Introduction

The chapter focuses on political responses in the US to the policy challenges of mitigating climate change and promoting the broader environmental and sustainability agenda. Over the last two decades, there has been an understandable perception of a US with only a limited engagement in the fight against climate change and the broader sustainability agenda. Indeed, as Reich (2008, p 5) argues: ‘As a nation the United States seems incapable of doing what is required to reduce climate change’. The failure of the US Congress to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gases and the record of the George W. Bush presidency certainly lend some credence to this viewpoint. However, this chapter will argue that the actual picture is much more complex and nuanced.

The last two decades have seen an ever-growing partisan divide within the US political system. The political debate between the two main protagonists – the Democrat and Republican Parties – has become ever-more rancorous, reaching new heights of bitterness and political venom. If anything, this process has intensified since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Too often, the debate about sustainability and tackling climate change in the US has been drowned out by the white noise of an increasingly partisan and hysterical political culture that militates against reasoned debate and argument at the federal level of government. Mix this in with the constitutional doctrine of the ‘separation of powers’ and the result has been policy gridlock across a number of issues, ranging from the economy to immigration. Action on tackling climate change and promoting sustainability has not been immune to this. Leading politicians, specifically conservative Republicans and ‘Tea Party’ supporters, pour scorn on the very existence of a climate change problem, ignore or subvert the science, and argue that the whole thing is a put-up job designed to increase big government and undermine US values. Action on climate change and on the broader environmental and sustainability agenda has become mired in the machinations of the political beltway in Washington DC.

But it was not always like this. In the period from 1964 to 1980 – what has been described as the ‘golden age’ of US environmental policy – a whole raft of legislation was passed and initiatives were pursued.