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States have long been the ‘laboratories of democracy’ for US lawmaking; states and other sub-federal actors are proving particularly important to the development of climate change law and policy. Through reference to key regional, state, and local efforts, this chapter explores how, why, and to what effect sub-federal actors are influencing climate policy in the US. It examines whether in confronting the federal government's failure to discharge its customary role as the principal architect of environmental policy, sub-federal entities have stepped in to fill the policy void. In doing so, it considers whether sub-federal climate change initiatives are merely symbolic in nature, ie, lacking substance and enforceability, or whether they are in fact having significant impact on the way that the domestic and private sectors and, ultimately, the federal government think about and respond to climate change in legal and political forums.

This chapter examines a case of entrepreneurial authority in the climate change regime: the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The protocol is a set of accounting standards to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions created by individual firms. These standards were created by two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and have subsequently become one of the most widely accepted accounting methodologies for measuring and reporting emissions. The chapter explains how these NGOs were able to insert themselves into the policy process while the United States and European Union were arguing about an appropriate role for emissions trading. In particular, it considers the success of WRI and WBCSD in creating the de facto standard for GHG emissions accounting at the firm (or “corporate”) level.

Chapter Five probes the zone of jurisdictional overlap that belies the dual federalism ideal, where both the states and federal government hold legitimate regulatory interests or obligations. It explores air and water pollution, counterterrorism efforts, climate change, nuclear waste siting, and disaster response as examples of interjurisdictional regulatory problems. Tensions among federalism values are especially heightened in these environmental, land use, and public health and safety regulation—all legal realms that match compelling claims for local autonomy and/or expertise with equally compelling needs for national uniformity and/or federal capacity. After illustrating the different reasons for jurisdictional overlap through these examples, the chapter reconceptualizes dual federalism’s bright-line boundary problem as a matter of “regulatory crossover” into the interjurisdictional gray area. The chapter then discusses how uncertain federalism theory creates two kinds of risk for good governance in the gray area: (1) that fear of doctrinal liability may deter needed interjurisdictional efforts, and (2) that doctrinal uncertainty may invite self-serving regulatory abdication. Finally, Chapter Five demonstrates the benefits of jurisdictional overlap through the detailed case study of regulatory backstop in climate mitigation and adaptation governance, reviewing regional cap-and-trade programs like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), federal and state renewable portfolio standards, green building requirements, and transportation sector initiatives. Finally, it applies its framework of analysis to the Katrina experience, concluding with reflections on how federalism theory more sensitive to gray area governance might have led to a different regulatory response.

This chapter provides an overview of how the US political system functions, focusing on the role of federalism in shaping policy-making. It reviews the history of environmental policymaking in the US and explores how climate change policymaking reveals a significant shift in the role and relationship between sub-federal and federal governmental entities in environmental law and policymaking. It seeks to provide an inclusive review of US federal climate change policies, beginning with the White House climate change strategy promoted by President Bush before exploring more recent efforts to overhaul the federal approach to climate change. It also endeavours to shed led light on how shifting federal climate change strategies influence domestic engagement in global climate change politics.

Cap-and-trade has also faced numerous political challenges but also includes some more successful cases. Some of the experience of the American sulfur dioxide emissions trading program has been replicated for carbon in the case of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. This alliance among nine Northeastern states has retained political support for more than a decade and also pioneered a system to auction allowances to generate revenue. These funds are then concentrated on expansion of energy efficiency and renewable energy in the region, thereby further addressing climate change and also building a broader base of political support.

The instrumental record shows steadily rising global surface temperatures as the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases increased during the industrial age. Numerous complementary scientific techniques have shown clearly that these increases are due to human activity, notably burning fossil fuels. The instrumental record is complemented by proxy measurements that reliably document the earth’s temperature and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide for hundreds of thousands, and in some cases, millions of years. Present conditions are unprecedented in those time frames. Without drastic reductions in the emission of carbon dioxide the worst is yet to come.

This chapter details the origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its precursor, the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (AGGG). It solves Chapter 1’s puzzle by spotlighting overlooked actors: international bureaucrats set the design agenda, shifting the status quo to which states reacted. Personnel from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) pushed states to craft a climate institution. When states refused, UNEP and WMO bureaucrats formed an alliance with a non-governmental organization and crafted one themselves. Angered by this highly insulated and policy-aggressive body, the Reagan administration agreed to launch the IPCC as a substitute. International bureaucrats negotiated directly with the US government and diluted several state control mechanisms in the IPCC. Later, that insulation provided cover for IPCC personnel to buffer themselves further. A narrow focus on states misses why this organization exists and why it looks as it does.

