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How did New York City's climate politics change after Hurricane Sandy, and why? Prevailing accounts of extreme weather's impact on climate politics draw on survey data and characterize climate policy in vague terms. However, weather does not do the work of politics; the specifics of climate policy matter. I develop a relational sociological approach focused on mobilized actors, political economy, and event theory. Drawing on interviews and document analysis, I show how senior disaster officials, New York's Mayor Bloomberg and his Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, community groups and Occupy Sandy activists responded to Hurricane Sandy. Actors maintained outlooks and practices consistent with their position in the city's power relations. This selective continuity shifted New York's climate policy from decarbonization-focused tentative cosmopolitanism to adaptation-focused defensive parochialism. I term this convergent prioritization of adaptation a 'fortress of solitude' social logic. Only subsequent events explain New York's 2019 low-carbon legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Climate scientists have developed high-resolution climate models to project local effects of climate change. However, such high-resolution climate information is not widely incorporated into climate change adaptation plans. In this study we analyze high-resolution (1.24x1.24-mile grid) temperature data generated by a climate model for Los Angeles County (CA). The data include projected surface air temperature and the number of extreme heat days (daily maximum temperature exceeding 95 °F) between a baseline period (1981-2000) and a mid-21st-century period (2041-2060). The data assume that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions will continuously increase at the current level and no change in existing built environments. We find significant geographic heterogeneity in terms of climate change effects in Los Angeles County. Also, given the assumptions, we expect inland suburban areas where urban expansion has been occurring to have more severe extreme heat effects than central and coastal areas by mid-century. Takeaway for practice: Planners should engage with climate scientists to access and use high-resolution climate data. The use of high-resolution climate data needs to be mandated in plan-making in the era of climate change. Many regions may have different spatial patterns of extreme heat events and require tailored climate adaptation plans. In Los Angeles County, for example, continuing suburbanization in inland valley areas may need to be discouraged, whereas coastal areas with the least effects may consider denser, inclusive redevelopment strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although substantial attention has focused on efforts by the new Administration to block environmental policies, climate politics have been contentious in the US since well before the election of Donald Trump. In this paper, we extend previous work on empirical examinations of echo chambers in US climate politics using new data collected on the federal climate policy network in summer 2016. We test for the similarity and differences at two points in time in homophily and echo chambers using Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) to compare new findings from 2016 to previous work on data from 2010. We show that echo chambers continue to play a significant role in the network of information exchange among policy elites working on the issue of climate change. In contrast to previous findings where echo chambers centered on a binding international commitment to emission reductions, we find that the pre-existing echo chambers have almost completely disappeared and new structures have formed around one of the main components of the Obama Administration’s national climate policy: the Clean Power Plan. These results provide empirical evidence that science communication and policymaking at the elite level shift in relation to the policy instruments under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the Juliana v U.S. case which involves American climate change policy and is considered the most important environmental case in the country. The violation made by the U.S. federal government to the plaintiffs’ fundamental constitutional rights to liberty, life, and property by substantially causing or contributing to a dangerous concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is mentioned.

State governments in the United States are well placed to identify opportunities for mitigation and the needs for adaptation to climate change. However, the cost of these efforts can have important implications for budgets that already face pressures from diverse areas such as unfunded pensions and growing health care costs. In this work, the current level of spending on climate-related activities at the state level are evaluated and policy recommendations are developed to improve financial management practices as they relate to climate risk. An examination of state budgets reveals that climate mitigation and adaptation activities represent less than 1% of spending in most states. The data collection highlights the obstacles to collecting accurate spending data and the lack of budgetary and accounting procedures in place. More importantly, the difficulty in benchmarking these activities poses challenges for the analysis of state-level policies as well as planning and modelling future climate-related spending. Other policy contexts, including public pensions and infrastructure, can provide guidance on budgetary and accounting tools that may help states prepare for and more efficiently manage climate-related expenditures. Key policy insights Climate change mitigation and adaptation will require substantial investments across many levels of government on a wide range of activities. Currently, US states are not clearly demarcating climate expenditures, hindering the identification of climate-related budgetary risks. In the absence of guidelines, these longer term fiscal outlays may remain chronically underfunded in favour of more near-term spending priorities. Establishing appropriate financial management and data collection practices is important for more sophisticated cost-effectiveness and policy analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Trump has embarked on an ambitious and far-reaching attempt to reshape American environmental policy. In regard to climate change, water quality, and other areas, his administration's actions constitute an attempt to roll back existing environmental protections and torecalibrateAmericanenvironmentalfederalism.Theseactionslargelyrepresentacontinuationof the practice of presidential reliance on the tools of the administrative presidency that has shaped U.S. environmental policy over the past forty years, although the Trump Administration has employed these tools in an especially aggressive fashion. Because changing public policy through administrative means is a time-consuming process that invites legal challenge, the full implications of these efforts will not be known for several years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Superstorm Sandy hit the northeastern United States in October 2012, knocking out power to 10 million people and highlighting energy and critical infrastructure system vulnerabilities in the face of a changing climate. The increased frequency and intensity of such disruptive events is shifting priorities in electricity system planning around the world, including how multiple stakeholders consider linkages between climate vulnerability and energy. This research links smart grid development with adaptation to changing climates and explores how different stakeholders grapple with system vulnerabilities and climate disruptions. To illustrate this, the in-depth case study assesses post-Sandy discourse to compare how electricity sector stakeholder groups in New York, Massachusetts and Vermont associate energy, smart grid, and climate change. To explore how different energy system stakeholders frame the impacts of Superstorm Sandy on energy system planning, we conducted 22 focus groups with a broad range of organizations representing diverse aspects of the electricity system including utilities, regulatory authorities, research and development agencies, regional transmission organizations, academic research institutions, consumer advocacy and environmental organizations across the three states. We used these data to examine post-Sandy discourse about climate mitigation and climate adaptation, routine system management, and the potential value of “smart grid” for future energy system planning. We found that both New York and Massachusetts stakeholders focused more on climate adaptation than climate mitigation, while stakeholders in Vermont focused more on mitigation. In all three states stakeholder discussions of adaptation focused most heavily on system resilience and reliability, whereas discussions of mitigation focused on demand-side management and demand response followed by alternative energy strategies. These results suggest that extreme weather and climate disruptions will differentially shape discourse around smart grid and energy system change and shift the focus among energy system stakeholders on climate adaptation compared to climate mitigation. This research demonstrates variation between political jurisdictions (states) and energy system stakeholders in energy system planning in the face of new challenges related to an uncertain and rapidly changing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses aspects of the risk awareness and safety culture for environmental health in the U.S. He highlights the effort of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to prevent of minimize climate change through environmental protection. The author examines the contribution of several factors to environmental protection including technological advances, healthy and balanced diet and hygiene.