Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Lessons from the U.S., China, and Japan

Abstract

State and local climate action has played a key role in the global response to climate change. Still, not all jurisdictions are engaged in emissions reductions, and some are actively recalcitrant. What prompts some state and local governments to take action while prompting others to resist? This Article makes several contributions to understanding state and local climate policies. First, prior efforts have generally had a U.S. focus. We broaden the inquiry to include the two leading Asian economies. Second, we make use of a fifty-state survey of recent state climate and energy initiatives in the United States rather than focusing on a few prominent jurisdictions like California. Third, rather than focusing solely on activist jurisdictions, we discuss the full range of stances on energy policy, from the leadership of states like California in the United States and cities like Shenzhen in China to the resistance of some rural areas of the United States, China, and Japan to climate action. We identify important economic, demographic, and geographic drivers of climate and energy policies in these diverse jurisdictions. Finally, we propose a new way of conceptualizing subnational climate action based on the peer production model used in the creation of important digital resources.