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5 - Northwestern Ohio: re-industrialization and emission reduction
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- By Samuel A. Aryeetey-Attoh, Professor of Geography and Chair of the Department of Geography and Planning The University of Toledo, Peter S. Lindquist, Associate Professor Department of Geography and Planning, The University of Toledo, William A. Muraco, Research Professor & Professor Emeritus University of Toledo, Neil Reid, Associate Professor Department of Geography and Planning, The University of Toledo
- Association of American Geographers GCLP Research Team
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- Book:
- Global Change and Local Places
- Published online:
- 31 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 26 June 2003, pp 103-121
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Summary
Toledo and its region attracted the attention of the Global Change and Local Places project because of their centrality in the traditional urban–industrial heartland of the United States. The area has undergone profound changes during the Global Change and Local Places study period. Its heavy involvement in fossil-fuel use in industry and the greenhouse gas emissions from such establishments place Northwestern Ohio at the core of the national search for ways to reduce greenhouse gases.
From 1970 to 1990, the 23-county study region of Northwestern Ohio accomplished a 26% decline in greenhouse gas emissions because of a complex combination of technological and structural forces. Perhaps the key ingredient was the industrial sector's responses to federal and state enforcement of more stringent air pollution controls mandated by the Clean Air Act. A second factor resulting in reduced emissions was local industrial restructuring brought about by changes in the broad region's general economy. Intensive intra-regional competition developed in the 1990s between greenfield industrial developments in the rural and suburban counties and to a lesser degree renewal efforts for brownfield redevelopment in core urban areas (Bielen 1998). That regional competition led to redistribution of greenhouse gas emissions from core urban zones to suburban and rural areas. Industrial restructuring will most likely continue to determine the magnitudes and locations of future greenhouse gas emissions in Northwestern Ohio. Adoption of energy-efficient production technologies will temper growth in greenhouse gas emissions despite continued industrial growth.
8 - Explaining greenhouse gas emissions from localities
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- By David P. Angel, Associate Professor of Geography and Dean of Graduate Studies and Research Clark University, Samuel A. Aryeetey-Attoh, Professor of Geography Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toledo, Jennifer DeHart, Doctoral candidate Department of Geography, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, David E. Kromm, Professor Emeritus of Geography Kansas State University, Stephen E. White, Interim Dean College of Arts and Sciences, Kansas State University
- Association of American Geographers GCLP Research Team
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- Book:
- Global Change and Local Places
- Published online:
- 31 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 26 June 2003, pp 158-170
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- Chapter
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Summary
The Global Change and Local Places project case studies foster robust explanations of local, national, and international trends in greenhouse gas emissions. Knowing the specific events and processes responsible for changes in greenhouse gas emissions in particular places (sometimes called the proximate or intermediate forces of human-induced changes in the global environment) broadens understanding of possibilities for abatement or adaptation. Examples of proximate forces include the opening of a coal-fired power plant, or the growth of two-earner households and associated increases in automobile use. Proximate forces cannot be studied in isolation from the social processes that underlie them, the mechanisms and trends often called the driving forces of global change. Focusing on proximate forces and driving forces deepens understanding of greenhouse gas emission dynamics by emphasizing the degree to which the proximate forces that are so often the focus of policy responses are themselves determined by powerful social forces that policy makers often ignore.
The four Global Change and Local Places study areas were used as natural laboratories for teasing out details regarding the operations of proximate and driving forces. Case studies often provide contexts in which analysis and explanation are less refractory than they can be over larger areas (Box 8.1). Indeed, the distinctly different trajectories of greenhouse gas emissions for the four Global Change and Local Places study areas illustrate the ways emissions and changes in emissions over time vary in response to the different kinds of economic change that have occurred in the four areas.
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