Humanity’s impact on the planet is undeniable. Fairly and effectively addressing environmental problems begins with understanding their causes and impacts. Is over-population the main driver of environmental degradation? Poverty? Capitalism? Poor governance? Imperialism? Patriarchy? Clearly these are not technical questions, but political ones.

Updated to cover new debates, data, and policy, and expanded to include chapters on colonialism, race and gender, and the impacts of energy and resource extraction, this book introduces students to diverse perspectives and helps them develop an informed understanding of why environmental problems occur.

How the international community should act is deeply contested. Guiding students through the potential responses, including multilateral diplomacy, transnational voluntary action, innovative financial mechanisms, problem displacement, consumer-focused campaigns, and resistance, this book explains the different forms of political action, their limitations and injustices.

Online resources include lecture slides, a test bank for instructors, updated weblinks to videos, and suggested readings for students.

Building on the book’s assessment of the incentives of cities to protect the environment, the chapter outlines an agenda for cities to meet the challenges presented by climate change. The chapter starts by charting an agenda for cities to adapt to the impacts of planetary climate change, because cities have the greatest incentives and levers to address this aspect of the climate challenge. Then the chapter identifies plausible contributions that cities can make to societal decarbonization. The federal government has been, at best, an inconsistent partner in decarbonizing the economy. Climate regulation in major cities provides a means of ensuring that the societal decarbonization project continues to advance, regardless of who is in power federally. The chapter emphasizes the need for higher levels of government to better support municipal efforts to tackle climate change and suggests ways for lawmakers at higher levels of government, in particular the federal level, to do so if they are interested in environmental protection.

This chapter outlines a framework for understanding what drives city governments in the early twenty-first century to engage in environmental protection efforts in the absence of mandates or generous subsidies from higher levels of government. The chapter begins by emphasizing is the central preoccupation at the local level with promoting economic growth, partly to fund the services that local governments provide, such as police and firefighting. The chapter distinguishes between two archetypal categories of environmental problems: local public goods problems, such as the need to collect solid waste or inadequate green space, that local residents benefit from addressing; and global public goods problems, such as planetary warming, that people throughout the world benefit from addressing. Local elites may push from “the top” for measures, such as building parks and collecting garbage, that simultaneously will improve the local environment and promote economic growth by making their cities more attractive to existing and new residents. In addition, community groups may push from “the bottom” for measures to improve the local as well as the global environment, such as limiting planetary warming. However, U.S. local governments are likely to resist imposing costs on local actors to address global environmental problems, such as limiting climate change, because of localities’ nested position as relatively small entities within a large federation competing for businesses and residents. Left to their own devices, local governments are more likely to undertake measures that will yield local benefits, such as improvements in the health of local residents and the beautification of the local environment. For cities to contribute meaningfully to addressing the global task of limiting planetary warming, local activists will need to mobilize over a sustained period to maintain the pressure on local officials who are sensitive to the need to cultivate local economic prosperity.

New York City’s policy efforts in the first two decades of the twenty-first century emphasize the potential for local governments to materially improve their local environments. During the mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg (2002-2013), the city government sought from the top to remake the city’s physical environment to appeal to postindustrial elites to promote local economic development. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio (2014-2021), the administration explicitly prioritized equity alongside economic growth and this commitment was reflected in environmental policy in a focus on investing in community parks. Under both mayors, environmental policy came from community groups, as well as city leaders. For example, across the two administrations, prominent environmental justice advocates prompted the city to adopt measures to address longstanding inequities in the allocation of responsibility for solid waste management, although the injustices persisted at the end of the de Blasio administration. Overall, the history of New York City’s efforts to address problems such as lack of greenspace, contaminated lands, and solid waste management underscores that change can come from the top and the bottom, but that there are legal, fiscal and other constraints on the ability of cities to address even paradigmatically local environmental problems.

Humanity’s impact on the planet is undeniable. Fairly and effectively addressing environmental problems begins with understanding their causes and impacts. Is over-population the main driver of environmental degradation? Poverty? Capitalism? Poor governance? Imperialism? Patriarchy? Clearly these are not technical questions, but political ones.

