Search

Recent research suggests that public support for climate action can be increased by bundling environmental policy with social and economic programs – the Green New Deal being one of the most widely known iterations of this strategy. Yet, party cue theory suggests that public support for the policy will be shaped by the strong Democratic associations of the proposal. In a preregistered survey experiment conducted among 1,203 residents of the rural western United States, I find strong evidence that the phrase 'the Green New Deal' functions as a partisan cue, lowering support for a bundled climate policy among rural residents by 9.1 percentage points. This depressive effect is robust even when framing around region-specific climate impacts is added to the survey question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While existing literature points to a number of factors that shape subnational support for climate policy, the extant scholarship has struggled to illustrate a clear and convincing explanation for subnational support of climate policy efforts and whether that support is meaningful. By looking to the United States, where subnational actors have an important role in environmental policy development and implementation, we find that legislators' ideology and membership in the minority party determines sponsorship of climate bills. Specifically, liberal legislators with the fewest opportunities to signal efficacy to their constituents are the most likely to support subnational climate change policy efforts. Given that the individuals most likely to support climate policy efforts are those without capacity, many support efforts may be more symbolic than substantive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has now been 12 months since Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States, a man who as a candidate for the job called the scientific evidence for climate change “a hoax,” vowed to deregulate the American economy from what he considered to be onerous oversight, and bring back jobs that he claimed were lost as a result of the effort to combat the rise in global atmospheric temperatures. So, now is a good time to examine the president’s words and deeds regarding climate change – a sort of first-year job performance review or report card. What has he been able to accomplish? Has he laid a foundation for a successful agenda? And what are the most significant challenges to his energy and climate policy objectives? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Farm animal welfare is becoming a subject of politicization strategies. The conflicting policy preferences are pronounced in the United States, with its large and highly intensified livestock sector. The lack of federal farm animal welfare regulations shifted politicization strategies of animal welfare advocates to the state level. By 2019 12 states had already passed legislation to protect animals in food production. This comparative study reveals that policy changes were initiated by new actor constellations entering the agricultural subsystem and were particularly successful when the institutional opportunity of public ballots existed. The role of political parties seems to be limited however. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Trump had a profound, largely adverse impact on environmental and climate policy, both domestically and internationally. In addition to rolling back environmental regulations and related policies, Trump sought to undermine the institutions and core values undergirding environmental and climate protection. This article analyses Trump's environmental tenure and legacy, examining key policies and regulations, but also norms, values and discourse. Drawing on insights from new institutionalism, the article explores three different dimensions of Trump's potential environmental legacy – organisational, policy and ideational. For each it identifies the institutional and discursive factors shaping Trump's impact, its "stickiness" and durability. It then analyses attempts by the Biden Administration and others to counter, reshape or chip away at that potential legacy. Re-visiting and adapting core institutionalist assumptions, the analysis suggests a decisive factor determining Trump's legacy is not his own actions and narrative but rather how – and how successfully – other institutional actors support, spread or counter them. The article finds that while Trump's impact on organisations, regulations and even policies can be diluted (and his legacy diminished), Trump's attack on the norms and trust underpinning environmental action may be more long lasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In the United States (U.S.) wide differences exist in the environmental policies that individual states adopt. To better understand the reason for this variation I examine the conditions that shape the roll call voting behavior of state lawmakers on environmental policy proposals. I examine a variety of potential explanatory factors ranging from individual legislator characteristics (e.g., party, ideology and gender) and constituency-level conditions (e.g., citizen ideology, demographic characteristics and industry employment patterns) to indicators of campaign effort (business and pro-environment campaign contributions). Analyses of 22 states across four legislative sessions demonstrate support for many hypothesized effects. Similar to findings at the national level in the U.S. Congress, political party and ideology are identified as strong predictors of voting, but additional factors also have an influence. For example, the political leanings of district voters and activities of environmental interest groups have substantive effects on legislative voting patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research about the religion and environmental attitudes relationship in the United States has yielded mixed results. Some studies find that religion relates to heightened concern about environmental threats and greater environmental interest whereas others find religion relates to diminished concern and interest. A new