Innovative Environmental Municipal Adaptation: Do Local Community Political Affiliations Affect Support for Climate Change Mitigation Efforts

摘要

Cities have gained considerable importance in the dialogue of climate change and environmental sustainability. A majority of the earth’s growing population is projected to live in cities. Not only are they responsible for a majority of earth’s energy and resource consumption, cities also subsequently produces the highest amount of wastes and emissions, and are therefore most affected by the impacts of climate change – both now and in the future. Solutions to human caused acceleration of climate changes must be locally based – driven by local organizations and individuals. In drafting mitigation and adaptation policies or influencing sustainability practices, local governments are therefore increasingly stressing civic involvement and public engagement in relevant programs and initiatives. Various institutional problems and the lack of a universally accepted local sustainability framework have caused a significant stagnation in the collective progress to create appropriate action plans or meeting emissions or waste reduction targets. The current study explores local leadership and innovation strategies and national public opinion in the United States regarding solutions to global climate change and mitigation schemes from a multidimensional analysis, as well as briefly observing tentative local level adaptations plans designed in order to address this global change.