Tangled Action Nets: Community Voices Collide over Localized Climate Action.

This study explores localized climate action as a discursive-material process in which things (e.g., issues, places, bodies, objects) come to "matter" to a community. We argue that localized climate action consists of action nets-- the constellation of communicative actions performed by both humans (e.g., residents, agency representatives) and nonhumans (e.g., fire, policy). Action nets are performative relationships that make distinctive sets of organizational practices, stakeholder values, ecosystem processes, and physical landscapes "matter" to a community. We examine how residents of a wildland urban interface (WUI) town organize to debate whether to implement or oppose a US Forest Service fuel treatment plan, Fuels II, intended to protect the town from climate-driven wildfires. Findings illustrate how residents' action nets collide and tangle as they debate conflicting preferences to scrap Fuels II and accept the risks of living in Lodgepole versus implement Fuels II and protect town from wildfire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]