perspective that applies ideas from psychology and sociology may help resolve these discrepant findings. It is hypothesized that religious meaning reduces concern with environmental threats since meaning helps people cope with distressing stimuli. This reduction is specific to threats and does not extend to environmental interest. Using the 2016 General Social Survey to test this hypothesis, after controlling for sociodemographic and political variables, structural equation modeling shows Americans who are more religious experience diminished sense of danger from environmental threats, yet exhibit heightened general environmental interest. These findings align with the proposed theory and suggest new ways to promote environmentalism and policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars who study the failure of climate change policy in the United States tend to focus on the mechanics of denial and the coordinated efforts of political operatives, conservative think tanks, and partisan news outlets to cast doubt on what has become overwhelming scientific consensus. In contrast, we address a factor that has been understudied until now – the role of climate change advocacy in the U.S. Congress. Using quantitative text analysis on a corpus of floor speeches published in the Congressional Record between 1996 and 2015, we find notable differences in the language partisans use. Democrats communicate in ways that are message-based, emphasizing the weight of scientific evidence, while Republicans tend towards a softer, cue-based narrative based on anecdotes and storytelling. We end with a discussion of what climate change advocates can hope to accomplish through the 'politics of talk,' especially in an age of heightened polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

False assumptions of stationarity, the idea that natural systems fluctuate within a set and predictable range, are common in conservation policies and public expectations developed since the late 1800s. With examples from United States national forest and water quality policy, we discuss the challenges of nonstationarity for planning and policy. We also raise questions about how resilience is becoming institutionalized. One central problem of managing for resilience is that it does not address the nuances and tradeoffs of managing nonstationary systems, such as keeping some components stable while transforming others. We recommend four paths forward: address root causes of change, increase adaptive capacity, develop science for nonstationarity, and enhance pragmatic flexibility without lowering environmental standards. Dealing effectively with nonstationarity in resource management and science, within our legal and management system of overlapping authorities and capacities, is critical for the intertwined future of people and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on Freudenburg's concept of "privileged accounts" and Hajer's work on the discourse of environmental policy by analyzing the debate over coal-fired power in the United States before and after the 2016 presidential election. A mixed-methods analysis of qualitative interviews with federal energy policy actors shows that anti-regulation narratives were central to the discourse. Results highlight shifts in pro-coal narratives as members and supporters of the coal industry adapted their discursive strategies to align with political and market transitions: whereas respondents used varied narratives during the pre-election period, the core arguments in the post-election period revolved around a more cohesive set of narratives about legal opposition to regulations and the importance of coal as a source of affordable, reliable energy. Additionally, the themes of climate denial and coal jobs—documented as dominant in previous research—were relatively rare and remained peripheral to the central discourse coalitions identified in this study. [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]

Environmental policy in the United States (US) is known for its media-specific approach to problems, and scholars have argued that this is ineffective. To combat these problems, some have argued for a more coordinated, integrated approach to policymaking. With Congressional gridlock prohibiting legislative solutions, the Obama administration offers some examples of a regulatory path to policy integration. Importantly, these efforts do not entail significant organizational remodels, which can be difficult to adopt. Three different 'types' of policy integration from the US Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Land Management are described. These cases serve as a potential roadmap for broader implementation of policy integration within the fragmented US bureaucracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing partisan divide in Congress stalled almost all new federal climate policy in 2011. The divide frustrated efforts to pass a cap-and-trade carbon permitting system, spawned a battle between the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Congress, pushed most substantive climate change policy down to the municipal level and hindered US ability to effectively negotiate an international climate agreement. Amid the federal partisan wrangling, US cities have enacted far-sighted climate policy initiatives, and the growing cost of fossil fuels has stimulated investment in renewable energy, edging the country closer to commercially viable alternatives to fossil fuels. These trends could help provide an alternate route to climate mitigation, even without international treaties or national legislation. But the inevitable shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources would be greatly hastened by federal action to tax carbon dioxide emissions and use the revenue generated to support alternative energy technologies. That action is extremely unlikely to occur unless climate change comes to be seen in the United States as a practical, rather than ideological, issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our understanding of the determinants of public concern about climate change relies