Large, adverse effects of climate change are predicted in the decades to come and past greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have missed supposedly agreed and achievable targets, a reflection of two deep problems of intergenerational and transnational collective action. One is that the full benefits of action today are uncertain and will not be felt until the distant future; the second is that, unlike most “local” pollution, GHG is a global externality problem, and most political decisions are national. In light of these problems, current “top down” approaches, e.g., Kyoto, may not be fruitful, compared to “bottom up” action at national or regional levels. With multi-speed policies “carbon tariffs” might also help address the externality problem, but could be a source of political friction.

The chapter discusses the problem of global warming and climate change as one of global pollution with widest effects of global externality. It describes the characteristics of the green house gases (GHG), their composition and regional source wise distribution and shows how their accumulation in the atmosphere leads to the rise of global temperature and climate change. It then describes the physical and economic impacts of climate change with the consequent loss of GDP and economic assets. The chapter further examines the prospect of low carbon economic growth for abating climate change particularly in the Indian context. It also discusses the issues relating to the adaptation to climate change as some climate change would be inevitable in future. It finally addresses the institutional issue of collective action for mitigation and adaptation to climate change and concludes by describing India’s policy approach of defining the shared global responsibility in the context.

Four main arguments have suggested that highways will or should play a smaller role in coming decades. Millennials are claimed to be abandoning car ownership. Autonomous vehicles are seen as leading to ownership by fleets rather than individuals (and hence less driving). The need to reduce carbon emissions is seen by some as contrary to highway expansion, as is the idea that Smart Growth should become the model for metro areas, to minimize driving. This chapter reviews the implications for highways of these concerns.

During the past half century, atmospheric concentrations of important greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) have been increasing at unprecedented rates ( I PCC, 1996, 2007). Trace gases such as methane (CH4), nitric oxide (NO), and nitrous oxide (N2O) are exchanged regularly between the soil and atmosphere, playing important roles in the greenhouse effect, in atmospheric chemistry, and in the redistribution of ecosystem nitrogen (N). Soils can be important sources of greenhouse gases, commonly contributing up to two thirds of atmospheric N2O and more than one third of atmospheric CH4 (Monson and Holland, 2001; Smith et al., 2003). Recent extensive changes in land management and in cultivation, which can stimulate N2O production and/or decrease CH4 uptake, could be contributing to the observed increases of both CH4 and N2O in the atmosphere (IPCC, 2007). Although the absolute amount of trace gases (such as CH4, NO, and N2O) released into the atmosphere from soils may be small, these gases are extremely effective at absorbing infrared radiation (Smith et al., 2003). Methane, for example, is 20 to 30 times more effcient than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (LeMer and Roger, 2001). As a result, even small changes in the production or consumption of these gases by soils could dramatically influence climate change. Of the gases exchanged between the soil and atmosphere, the major reactive ones are oxides of N (NO and NO2, collectively referred to as NOx). Combustion is a major source of NOx, but native and N-fertilized soils also contribute signi3 - cant amounts of NOx to the atmosphere (Williams et al., 1992). Nitric and nitrous oxide play a complex role in atmospheric chemistry. At low concentrations, it catalyzes the breakdown of ozone. At higher concentrations it can interact with carbon monoxide (CO), hydroxyl radicals (OH.), and hydrocarbons to produce ozone. Atmospheric NOx is converted within days to nitric acid, which is an important component (30% to 50%) of acidity in precipitation (Williams et al., 1992).

