Environment

Climate policy advocates want to increase public support for renewable energy. Because renewable energy is a low-carbon source, substituting it for coal in electricity generation can help reduce carbon emissions in the United States. This approach gains credibility with experts and advocates as the cost of renewable electricity generation declines and renewable portfolio standards spread in U.S. states. Following President Obama’s August 2015 announcement of his Clean Power Plan, the various U.S. states gain important responsibilities for planning and implementation. We can expect to see more campaigns in the states to boost the use of renewable energy in the American power sector. In Paris, recently, the United States pledged to lower carbon emissions, and public support will be needed to make sure this promises is actually met.

Advocates frame renewable energy in ways they hope will appeal to the broader public, calling it a home-grown source that avoids pollution and never runs out. Wind and solar power are touted as clean and abundant resources that can help make America “energy independent” and create “green jobs.” As the Natural Resources Defense Council puts in on its website, this kind of electricity “comes from natural sources that are constantly and sustainably replenished. The technologies featured here will make our families healthier, more secure, and more prosperous by improving our air quality, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, curbing global warming, adding good jobs to the economy and – when they’re properly sited – protecting environmental values such as habitat and water quality.”Renewable energy advocates cannot win the hearts and minds of the American public simply by pointing to nice features of their preferred approach. They have to win the debate with opponents.

Such positive arguments are not the end of it, however, because opponents of electricity generation from renewable sources are bound to have their say in a democratic setting. Opponents warn the public that using renewable sources will increase electricity prices make supplies unreliable, because the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow. Conservative consultant Rupert Darwall declared in The Wall Street Journal that electricity generation from renewables “does not produce jobs, growth or prosperity.” more...

Around the world we see encouraging declines in the number of people newly infected with the virus that causes AIDS (as the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is called). But hard-won gains in preventing and treating this “disease that changed everything” are not equally distributed across places and groups of people. The AIDS crisis has, in fact, widened inequalities in health and wellbeing the world over. In poor nations, AIDS remains a leading factor contributing to health declines, because more than 95% of the 33.2 million individuals infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (or HIV) that causes AIDS reside in such countries. The spread of HIV/AIDS has been especially detrimental to women in poor nations. The number of women infected with HIV has increased dramatically in recent years, and young women in less developed nations are about twice as likely as men to become infected. Strikingly, AIDS is the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age.

How can we understand women’s special vulnerability to AIDS, especially in poorer countries? Theories of gender inequality provide clear insights by highlighting the ways in which women have fewer resources and less control than men over decisions about sex and health practices. In particular, women in less developed nations face many barriers in getting needed access to vital educational and health resources, including schools and contraceptives.The AIDS crisis has widened inequalities in health and wellbeing the world over.

If gender inequalities, poverty, and low levels of education and access to health care make for a deadly brew that undermines the wellbeing of women across the less developed world, these harmful forces can be exacerbated by events and trends that further social disorder. In many poor countries, civil wars and violence obviously undermine the health and longevity of women (as well as men). In addition, the spread of AIDS can be spurred by environmental crises and degradation – exacerbated in many places by global warming. So far, the potential impact of environmental degradation on the spread of HIV/AIDS has received insufficient scholarly attention. Drawing insights from eco-feminist perspectives, our work takes a step in the direction of correcting this deficit. more...

In late 2015, the City of New York fulfilled the promise of the “MillionTreesNYC” program by planting its millionth tree. While the program was designed primarily to make the city greener and more resilient to floods during storms like Hurricane Sandy, the project also served as a predominantly positive experience for thousands of volunteers, who then went on to become more involved in civic life in their communities.  Since the vast majority of those volunteers came from white, middle class and affluent backgrounds it is hard to determine if the lessons of New York can be applied to other sectors of the population to increase civic engagement, especially among minorities and lower-income Americans.

Benefits beyond the environment

The MillionTreesNYC program is a public-private partnership that was created between Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration and a private nonprofit group, the New York Restoration Project. Of course, trees have many environmental benefits, including providing absorbing carbon, beautifying neighborhoods, creating shade, and preventing soil erosion. Yet we find another benefit: the initiative has also encouraged New Yorkers to get more involved in environmental projects of all sorts and become more engaged citizens overall.

To date, little research has been done on the connections between green initiatives and enhanced citizen participation. In our recent book, Urban Environmental Stewardship and Civic Engagement: How Planting Trees Strengthens the Roots of Democracy, my co-authors and I present findings from a two-year study of more than seven hundred volunteer stewards who got involved in the MillionTrees Initiative.  The findings we present in our book are consistent with those from my research on other environmental projects in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, which are known for their diverse populations. Nevertheless, the participants in all of these projects tended to be whiter, more highly educated, and more female than their communities overall. The “MillionTreesNYC” initiative encouraged New Yorkers to get more involved in environmental projects, but the participants tended to be whiter, more highly educated, and more female than their communities overall.