Updated to cover new debates, data, and policy, and expanded to include chapters on colonialism, race and gender, and the impacts of energy and resource extraction, this book introduces students to diverse perspectives and helps them develop an informed understanding of why environmental problems occur.

How the international community should act is deeply contested. Guiding students through the potential responses, including multilateral diplomacy, transnational voluntary action, innovative financial mechanisms, problem displacement, consumer-focused campaigns, and resistance, this book explains the different forms of political action, their limitations and injustices.

Online resources include lecture slides, a test bank for instructors, updated weblinks to videos, and suggested readings for students.

Many of the contemporary discussions of the potential for cities to address climate change overlook the historical efforts of cities to protect their residents from environmental harms. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before the emergence of the administrative state at the state and federal levels, local governments were often the first level of government to provide many Americans with environmental protection. Supplying safe drinking water was an early priority for expanding cities. With water more readily available, city governments then built sewage systems. They also built parks, established systems for collecting solid waste, and attempted to address air pollution from the combustion of coal. The historical efforts of cities, well documented by historians, emphasize that city governments can positively contribute to protecting the environment. However, these efforts also offers cautionary lessons about the limitations of relying on local governments to address large-scale problems, and help to explain the substantial federalization of environmental law in the latter twentieth century. Federalization diminished the ability of cities to innovate in the environmental field but cities still have considerable legal authority to pursue environmental policies to address contemporary challenges.

Humanity’s impact on the planet is undeniable. Fairly and effectively addressing environmental problems begins with understanding their causes and impacts. Is over-population the main driver of environmental degradation? Poverty? Capitalism? Poor governance? Imperialism? Patriarchy? Clearly these are not technical questions, but political ones.

Updated to cover new debates, data, and policy, and expanded to include chapters on colonialism, race and gender, and the impacts of energy and resource extraction, this book introduces students to diverse perspectives and helps them develop an informed understanding of why environmental problems occur.

How the international community should act is deeply contested. Guiding students through the potential responses, including multilateral diplomacy, transnational voluntary action, innovative financial mechanisms, problem displacement, consumer-focused campaigns, and resistance, this book explains the different forms of political action, their limitations and injustices.

Online resources include lecture slides, a test bank for instructors, updated weblinks to videos, and suggested readings for students.

Humanity’s impact on the planet is undeniable. Fairly and effectively addressing environmental problems begins with understanding their causes and impacts. Is over-population the main driver of environmental degradation? Poverty? Capitalism? Poor governance? Imperialism? Patriarchy? Clearly these are not technical questions, but political ones.

Updated to cover new debates, data, and policy, and expanded to include chapters on colonialism, race and gender, and the impacts of energy and resource extraction, this book introduces students to diverse perspectives and helps them develop an informed understanding of why environmental problems occur.

How the international community should act is deeply contested. Guiding students through the potential responses, including multilateral diplomacy, transnational voluntary action, innovative financial mechanisms, problem displacement, consumer-focused campaigns, and resistance, this book explains the different forms of political action, their limitations and injustices.

Online resources include lecture slides, a test bank for instructors, updated weblinks to videos, and suggested readings for students.

Humanity’s impact on the planet is undeniable. Fairly and effectively addressing environmental problems begins with understanding their causes and impacts. Is over-population the main driver of environmental degradation? Poverty? Capitalism? Poor governance? Imperialism? Patriarchy? Clearly these are not technical questions, but political ones.

Updated to cover new debates, data, and policy, and expanded to include chapters on colonialism, race and gender, and the impacts of energy and resource extraction, this book introduces students to diverse perspectives and helps them develop an informed understanding of why environmental problems occur.

How the international community should act is deeply contested. Guiding students through the potential responses, including multilateral diplomacy, transnational voluntary action, innovative financial mechanisms, problem displacement, consumer-focused campaigns, and resistance, this book explains the different forms of political action, their limitations and injustices.

Online resources include lecture slides, a test bank for instructors, updated weblinks to videos, and suggested readings for students.