In May 1970, Look magazine ran an International Paper Company advertisement, “The Story of the Disposable Environment,” which envisioned a time when “the entire environment in which [we] live” would be discarded. “Colorful and sturdy” nursery furniture “will cost so little, you’ll throw it away when [your child] outgrows it,” the ad enthused, adding for the socially conscious, “experimental lowbudget housing developments of this kind are already being tested.” International Paper never addressed where the disposable housing, furniture, and hospital gowns, or the toxic chemicals used for processing raw materials and manufacturing products— or the fossil fuel emissions—would end up. More than 30 years later, we live with the consequences of that vision, which has transmuted the real environment that we depend on into a nightmarish one, dominated by colossal and increasingly hazardous wastes. For nearly all of human history and prehistory, people dropped their wastes where they lived, expecting the discards would largely disappear. When wastes were relatively minor and all natural materials, many of them did disappear through “natural attenuation”—the diluting or neutralizing effects of natural processes. But even after tens of thousands of years, many items in ancient garbage remain recognizable, and poking through prehistoric dumps can reveal significant details about long-gone people and their ways of life. History shows that soils and waters have limited capacities for processing even natural wastes. Garrett Hardin underscored these lessons in his 1968 essay “The Tragedy of the Commons.” From Roman urbs urbii (cities) to nineteenth-century industrial complexes, the refuse dumped in and around larger population centers issued foul odors and helped spread diseases. Public health concerns eventually forced towns and cities to provide sewers, “sanitary” dumps, water treatment, and more recently, sewage treatment. Nowadays, however, our sewers and dumps receive a sizable proportion of synthetic chemicals with unknown properties as well as millions of tons of toxic wastes, hazardous to humans and other living things.

The last chapter addresses why research on edible insects is not nearly as developed compared to meat, and why this imbalance leads to underrepresentation. In paleoanthropology, there is abundant research on hunting and meat eating while other foods are essentially ignored. This impartiality leads to the portrayal of our ancestors as being primarily carnivorous, which in recent years has been incorporated into the “paleo diet” trend. As a popular weight loss program, the paleo diet emphasizes eating real and natural foods that would have been available to our “cavemen” ancestors. The emphasis on real food is a direct response to our over-industrialized food systems, which produce widely available, inexpensive, unhealthy food options. However, another problem with our modern food system is that it is unsustainable and livestock cultivation is the primary culprit for resource waste and greenhouse gas emissions. We should be looking to reduce our meat intake, not increase it. In this regard, edible insects provide an appealing sustainability option: they are efficient to raise and provide the same nutritional benefits as traditionally raised livestock.

Consumers have access to substantial information on the products they buy, but much information is missing. “Sustainability information” – about traits like greenhouse gases, child labor, toxic chemicals – is not part of the flow of information. In its absence, the market cannot reflect consumer values about sustainability. New sources of information could integrate our collective values into day-to-day consumer transactions, and make ordinary shopping a path to a more sustainable future.

The United States is more wedded to vehicles than is any other nation, and “freedom” to many Americans seemingly means driving their individual vehicles anywhere they choose. Opinion polls commonly show high proportions of U.S. citizens more concerned about gas prices, potholed highways, or restrictions on vehicle access to backcountry washes and dirt roads than about government scandals, stolen elections, or environmental damage. Unfortunately, vehicles and roads exact a huge toll on lives and health and threaten our future well-being. Driving wheeled vehicles, and constructing roads to support them, comes close to topping the list of humankind’s most environmentally damaging activities. On most soils, even foot traffic creates tracks, trails, and roads. After ancient people invented wheeled vehicles to carry their burdens and themselves, they found that running water quickly rutted and potholed the cart tracks, and gully erosion chopped them up on slopes. Rainstorms eroded the tracks, flooding the dislodged sediment into streams and creeks and burying downslope croplands. Rutted tracks prevented Roman chariots from driving as fast as they were designed to go, so the talented Roman engineers quite naturally invented paved roads—some with better staying power than asphalt highways. But Roman paving did not solve the erosion problems that roads created, and in some ways made it worse. Today, some parts of the United States contain more motorized vehicles than people. The varied vehicle uses, including military training, have vastly proliferated roads and roadlike corridors—especially numerous utility routes—across every type of American landscape. Erosional forces and their effects have not changed since Roman times, but modern engineers still fail to choose transportation routes or build roads to minimize environmental damages. The roads spread severe erosional effects everywhere, along with pervasive pollution. On top of it all, television images encourage Americans to take recreational cars, trucks, motorcycles, and all-terrain vehicles anywhere we wish. The naked ruts they create are an insidious form of road building.

