This policy brief focuses on action in climate change policy.

It argues that effective climate change responses have been impeded by focusing too much on the collective-action nature of the problem, relative to other obstacles – delayed benefits and concentrated opponents – that are more important and imply different priorities for action.

The author argues that policy should aim to overcome the problem of delayed benefits, by linking emission cuts with actions that bring immediate benefits, enacting reforms that are sticky or self-reinforcing over time, and framing the issue in appropriately long historical terms.
The paper concludes that policy should aim to overcome concentrated opposition, by advancing reform efforts first in jurisdictions where fossil interests have less sway and by designing policies to split fossil interests and weaken their political control.

[Taken from source]