David M. Konisky – författare

How Americans make energy choices, why they think locally (not globally), and how this can shape U.S. energy and climate change policy.

How do Americans think about energy? Is the debate over fossil fuels highly partisan and ideological? Does public opinion about fossil fuels and alternative energies divide along the fault between red states and blue states? And how much do concerns about climate change weigh on their opinions? In Cheap and Clean, Stephen Ansolabehere and David Konisky show that Americans are more pragmatic than ideological in their opinions about energy alternatives, more unified than divided about their main concerns, and more local than global in their approach to energy.

Drawing on extensive surveys they designed and conducted over the course of a decade (in conjunction with MIT''s Energy Initiative), Ansolabehere and Konisky report that beliefs about the costs and environmental harms associated with particular fuels drive public opinions about energy. People approach energy choices as consumers, and what is most important to them is simply that energy be cheap and clean. Most of us want energy at low economic cost and with little social cost (that is, minimal health risk from pollution). The authors also find that although environmental concerns weigh heavily in people''s energy preferences, these concerns are local and not global. Worries about global warming are less pressing to most than worries about their own city''s smog and toxic waste. With this in mind, Ansolabehere and Konisky argue for policies that target both local pollutants and carbon emissions (the main source of global warming). The local and immediate nature of people''s energy concerns can be the starting point for a new approach to energy and climate change policy.

This book explores the dominant framings and paradigms of environmental politics, the relationship between academic analysis and environmental politics, and reflects on the first thirty years of the journal, Environmental Politics.

The book has two purposes. The first is to identify and discuss the key themes that have driven scholarship in the field of environmental politics over the last three decades, and to highlight how this has also led to oversights and silences, and the marginalisation of important forms of analysis and thought. As several chapters in the book explore, problem-solving frameworks have increasingly taken away space from more radical systemic challenge and critique, as the key themes of environmental politics have become ever more central to the field of politics as a whole – and as our understandings of social and environmental crisis become ever clearer and more urgent. The second purpose of the volume is to map out a series of new and developing agendas for environmental politics.

The chapters in this volume focus foremost on questions of justice, materiality, and power. Discussing state violence, multispecies justice, epistemic injustice, the circular economy, NGOs, parties, green transition, and urban climate governance, they call above all for greater attention to intersectionality and interdisciplinarity, and for centering key insights about power relations and socio-economic inequalities into increasingly widespread, yet also often depoliticised, topics in the study of environmental politics.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Environmental Politics.

This book explores the dominant framings and paradigms of environmental politics, the relationship between academic analysis and environmental politics, and reflects on the first thirty years of the journal, Environmental Politics.

The book has two purposes. The first is to identify and discuss the key themes that have driven scholarship in the field of environmental politics over the last three decades, and to highlight how this has also led to oversights and silences, and the marginalisation of important forms of analysis and thought. As several chapters in the book explore, problem-solving frameworks have increasingly taken away space from more radical systemic challenge and critique, as the key themes of environmental politics have become ever more central to the field of politics as a whole – and as our understandings of social and environmental crisis become ever clearer and more urgent. The second purpose of the volume is to map out a series of new and developing agendas for environmental politics.

The chapters in this volume focus foremost on questions of justice, materiality, and power. Discussing state violence, multispecies justice, epistemic injustice, the circular economy, NGOs, parties, green transition, and urban climate governance, they call above all for greater attention to intersectionality and interdisciplinarity, and for centering key insights about power relations and socio-economic inequalities into increasingly widespread, yet also often depoliticised, topics in the study of environmental politics.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Environmental Politics.

Separated into five distinct thematic sections, the Handbook moves from examining political institutions, to politics and behaviour, policy tools and strategies, climate change, and finally ideas and challenges. Individually, each chapter provides readers with a clear synthesis of current research on a specific environmental policy topic. Together, they offer a thorough review of the current landscape of research in the field.

Environmental studies and politics scholars will find the key case studies and in-depth theoretical discussions in this Handbook of great use. It will also be interesting reading for US policy-makers and those working in the media looking for a deeper understanding of the current state of affairs.

Contributors include: M. Ahluwalia, J.E. Aldy, S.E. Anderson, K. Ard, W.F. Baber, P. Bergquist, H.L. Breetz, R.J. Brulle, P.F. Cannavò, S. Carley, S.N. Chau, A. Cheon, B.J. Cook, M. Dowiatt, D.J. Fiorino, B.J. Gerber, M. Graff, L. Hsueh, S. Hughes, D. Javeline, M. Klasic, D.M. Konisky, A. Leiserowitz, A. Lin, M. Lubell, E. Maibach, D.C. Matisoff, C. McGrory Klyza, J. Meckling, M.K. Merry, M. Mildenberger, R. O''Leary, A. Osorio, K.E. Portney, S.B. Pralle, C. Provost, C. Roser-Renouf, J.P. Shimshack, L.C. Stokes, J.W. Stoutenborough, S. Tuler, T. Van de Graaf, C. Warshaw, E.P. Weber, T. Webler, N.D. Woods