Where lies the future of the shortgrass steppe? In prior chapters we have described the remarkable resilience of the shortgrass steppe ecosystem and its organisms to past drought and grazing, and their sensitivity to other types of change. Emerging from this analysis is the idea of vulnerability to two main forces: future changes in precipitation or water availability, and direct human impacts. What are the likely changes in the shortgrass steppe during the next several decades? Which of the changes are most likely to affect major responses in the plants, animals, and ecosystem services of the shortgrass steppe? In this chapter we evaluate the current status of the shortgrass steppe and its potential responses to three sets of factors that will be driving forces for the future of the steppe: land-use change, atmospheric change, and changes in diseases. Referring to the early 1900s, James Michener in his novel Centennial (1974) wrote the following:… The old two-part system that had prevailed at the end of the nineteenth century— rancher and irrigator—was now a tripartite cooperation: the rancher used the rougher upland prairie; the irrigation farmer kept to the bottom lands; and the drylands gambler plowed the sweeping 0 eld in between, losing his seed money one year, reaping a fortune the next, depending on the rain. It was an imaginative system, requiring three different types of man, three different attitudes toward life. . . . (p. 1081)… Even today, because of the strong water limitation for cropping, the shortgrass steppe remains relatively intact, or at least unplowed, in contrast to other grassland ecosystems (Samson and Knopf, 1994). More than half of the shortgrass steppe remains in untilled, landscape-scale tracts, compared with only 9% of tallgrass prairie and 39% of mixed-grass prairie (The Nature Conservancy, 2003). These large tracts, including those in the national grasslands (Pawnee, Cimarron, Comanche, and Kiowa/Rita Blanca), provide the greatest opportunity for preserving key ecological processes and biological diversity.

This chapter examines the spatial and temporal variability and patterns of climate for the period 1972–1991 in the North Central Region of North America (NCR). Since the mid-1970s, climate has become more variable in the region, compared to the more benign period 1950–1970. The regional perspective presented in this chapter characterizes the general climatology of the NCR from 1972 to 1991 and compares the climate to a severe drought that occurred in 1988. This one-year drought was one of the most substantial in the region’s recent history, and it had a significant impact on the region’s agricultural economy and ecosystems. Petersen et al. (1995) characterize the 1988 drought with respect to solar radiation, and Zangvil et al. (2001) consider this drought from the perspective of a large-scale atmosphere moisture budget. A major reason for the seriousness of the drought in 1988 was the fact that May and June were unusually dry and hot (Kunkel and Angel 1989). Drought is defined as a condition of moisture deficit sufficient to adversely affect vegetation, animals, and humans over a sizeable area (Warwick 1975). The condition of drought may be considered from a meteorological, agricultural, and hydrologic perspective. Meteorological drought is a period of abnormally dry weather sufficiently prolonged to a point where the lack of water causes a serious hydrologic imbalance in the affected area (Huschke 1959). Agricultural drought is a climatic digression involving a shortage of precipitation sufficient to adversely affect crop production or the range of production (Rosenberg 1980). Hydrologic drought is a period of below-average water content in streams, reservoirs, groundwater aquifers, lakes, and soils (Yevjevich et al. 1977). All of these drought conditions are mutually linked. The objectives of this chapter are to (1) address the issues of climatic spatial scale to quantify variability of climate in the NCR, (2) examine the characteristics of the 1988 drought as it relates to characteristics of an ecoregion, (3) illustrate a means to quantify drought through a potential plant stress index, and (4) examine the link of regional drought to ecosystem processes. This analysis will provide background and methodology for ecologists, agriculturalists, and others interested in spatial and temporal characterization of climate patterns within large geographic regions.

Ecological disturbances at Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites are often the result of extreme meteorological events. Among the events of significance are tropical storms, including hurricanes, and extratropical cyclones. Extratropical storms are low-pressure systems of the middle and high latitudes with their attendant cold and warm fronts. These fronts are associated with strong, horizontal thermal gradients in surface temperatures, strong winds, and a vigorous jet stream aloft. These storms and their attendant fronts generate most of the annual precipitation in the continental United States and provide the lifting mechanisms for thunderstorms that, on occasion, spawn tornadoes. Off the United States West and East Coasts, extratropical storms generate winds, wind waves, wind tides, and long-shore currents that rework coastal sediments, alter landscape morphology, and change the regional patterns of coastal erosion and accretion (Dolan et al. 1988). Although extratropical storms do not match hurricanes in either precipitation intensity or in the strength of the winds generated, they are much larger in size and have a more extensive geographic impact. On occasion, extratropical storms will intensify at an extraordinary rate of 1 millibar (mb) per hour for 24 hours or more. Such storms are classed as “bomb” and are comparable to hurricanes. Extratropical storms occur in all months of the year but are most frequent and more intense in winter when the north-south temperature contrast is large and dynamic support for storm intensification from the stronger jet stream aloft is great. In this chapter, we will explore the history of storminess for those LTER sites in the continental United States at which more than a century of data on storms and their storm tracks are readily available. Specifically, we will look at the record of changes in storminess at both the regional and national scales. During the 1990s, significant storms along the U.S. West Coast and droughts and fires in Florida in an El Niño year led to a hypothesis that El Niño and La Niña conditions were associated with a modulation in the frequency of storms. In addition, it has been suggested that the frequency of El Niño and La Niña events and, by inference, storminess, has increased during the past century.

