ABSTRACT
Climate change politics in the United States clearly illustrates the importance of how an issue is framed. For many years under the George W. Bush administration, dominant actors in the federal government framed climate change as a problem that would result in major economic damage by requiring costly changes to U.S. ways of doing business. They argued that signifi cant policy changes should only be made if developing countries – the major emitters of the future – also agreed to take substantial action. There was substantial questioning of climate change science and the seriousness of the climate change threat (McCright and Dunlap 2003; Jacques, Dunlap, and Freeman 2008; Jacques 2009). The end result was a climate policy that was based on a simple no regrets strategy. Basically only actions were taken that would make sense to take anyways, such as measures that would both control air pollution and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or that would both cut costs and reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions – such as energy effi ciency improvements. While funding for research and development in some new technologies was made available (e.g. for hydrogen fuel cars), there was little policy action to require major cuts in emissions. Unlike in the European Union (EU) where ecological modernisation is an accepted concept and the greening of the economy came to be seen by many political leaders as not only necessary for dealing with climate change but also as an economic opportunity, in the United States under President Bush, ecological modernisation had no traction. Linking climate change action to sustainable economic development was not accepted as an action guiding norm for climate policy. As a result, internationally, the EU took the lead on pushing for a global climate agreement (Schreurs and Tiberghien 2007; Oberthür and Kelly 2008; Schreurs, Selin, VanDeveer 2009b). From its start, the Obama administration introduced a different set of policies and reframed how climate change was discussed (Romàn and Carson 2009). The top political leadership – the president, vice-president, and members of the Cabinet – have worked to redefi ne public perceptions of climate change, embracing the international scientifi c community’s warnings about the implications of inaction. They are working to regain international cognitive and structural leadership on climate change for the United States.