heavily on survey research in the United States. But can those findings be generalized to the rest of the world? Analysis of the Pew Research Center's 2015 Global Attitudes Survey shows fairly similar patterns in the English-speaking Western democracies and, to a lesser extent, western Europe, but party identification and political ideology matter much less in most of the globe, and demographic factors have very different impacts. Female, younger, and less religious people tend to worry more about climate change in English-speaking Western democracies. In most of the world, however, concern is only weakly correlated with gender, rises with age and religiosity, and is more strongly correlated with education. A new measure of commitment to democratic values proved to be the most consistent predictor of concern globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Obama's climate change record is assessed by looking at his success in translating policy goals into policy outputs (laws or regulatory action) during his time in office. Obama's campaign speeches are examined to identify specific promises to take action on climate change before proceeding to examine whether, how and with what success he managed to act upon these pledges. Obama is shown to have set out a multi-pronged approach to deal with climate change in his campaign speeches and succeeded in translating many of his goals into policy outputs. This finding contributes to debates about Obama's 'green' credentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scalar tensions of nationalism manifest acutely in agriculture—particularly in the contemporary United States. This is paradoxical because farm policy calls for and enacts nativist governance that undermines the conditions of farming: from labor to water, topsoil, and pollinators, to export markets. At the heart of these scalar contradictions is the fraught, shifting terrain of agrarian populism. The intertwined origin of the U.S. Farm Bill, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and Cooperative Agricultural Extension shows how early twentieth-century fraught agrarian populism drove farm policy but how it also carried a pivotal consensus of recognition about the ecological and economic dangers of overproduction. Drawing on archival research at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Agricultural Library Special Collections, discourse and policy analysis of U.S. Farm Bills, and qualitative research with farmer organizations, this article traces how racialized xenophobia accentuates the hypocrisy of U.S. agriculture's extreme dependency on migrant labor, as heightened borders also reveal their ecological farce in the face of intrinsically transnational climate change, soil erosion, and water constraints. The America First trade agenda decries imports while sidelining the crisis of commodity crop glut and the spatial fix of subsidizing exports as surplus disposal. Yet, even amidst the scalar contradictions of nativist agricultural governance and the fraught farm populism driving it, there existed a kernel of agrarian populism grounded in a collective honest recognition of the ecological, economic, rural, and social crises of overproduction—and that organized against it. This kernel catalyzed the origin of both the Farm Bill and the Farm Bureau but has been subsumed in and through both since. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between racism and environmental deregulation in President Trump's first year in office. We collected data on all environmental events, such as executive actions at the federal level or Trump's tweets. Likewise, we documented racist events targeting indigenous people, people of color, Muslims, and South Asians or Arabs. We found important differences in how these agendas unfolded: Environmental events were more likely to be concrete actions, whereas racist events were more likely to involve "noisy" rhetoric. The differing forms are not associated with particular levels of harm; rather, they suggest the unanticipated and complex ways in which racism intersects with environmental governance under neoliberal, authoritarian regimes. We argue that Trump's "spectacular racism," characterized by sensational visibility, helps obscure the profound deregulation underway. The white nation plays a critical role, as Trump uses spectacular racism to nurture his base, consolidate his power, and implement his agenda. Such an analysis expands how environmental racism is typically conceptualized. Key Words: environmental deregulation, spectacular racism, Trump, white nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Donald Trump's agenda to build a "big" and "beautiful" border wall continues to raise alarms for anyone concerned with social justice and environmental well-being throughout the Mexico-U.S. borderlands. In this article, I examine how the border wall and its surrounding debates raise multiple issues central to political ecological and human geographic scholarship into governance across the organic spectrum. I focus particularly on a comparison of the different kinds of "border thinking" that frame these debates and that provide synergy for those coalitions dedicated to the preservation of diversity throughout the ecological and social landscapes of the Mexico-U.S. borderlands. Key Words: biodiversity, decolonial, feminist, Mexico-U.S. borderlands, neoliberal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's populist moment, climate change response has become anything but "postpolitical." The project to decarbonize energy supplies is generating ongoing political clashes today, including between competing forms of capital/ism. In the United States, rising renewable energy industries in places like California contend with fossil fuel blocs and their regional bases. Such confrontations are sparking populist organizing on the right and left. I argue that critical geography must further consider left populist movements' role in these politics of clean energy transition, grievance, and reparation and openings for collectively advancing more liberatory futures. I survey a wave of