The role that private actors play in accelerating or preventing progressive climate policy and true decarbonization is a core research interest of global environmental politics. Yet scholars have struggled to measure the political behavior of multinational firms due to lack of transparency about their activities and inconsistency in reporting requirements across jurisdictions. In this research note, we present a new data source—firms’ earnings calls—that scholars might use to better understand the political behavior of major multinational polluters. To illustrate the value of earnings calls as a data source, we construct an original data set of all earnings calls made between 2005 and 2019 by major oil and gas firms. We then code these transcripts, demonstrating that although firms can be classified as more or less pro-climate, there is little evidence of the industry’s public acceptance of decarbonization. These unique data could permit researchers to explore important questions about climate politics, the evolution of private governance, and the relationship between policy and firms’ political behavior. Moreover, we suggest extensions of our approach, including other multinational industries that are amenable to this type of analysis.

Scholars typically model the politics of global public goods or common pool resources as difficult collective action problems. Theories of international organization aim to explain how institutions can promote cooperation by solving the free rider problem. Based on an analysis of a quintessential global collective action problem—international climate mitigation—this article challenges both this diagnosis of the problem and the concomitant institutional remedies. Important elements of climate mitigation exhibit three key features that depart from the canonical model: joint goods, preference heterogeneity, and increasing returns. The presence of these features creates the possibility for “catalytic cooperation.” Under such conditions, the chief barrier to cooperation is not the threat of free riding but the lack of incentive to act in the first place. States and other actors seek to solve this problem by creating “catalytic institutions” that work to shift actors’ preferences and strategies toward cooperative outcomes over time. While catalytic institutions can be seen in many areas of world politics, the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change has put this logic of cooperation at its core, raising the possibility that similar catalytic institutions may facilitate cooperation in other areas of world politics characterized by analogous problem structures.

The 2015 Paris Climate summit consolidated the transition of the climate regime from a “regulatory” to a “catalytic and facilitative” model. A key component of this shift was the intergovernmental regime’s embrace of climate action by sub- and nonstate actors. Although a groundswell of transnational climate action has been growing over time, the Paris Agreement seeks to bring this phenomenon into the heart of the new climate regime. This forum article describes that transition and considers its implications.