Expanding benefits to historically less-advantaged communities

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Responding to the climate threat will take an all-hands-on-deck approach that combines policies at the national level with coordinated actions by state and local governments. To support climate policymaking, climate scientists create detailed models of climate change risks at the local level. But fashioning publicly supported responses to climate threats is a major political challenge. As part of any effective response, state and local officials will need to interact with and represent the concerns of diverse constituencies. Policymaking will be shaped by public concerns about climate change, public understanding of the shifts in behavior necessary to manage the threat, and public support for different climate policy options.

To help understand citizen attitudes, we created the “Yale Climate Opinion Maps” – an interactive online tool supported by a peer-reviewed scientific article published in Nature Climate Change. Our online tool provides estimates of what Americans believe about climate change, their perceptions of climate risks and support for policy options, with breakdowns for all 50 states, 435 congressional districts, and 3,000+ counties in the United States.

Measuring Public Views

Recent years have brought a proliferation of polls that document national beliefs about climate change with a single number. For example, surveys indicate that 63% of Americans believe that global warming is happening. However, existing polls provide, at best, a limited view of the distribution and variation of opinions at the local scales relevant for many decision makers. Imagine we did a national survey of 2000 Americans that included 50 Americans from the state of Texas. Unfortunately, averaging the responses of these 50 Texans could not provide an accurate estimate of average climate beliefs in Texas – because the Texans who happened to be polled would usually not be a good representation of the range of views held by all Texans. Furthermore, for many smaller areas across the country, such as a rural county, there would not usually be a single respondent from that area in a national poll. more...

Environmental problems create especially heavy burdens for poor and minority communities. As three decades of research have shown, these communities host a disproportionate number of landfills, contaminated properties, incinerators, and other polluting facilities, many of which can cause serious health problems. Epidemiological research on health risks reveals that low-income and minority groups have higher rates of asthma, impaired lung function and other respiratory ailments as well as cardiovascular disease. All of these adverse health conditions are caused or exacerbated by exposure to pollution. Underprivileged communities can also be at greater risk from severe weather developments, which are expected to increase with climate change.

The Pursuit of Environmental Justice

Environmental justice has been on the federal government’s agenda now for twenty years, in no small measure due to effective advocacy by grassroots organizations and scholar-activists who have pushed since the 1980s for fairness in environmental protection. The federal government responded with new policy mandates, administrative reorganization, research and data collection programs, enhanced outreach and efforts to build community capacity – and, most notably, with a presidential executive order on environmental justice. Signed by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1994, Executive Order 12898 called on each federal agency to “make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations.” more...

In 1987, a United Nations report on “Our Common Future” highlighted the importance of environmental as well as economic and social factors in the development of societies that further human well-being. The reason for stressing environmental sustainability is clear. Resources garnered from the environment provide necessities for human life such as food, clothing, and shelter. Harnessing energy and harvesting resources are essential components of production processes that contribute to economic advancement. In fact, without a hospitable and supportive environment, societies cannot exist and economies cannot operate. more...

Reelected to a second term, President Barack Obama is speaking with new force and clarity about the threat of climate change; and he is encouraging the Environmental Protection Agency to take bold steps to reduce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions. To make up for Congressional unwillingness to legislate, the Obama administration seems ready to do all it can through executive actions. Many professional environmentalists are delighted, and will rely on inside-the-beltway lobbying to urge regulators onward. That is fine for the short run, but it would be too bad if efforts to counter damage from global warming stopped at insider advocacy.

The new few years are exactly the right time to build a broad nationwide network of popularly rooted organizations committed to supporting carbon-capping as part of America’s transition to a green economy. To be prepared when the next opening arises in Congress, organizational efforts must reach far beyond the Beltway – to knit together alliances and inspire tens of millions of ordinary Americans to push for change. more...

Enterprises generating wind and solar power are growing fast in Europe, Asia, and the United States. As countries seek to limit fossil fuel emissions that spur global warming, the search for cleaner energy sources is on. Thirty years ago, the wind and solar industries did not exist, but now they are coming into their own, actively nurtured by governments across the globe.

On a good site with convenient access to transmission lines, wind power is highly competitive with power generated from fossil fuels like coal and oil. Texas and Iowa alone have installed over 15,000 megawatts of wind-power generation, equal to the energy that can be generated by fifteen nuclear power plants. In the last couple of years, solar prices have dropped as much as fifty percent, reaching parity with other sources in parts of Europe and the United States. California will soon have solar power capacity equal to several large nuclear power plants. more...