coalition-building that has evolved in the United States since the beginnings of the New Economy, allying U.S. environmentalists, organized labor, and, more recently, racial and community justice organizers. This movement became most visible as it built networks around calls for national "green collar" job creation during the late 2000s financial crisis and 2008 presidential campaign. Its organizing shaped noteworthy, if ultimately limited Obama administration programs and continues to influence clean energy rollout in regions such as California, particularly campaigns for job quality and racial diversity in green construction. I consider here both these successes and their limits in a turbulent clean-tech sector: the need for farther reaching transformations in energy-industrial policy and democratic participation in shaping them. Key Words: clean energy transition, climate change, green collar jobs, green economy, populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trump administration's antienvironmental policies and its proclivity to dismiss evidence-based claims creates challenges for environmental politics in a warming world. This article offers the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) as a case study of one way to respond to this political moment. EDGI was started by a small group of Science and Technology Studies and environmental justice researchers and activists in the United States and Canada immediately after the November 2016 elections. Since then, EDGI has engaged in four primary activities: archiving Web pages and online scientific data from federal environmental agencies; monitoring changes to these agencies' Web sites; interviewing career staff at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as a means of tracking changes within those agencies; and analyzing shifts in environmental policy. Through these projects and practices, EDGI members developed the concept of environmental data justice. Environmental data justice is deeply informed by feminist approaches to the politics of knowledge, especially in relation to critical data and archival studies. In this article we establish the theoretical basis for environmental data justice and demonstrate how EDGI enacts this framework in practice. Key Words: critical data studies, environmental data justice, feminist science studies, the politics of knowledge, social practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presidents use legislative powers in many ways to influence environmental policy. The relationship between partisanship and the use of these powers is an open question. Previous research has shown that legislative powers such as the passage of legislation and budgetary decisions display bipartisan effects. This study argues that this does not hold true for veto power. Presidents of different parties approach environmental legislation differently and use vetoes in dissimilar ways. Understanding these differences allows for a better comprehension of how environmental policy decisions are made and the role of presidents in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impact assessment (IA) has become one of the most prevalent environmental policy instruments today. Its introduction under the National Environmental Policy Act (US) in 1969 was revolutionary. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that such a widely used tool has received its share of criticism, including that it fails to meet some of its fundamental goals. Over the last fifty years, IA has broadened in scope and application and embraced new techniques. It has followed evolved, but has not changed fundamentally. We believe that IA must continue to change to meet the societal and environmental challenges of the 21st century. But will it be enough for IA to progress through incremental change (evolution), or is a complete overhaul of impact assessment (revolution) needed? We provide some ideas as to what ‘evolution’ and ‘revolution’ may look like, but rather then offering a definitive way forward now, we invite stakeholders to present their thoughts and suggestions at the IAIA19 Annual Conference in Brisbane, which carries the same theme as the title of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environment is organic to the neoliberal turn, not just as more or less cooperative material inputs or as a surface on which the changes to production and labor relations play out. The frequent finding that nature is being privatized and commodified in new ways is often described as nature's neoliberalization, but these trends do not exhaust the ways in which nature is integral to recent economic transformations. This article is structured around two claims. First, the ways of representing the environment economically that the neoliberal natures literature tends to represent as quite new are actually present and important at the origins of neoliberal policy. A brief genealogy of neoliberalism and nature in U.S. economic policy of the 1970s is surveyed in support of this. Second, work on neoliberal natures has emphasized the commodification and privatization of nature under neoliberalism at the expense of analyzing the environment's role in other important features of neoliberalism. Using qualitative policy analysis and an examination of three modern cases of environmental policy, this article traces the connections between the governance of nature and the governance of other parts of the economy with reference to the more specific economic transformations identified as “post-Fordist.” These similarities are not due to the new application of an established set of techniques of economic governance but because nature was internal to neoliberalism from the beginning not just as resources but as a set of relationships useful for stabilizing capital accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shale gas boom in the United States spurred a shift in electricity generation from coal to natural gas. Natural gas combined cycle units emit half of the CO2 to produce the same energy as a coal unit; therefore, the market trend is credited for a reduction in GHG emissions from the