Global Climate Change and Local Action: Understanding the Connecticut Policy Trajectory

Abstract

Climate change is the signature global issue of our time. This is not just because of climate change itself, but also because of the host of socioeconomic and physical impacts that will result from rising temperatures globally. But fundamentally for scholars of international relations, climate change confronts the policy limitations of sovereignty and its implications for global action directly. Because of the lack of effective global and even national climate change policy action, policy initiatives to confront climate change must focus on levels below the global, even though economic models suggest that global policy provision might be the most efficient way to target the implications of climate change. Thus, this study centers on the complexity of climate change policymaking by focusing attention on the evolution of climate change policy action in the New England region, the State of Connecticut, and its municipalities.