Rethinking Climate Change Leadership: An Analysis of the Ambitiousness of State GHG Targets

Abstract

Traditionally, diffusion policy scholars sought to understand state climate change policy leadership by exploring the speed of policy adoption. This study moves beyond these approaches by exploring factors that influence adoption as well as those that influence the content of a policy or policy goal intensity. Through the exploration of the first “wave” of state GHG reduction targets during the early 2000s, we create an innovative policy commitment variable that standardizes state emissions targets and explores the specific factors influencing these mitigation goals. Our results suggest that internal political factors (Democratic control of the legislature), lower state carbon dioxide emissions and dependency on coal production increases the likelihood of target adoption. However, the degree of GHG reduction commitments (content) are dependent on both internal and external factors, such as neighboring states adoption, carbon dioxide emission levels, citizen ideology, environmental interest groups, natural gas production and solar energy potential. These results support the growing literature on differentiating adoption and the content of a policy when analyzing the spread of policy ideas. Additionally, it suggests the limitations of states as climate leaders.

Administration, rhetoric, and climate policy in the Obama presidency

“…Further connecting this to larger trends, the climate policy void experienced in the 21st century is as much by design as by default, as President Bush and later Trump purposely retreated from the policy area while Obama aggressively inserted the federal government into policy space occupied by others, leaving states and NGOs to address concerns and create certainty (Konisky & Woods, 2018 Rabe, 2007, 2011). Notably, a significant amount of state climate action has been driven by partisanship, so that a divergence between Republican and Democratic‐led states has grown for two decades (Besco, 2018; Glasgow et al, 2021; Rabe, 2007). By extension, future policy is likely dependent on following Obama's example, with Biden and subsequent presidents' abilities to justify going it alone, more so than their ability to find bipartisan compromise, a key to successfully moving the needle on climate change.…”

Barriers to achieving climate goals. An external context

“…Only a few works make an attempt to "collectively" identify the underlying factors that could reveal barriers to the implementation of climate goals. One such attempt is to emphasise the importance of political factors, citizen ideology, environmental interest groups, natural gas production, and solar energy potential (Glasgow et al, 2021). Secondly, the constraints on the implementation of climate goals are located in particular spheres: social, economic, environmental, and political-institutional, but a large part of them is of cross-sectional nature -falling within several spheres of human activity.…”