Variations in temperature and precipitation are both components of climate variability. Based on coral growth rates measured near Puerto Rico, the Caribbean was 2–3ºC cooler during the “Little Ice Age” during the seventeenth century (Winter et al. 2000). At the millennial scale, temperature variations in tropical regions have been inferred to have substantial biological effects (such as speciation and extinction), but not at the multidecadal timescales considered here. My focus is on precipitation variability in particular, because climate models examining effects of increased greenhouse gases suggest greater changes in precipitation than in temperature patterns in tropical regions. Some correspondence between both the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Northern Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and average temperatures and total annual precipitation have been reported for the LTER site at Luquillo (Greenland 1999; Greenland and Kittel 2002), but those studies did not refer to extreme events. Based on climate records for Puerto Rico since 1914, Malmgren et al. (1997) found small increases in air temperature during El Niño years and somewhat greater total rainfall during the positive phase of the NAO. Similar to ENSO, the NAO index is characterized by differences in sea-level atmospheric pressure, in this case based on measurements in Iceland and Portugal (Walker and Bliss 1932). Its effects on climate have largely been described in terms of temperature and precipitation anomalies in countries bordering the North Atlantic (e.g., Hurrell 1995). Puerto Rico is in the North Atlantic hurricane zone, and hurricanes clearly play a major role in precipitation variability. The association between extreme rainfall events and hurricanes is discussed in detail in this chapter. I examine the degree to which extreme rainfall events are associated with hurricanes and other tropical storms. I discuss whether the occurrence of these extreme events has changed through time in Puerto Rico or can be linked to the recurrent patterns of the ENSO or the NAO. I examine the 25-year daily precipitation record for the Luquillo LTER site, the 90-year monthly record from the nearest site to Luquillo with such a long record, Fajardo, and those of the two other Puerto Rico stations with the longest daily precipitation records, Manati and Mayaguez (figure 8.1).

The H. J. Andrews (AND) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site represents the temperate coniferous forest of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the United States. The general climate of the area is highly dynamic, displaying variability at a variety of timescales ranging from daily to millennial. AND, and its surrounding region, is therefore an ideal site for examining some of the guiding questions of climate variability and ecosystem response addressed by this volume (see chapter 1). A legacy of more than 50 years of research at the site and its surrounding area ensures that several of the questions can be investigated in some depth. Here we organize our discussion within a timescale framework that is consistent with the structure of this volume. Thus, following a brief description of the general climate of the site, we discuss climate variability and ecosystem response at the daily, multidecadal, and century to millennial scale. This discussion for the PNW is supplemented in chapters 6 and 13 by a consideration of the quasi-quintennial scale and an additional ecosystem response at the decadal scale. Having described some of the climate variability and ecosystem response at the selected timescales, we will consider what this information can tell us regarding some of the guiding questions of this book. The questions that we specifically address include the following: What preexisting conditions affect the impact of the climatic event or episode? Is the climatic effect on the ecosystems direct or cascading? Does the system return to its original state? We also consider potential future climate change and its possible ecosystem effects. Located at latitude 44.2º N and longitude 122.2º W, the Andrews Forest is situated in the western Cascade Range of Oregon in the 6400-ha (15,800-acre) drainage basin of Lookout Creek, a tributary of the Blue River and the McKenzie River (figure 19.1). Elevation ranges from 410 m (1350 feet) to 1630 m (5340 feet). Broadly representative of the rugged mountainous landscape of the Pacific Northwest (PNW), the Andrews Forest contains excellent examples of the region’s conifer forests and associated wildlife and stream ecosystems. Lower elevation forests are dominated by Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), and western red cedar (Thuja plicata).