The article explores the transition from regulation to governance in the climate change context. It argues that the study of regulation, and particularly that of climate change regulation, should go beyond traditional state and transnational regulation to encompass hybrid regulatory forms which blur the distinction between the public and the private, the mandatory and the voluntary and destabilize the boundaries between the global, the national and the sub-national. The article analyzes the particular problematics of climate change which make regulating it particularly difficult and explores creative forms of soft regulation that environmental groups, NGOs and international NGOs have developed in order to bypass the obstacles posed by traditional state regulation. Such novel regulatory mechanisms include certification programs, voluntary cap and trade initiatives and corporate codes of conduct. It concludes by reflecting on the crucial question whether the plethora of new governance mechanisms is at all apt to address the problem of climate change.