectiveness. Political viability—the prospect of actually being enacted—is too often mentioned only in passing. No matter how well-designed, though, a policy that falls short of real-world political viability can be neither effective nor efficient. The purpose of this research is to cast a more politically attuned eye on climate policy options—to map a course forward using political viability as a compass. A few climate policy options—specifically, those often categorized as “geoengineering”—elicit less political resistance from the general public. However, public opinion alone is neither necessary nor sufficient for policy formation, as increasing economic inequality has driven representational inequality as well. This dissertation analyzes the effects of both polarization and economic status as filters for the political viability of climate policy options in general, and geoengineering in particular. Part One investigates the process of state-level adoption of innovative climate policies. The approach is sequentially quantitative, then qualitative. It first updates a published event history analysis of the factors influencing past policy adoptions, then examines the experiences of state-level policy actors using semi-structured interviews. Part Two investigates the attitudes of individual economic elites, gathering data through a survey experiment and analyzing it to determine elites’ degree of openness to climate policy interventions in a geoengineering context. Part Three investigates the behavior of economically elite organized interests, assessing their revealed preferences on geoengineering initiatives. The approach is mixed-method, employing qualitative comparative analysis to interpret relevant case studies and underlying conditions. As a whole, this dissertation charts a course that skirts conventional political obstacles, identifying the characteristics of climate policies that might get off the drawing board.