US power sector. However, methane that escapes the natural gas supply chain may undercut these relative climate benefits. In 2016, Canada, the United States and Mexico pledged to reduce methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector 40-45% from 2012 levels by 2025. This article reviews the science-policy landscape of methane measurement and mitigation relevant for meeting this pledge, including changes in US policy following the 2016 presidential election. Considerable policy incoherence exists in all three countries. Reliable inventories remain elusive; despite government and private sector research efforts, the magnitude of methane emissions remains in dispute. Meanwhile, mitigation efforts vary significantly. A framework that integrates science and policy would enable actors to more effectively inform, leverage and pursue advances in methane measurement and mitigation. The framework is applied to North America, but could apply to other geographic contexts. Key policy insights The oil and gas sector’s contribution to atmospheric methane concentrations is becoming an increasingly prominent issue in climate policy. Efforts to measure and control fugitive methane emissions do not presently proceed within a coherent framework that integrates science and policy. In 2016, the governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States pledged to reduce methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector 40-45% from 2012 levels by 2025. The 2016 presidential election in the United States has halted American progress at the federal level, suggesting a heavier reliance on industry and subnational efforts in that country. Collectively or individually, the countries, individual agencies, or private stakeholders could use the proposed North American Methane Reduction framework to direct research, enhance monitoring and evaluate mitigation efforts, and improve the chances that continental methane reduction targets will be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ways that American approaches to public administration and policy are heavily shaped by a Cartesian ontology that emphasizes abstract notions of time, space, and consequences that result. It proposes an alternative drawing on Heideggerian phenomenology. It examines the implication of moving our perspectives from abstracted notions time and space to authentic encounters in the world, and uses environmental policy as a reference point to investigate potential expressions. It concludes with several propositional claims regarding the implications of this shift for environmental policy narrowly and democratic governance more broadly. [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]

From a theoretical perspective, the effect of international climate policy on individual willingness to take up climate protection efforts is ambiguous. An effective international climate policy may motivate individuals to increase their voluntary efforts to mitigate global warming (crowding-in). However, if individuals perceive international climate policy to be effective, they may decide to scale back their own voluntary climate protection activities (crowding-out). Relying on data from representative household samples from Germany and the US, this article empirically explores the relation between individual perceptions of climate policy and their planned adoption of six climate protection activities. It also tests the effects of a ‘warm glow’ motivation and whether this effect varies with the perceived effectiveness of international climate policy. The econometric analyses provide suggestive evidence that higher perceived justification and effectiveness of international climate policy crowd in voluntary individual climate protection activities in the US and Germany. In both countries, these activities are also positively related to the warm glow indicator, confirming that feelings which go beyond pure altruism help explain individual voluntary climate protection efforts. For the German (but not the US) sample, the effect of warm glow is stronger when international climate policy is believed to be ineffective. Key policy insights More effective international climate policy is expected to spur additional voluntary climate protection activities by individuals. Enhancing people’s trust in the outcomes of international climate policy likely raises their engagement in voluntary actions. In some cases, policy failure may be somewhat compensated for by greater individual action, motivated by warm glow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought is a hazard that inflicts costly damage to agricultural, hydrologic, and ecological systems and affects human health and prosperity. A comprehensive assessment of resilience to the drought hazard in various communities and an identification of the main variables that affect resilience is crucial to coping with the hazard and promoting resilience. This study assessed the community resilience to drought hazards of all 503 counties of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas using the resilience inference measurement (RIM) model for the period of 2000 to 2015. Through k-means cluster analysis, stepwise discriminant analysis (74.7 percent accuracy, 72.8 percent leave-one-out cross-validation accuracy), and regression analysis (adjusted R2 = 0.69), four variables (significant at p < 0.05) representing the social, economic, agriculture, and health sectors were identified as the main resilience indicators. Higher resilience counties were found in central Oklahoma and eastern Texas, with the few highest counties located near large metropolitan areas such as Dallas, Houston, Austin, and Albuquerque. Lower resilience counties were concentrated in western Texas. The study provides useful insights into the relationship between drought incidence, inflicted damage, and community resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issue frames portraying climate science as uncertain are cited as a key impediment to new climate change and energy policies. However, some have recently argued that the debate over policy impacts, especially