The Impact of Internal and External Characteristics on the Adoption of Climate Mitigation Policies by US Municipalities

Abstract

Many US municipalities are engaged in climate mitigation planning, or efforts to reduce their communities' greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through land-use, transportation, and energy planning. However, they face a number of procedural and institutional obstacles that limit the adoption and implementation of those plans. The literature identifies some of the factors that lead municipalities to join relevant policy networks, but provides little guidance for overcoming the aforementioned obstacles and adopting policies to reduce community-wide GHG emissions. With this study I increase the understanding of climate mitigation planning by examining whether the adoption of these plans and policies is driven primarily by local demographic, economic, environmental, or political^institutional characteristics. My research is based upon a survey of 255 US municipalities. I combine the survey responses with secondary data and use multiple regression techniques to estimate the impact of fifteen demographic, political^institutional, economic, and environmental variables on the adoption of climate mitigation plans and policies. The influence of neighboring jurisdictions, the presence of staff members assigned to energy or climate planning, and the level of community environmental activism are found to have the greatest impact on climate mitigation policy adoption. These findings support the conclusion that the extent of climate mitigation planning is driven primarily by internal processes, and municipalities that are successful in this area do not fit any one profile according to their demographic, economic, or environmental characteristics.

Reciprocity as Deliberative Capacity: Lessons from a Citizen's Deliberation on Carbon Pricing Mechanisms in Australia

“…The opinions of climate change sceptics have been found to impact the course of public debate on climate mitigation strategies (Climate Institute 2010; Leviston and Walker 2010;Nerlich 2010;Oreskes and Conway 2010). The divisive debate poses challenges to effective governance of climate mitigation and adaptation (Few et al, 2007;Amundsen et al 2010;Krause 2011;Pitt 2010;Osberghaus et al 2010;Hobson and Niemeyer, 2011).…”

Climate Planning in Politically Conservative Cities: A Case Study of Seven Climate Action Plans

“…Yet, sometimes the choice to join ICLEI can have as much to do with politics as a genuine desire to reduce GHG emissions. Research has shown that ICLEI members tend to be already predisposed to having concern for environmental issues, and have colleges located within their borders (Pitt, 2010b). In contrast, Reams et al (2012) found that the most important factor for achieving ICLEI milestones was length of ICLEI membership and that factors likely to discourage membership include greater automobile dependency and high levels of hazardous air pollution.…”

“…Each of these has identified unique attributes of climate action plans such as structure, content, stakeholder involvement and efficacy. Some have studied the variables of political will (Betsill, 2001;Wheeler, 2008), political climate (Leiserowitz, 2006;Bassett & Shandas, 2010;Reams, Clinton, & Lam, 2012), and the trend of environmental policies and programs being created in communities that vote for Democratic/Republican representatives (Hanak, Bedsworth, Swanbeck, & Malaczynski, 2008;Lubell, Feiock, & Handy, 2009;Pitt, 2010b;Portney and Berry, 2010;Hawkins & Wang, 2012) as an element of the research. However, no study was identified that specifically analyzes climate action planning in politically conservative communities as its sole aim.…”

Constructing urban life : a study of automobile dependency in 148 mid-size U.S. cities.

“…Some modest correlations between the sustainability indices and the WBI were uncovered, but the connection is less than conclusive: Two of the indices were correlated, and two were not. Of the two which were correlated, "Our Green Cities Index" focuses on the presence of civic programs for environmental stewardship (a good indicator of the political policy atmosphere in the city-recall Pitt [2010]), while the "Popular Science Index" includes "green living" and "green perceptions" in a limited scope (only four measured categories). The two uncorrelated indices, "SustainLane" and the "Green City Index" (GCI), are more comprehensive, and rely more on objective performance indicators, and less on perceptions of sustainability.…”

“…This is surprising since commute times may be central to predicting a wide variety of social outcomes. Pitt (2010) used commute times as a measure of AD to complete a statistical model predicting an urban climate change mitigation policy score.…”