Political Opportunities for Climate Policy California, New York, and the Federal Government

Analysis of climate change policies focuses mainly on the prospects for international agreements or how climate policies should be designed. Yet effective domestic climate policies are essential to any global solution, and we know too little about how and why such policies are adopted. Political Opportunities for Climate Policy examines in depth the causes of effective climate policies in the United States, using a statistical analysis of all fifty states and long-term case studies of California, New York, and the federal government. Roger Karapin analyzes twenty-two episodes in which policies were adopted, blocked, or reversed. He shows that actors and events have positively affected climate policy making, despite the constraints presented by political institutions and powerful fossil fuel industries. Climate policy advocates have succeeded when they mobilized vigorously and astutely during windows of opportunity - which opened when events converged to raise both problem awareness and the political commitment to address them.

1. Introduction and overview; 2. Climate policies in the United States; 3. Theories of climate policy; 4. The structural theory applied to the cases; 5. Causes of climate policies in the fifty states; 6. Air-pollution and energy policy making in California (the 1940s to the 1980s); 7. Climate policy making in California (the 2000s to the present); 8. Energy and climate policy making in New York State; 9. Energy and climate policy making by the federal government; 10. Conclusions - political opportunities for climate policy in the United States.

Roger Karapin is Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and is the editor-in-chief of Polity.