policy impacts on consumers, has become more politically salient than the debate over science. This study applies qualitative content analysis to 340 documents from the conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute, to test whether certain policy frames have become more common among leading opponents of climate policy in the United States. The results indicate a continued reliance on science framing, with more directed attacks on climate scientists and fewer frames stressing the uncertainty of climate science. An increase in the use of policy frames related to effects on consumers also suggests that opposition to climate policy is taking new forms as the political debate evolves, with ramifications for climate change policy opposition on an international scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildlife governance principles (WGPs) identify desirable governance characteristics for wildlife conservation in the United States (US). The types of institutional, ecological, and socio-cultural challenges that WGPs are designed to address also affect governance of public natural resources other than wildlife and in places other than the US. This raises the possibility that a similar set of governance principles might help natural resource professionals working in other resource contexts address the particular challenges they face. We describe the process by which we developed WGPs and offer seven practically oriented questions to help natural resource professionals ascertain whether a similar set of principles could improve governance in their context. In some contexts, minor modification of WGPs might be appropriate; in others, the process by which we developed WGPs could serve as a blueprint for formulating appropriate principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexibility and collaboration are a common prescription for complex, transboundary problems such as nonpoint source (NPS) water pollution. This paper examines the case of the United States Coastal Nonpoint Pollution Control Program (CNPCP), under which all 28 coastal states must develop comprehensive NPS management programs. The CNPCP allows states to satisfy requirements using voluntary, non-regulatory measures, and grants considerable flexibility in terms of institutional coordination and public participation. Thus, it is unclear whether compliance – which is incentivized with Federal funds – should be associated with improved environmental outcomes. Using a remotely sensed land cover census of 800 coastal counties from 1996 to 2010, this paper tests whether compliant programs – and particular participation and coordination mechanisms – are associated with different rates of forest and wetlands conversion. Approved states are associated with decreased rates of forest and wetlands conversion, but minimal differences are found with respect to specific participation and coordination strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trends in state-level public opinion on the environment within the U.S. are examined, using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) from 1976 to 2008. Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification (MRP) approach estimates public support for environmental spending at the U.S. state-level over three decades. This allows for an analysis of inter-state homogeneity of environmental public opinion, over the latter half of the twenty century. The findings indicate state-level trends mirror those at the national-level, but state-level public opinion is becoming more analogous over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how 10 localities in the USA and England, recognised as leaders in clean energy and climate action, have used collaborative approaches to develop local climate change plans and energy conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy initiatives. It examines these planning and policy-making processes in the context of Margerum's [2008. A typology of collaboration efforts in environmental management.Environmental Management, 41 (4), 487–500] typology of “action”, “organizational”, and “policy-level” collaborations, as well as Gray's [1989.Collaborating: finding common ground for multiparty problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass] classification of collaboration in the “problem-setting”, “direction-setting”, and “implementation” phases. We conducted interviews with local elected officials, municipal staff, energy professionals, and citizen volunteers in each community, supplemented with an analysis of their adopted energy, climate change, and land-use plans. We find that despite the different government structures and political contexts between the two countries, there was a surprising amount of commonality in how the case study localities used collaborative planning to develop local climate plans and clean energy initiatives. These processes were most often initiated by local elected officials and/or high-level staff members, and then carried out in collaboration with local third-sector organisations and other community stakeholders. In the USA, collaboration was strongest at the policy level and in the direction-setting phase, with the distinguishing feature that citizen advisory boards or stakeholder working groups often took a more active role in shaping local plans and policies. The English localities had some of those same types of collaborations, but were more likely to also employ action collaboration, in the implementation phase, in which third-sector organisations coordinated with the locality to directly provide clean energy services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on the works of U.S. President Donald Trump for environment and politics in first 100 days of his administration. Various topics discussed include environmental policies framed by him, protection of climate in the U.S., Paris climate agreement and climate policy. Author further discusses warnings related to environment given to Trump's administration, conferences on climate financing and executive order issued by Trump for canceling the Clean Power Plan (CPP).

Can environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) foster an environmental race to the top? The ways in which different enforcement mechanisms in North-South PTAs affect the implementation of environmental standards in developing countries are examined. It is argued that environmental provisions in European Union (EU) and United States (US) PTAs will be effective in instigating policy change in partner countries, although the timing of the effect will vary significantly. Fines and sanctions in US PTAs incentivize partner countries to reform during the negotiation process. Reform in EU PTA partners is predicted to occur during agreement implementation as a result of the EU's policy dialogue approach. Illustrative evidence is provided and the hypotheses are tested using statistical estimations of EU and US PTAs with environmental provisions on developing countries' environmental policy reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the state of the economy condition public concern for the environment? Scholars have long argued that environmental preferences decline during economic downturns as individuals prioritize short-term economic needs over longer-term environmental concerns. Yet, this assumption has rarely been subjected to rigorous empirical scrutiny at the individual level. The presumed link between economic and environmental preferences is revisited, using the first individual-level opinion panel (n = 1043) of US climate attitudes, incorporating both self-reported and objective economic data. In contrast with prior studies that emphasize the role of economic downturns in driving environmental preference shifts, using a stronger identification strategy, there is little evidence that changes in either individual economic fortunes or local economic conditions are associated with decreased belief that climate change is happening or reduced prioritization of climate policy action. Instead, the evidence suggests that climate belief declines are associated with shifting political cues. These findings have important implications for understanding the dynamics of political conflict over environmental policy globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy forums are lightly institutionalized and stable forms of governance networks that include administrative authorities, interest groups, and scientists. They are said to produce different types of outputs, from simple actor coordination to position papers and implementation documents, but their productivity has also been questioned. Metagovernance strategies can improve the capability of policy forums to produce outputs. To determine how different metagovernance strategies influence the capability of forums to produce joint position papers, 29 policy forums in the Swiss environmental sector are compared through a qualitative comparative analysis. Results indicate that metagovernance strategies such as state actors as forum members or majority decision rules need to be combined with small forum size or low actor heterogeneity. Furthermore, forum foundation by the state complicates the production of position papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, natural resource agencies in the United States have attempted to restore ecosystems using adaptive management, a process that emphasizes experimental learning to reduce uncertainty. Most studies show that it rarely occurs in practice and explain implementation failures as organizational issues. This study draws on policy implementation theory to suggest that behaviors and attitudes of individuals may better explain implementation gaps. This comparative case study finds differences between experts implementing adaptive management in the Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Geological Survey. These include differences in attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors aimed at promoting individual autonomy, performance standards, and defending individual interests on the job. Policy implications are twofold: first, that individual behaviors impact adaptive management implementation and intrinsic motivation to perform such functions. Second, regardless of agency, experts view their work as a social good. This suggests that a devolved planning process may remedy implementation obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

London and New York have often been hailed for their sustainable planning practices. However, when one focuses on the entire city region, there is ever-increasing car-dependent development. This paper focuses on the exurban region of the two cities investigating transport-created CO2emissions. The research is based on the analysis of data of the National Travel Surveys of Great Britain and the USA through a quantification of personal travel and a top-down estimation of CO2emissions. It is the exurban region that accounts for the vast majority of CO2emissions: 77% for London and 87% for New York. In the wider region for both cities there is a policy vacuum and dearth of regional planning mechanisms to deliver policies to reduce CO2emissions. The paper argues that transport needs to be planned at the city-regional scale.ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHERCopyright of Journal of Environmental Planning & Management is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To analyze the factors affecting US public concern about the threat of climate change between January 2002 and December 2013, data from 74 separate surveys are used to construct quarterly measures of public concern over global climate change. Five factors should account for changes in levels of concern: extreme weather events, public access to accurate scientific information, media coverage, elite cues, and movement/countermovement advocacy. Structural equation modeling indicates that elite cues, movement advocacy efforts, weather, and structural economic factors influence the level of public concern about climate change. While media coverage exerts an important influence, it is itself largely a function of elite cues and economic factors. Promulgation to the public of scientific information on climate change has no effect. Information-based science advocacy has had only a minor effect on public concern, while political mobilization by elites and advocacy groups is critical in influencing climate change concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the international relations between the U.S. and the United Nations (UN) along with the engagement of the U.S. with the UN under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Topics mentioned include the foreign policy priorities of Trump's administration, the financing of the UN climate-change mitigation by the U.S. government and the strong and productive relationship of the UN with President Trump, who is serious in his statements about solving global problem for the country's interests.

Urban living environments are known to influence human well-being and health. The literature on environmental equity focuses especially on the distribution of nuisances and resources, which, because of the unequal spatial distribution of different social groups, leads to an increased exposure to risks or to less access to beneficial elements for certain populations. Little work has been done on the multidimensionality of different environmental burdens and the lack of resources in some urban environments. This article has two main objectives. The first objective is to construct an environmental equity index that takes into consideration seven components of the urban environment (traffic-related pollutants, proximity to major roads and highways, vegetation, access to parks, access to supermarkets, and the urban heat island effect). The second objective is to determine whether groups vulnerable to different nuisances—namely, individuals under fifteen years old and the elderly—and those who tend to be located in the most problematic areas according to the environmental justice literature (i.e., visible minorities and low-income populations) are affected by environmental inequities associated with the application of the composite index at the city block level. The results obtained by using four statistical techniques show that, on the Island of Montreal, low-income persons and, to a lesser extent, visible minorities are more frequently located in city blocks close to major roads and with higher concentrations of NO2and less vegetation. Finally, the environmental equity index is significantly lower in areas with high concentrations of low-income populations in comparison with the wealthiest areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political inaction at the federal level in the United States has driven increased attention to the importance of planning for climate change at the metropolitan level. This study reports on a survey of 25 regional councils in the United States that measures the extent to which they have adopted climate change plans and to identify the factors that influence their ability to implement climate change initiatives. The findings revealed that a majority of regional councils are involved in planning for and seeking to reduce climate change, and that existing efforts in complementary policy domains make this involvement possible. The findings support a multi-level framework to assess the institutional capacity of regional councils to implement climate change policy and planning in a metropolitan area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The few systematic international comparisons of climate policy strength made so far have serious weaknesses, particularly those that assign arbitrary weightings to different policy instrument types in order to calculate an aggregate score for policy strength. This article avoids these problems by ranking the six biggest emitters by far – China, the US, the EU, India, Russia, and Japan – on a set of six key policy instruments that are individually potent and together representative of climate policy as a whole: carbon taxes, emissions trading, feed-in tariffs, renewable energy quotas, fossil fuel power plant bans, and vehicle emissions standards. The results cast strong doubt on any idea that there is a clear hierarchy on climate policy with Europe at the top: the EU does lead on a number of policies but so does Japan. China, the US, and India each lead on one area. Russia is inactive on all fronts. At the same time climate policy everywhere remains weak compared to what it could be. Policy relevance This study enables climate policy strength, defined as the extent to which the statutory provisions of climate policies are likely to restrict GHG emissions if implemented as intended, to be assessed and compared more realistically across space and time. As such its availability for the six biggest emitters, which together account for over 70% of global CO2emissions, should facilitate international negotiations (1) by giving participants a better idea of where major emitters stand relative to each other as far as climate policy stringency is concerned, and (2) by identifying areas of weakness that need action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does religion affect legislators’ behavior on environmental policy in the US? Studies of environmental policy making have not examined this question, although the literature suggests that religion might affect legislative behavior on environmental policy. This study examines the relationship between US House members’ religion and roll-call voting on environmental legislation from 1973 to 2009. It finds significant differences across religious traditions. Legislators’ party and characteristics of constituencies relevant to environmental politics increasingly, but not entirely, mediate these differences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

State-level public opinion on the environment within the US is examined, using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) from 2000 to 2010. A Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification (MRP) approach is taken to estimate three different survey items on environmental issues at the US state level. This allows for a comparable understanding of state-level public opinion on environmental issues, which is then connected to economic, environmental, and political conditions, and representation in policy making. The findings indicate the MRP technique is a sophisticated way to make accurate estimations of state-level public opinion, and those estimates provide further insight into the shaping of public opinion and public policy. [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.

Korean immigrants in the USA rely heavily on ethnic resources to start up small businesses. Ethnic resources include business networks and knowledge, start-up capital and access to labour power, which are embedded in networks of family, friends and co-ethnics. This paper shows how Korean dry-cleaners in Southern California used ethnic resources to mobilize in response to an environmental policy initiated by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD). While Korean immigrants used ethnic resources to start up dry-cleaning businesses, they found themselves working with a toxic chemical. In 2002, the AQMD required dry-cleaners in Southern California to convert to costly alternative machines by 2020. Korean dry-cleaners used ethnic-based collective action, particularly the Korean Dry Cleaning Association, as a means of fighting for regulatory concessions. They also used ethnic resources to overcome cultural and linguistic barriers to facilitate the adoption of alternative cleaning machines in compliance with the regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]