ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how the federal, state and regional levels of action respond to climate change and highlights the difficulties in transposing one level of action onto another. It explores whether or not the US federal government provides political leadership on climate change policy, or whether it is the states themselves that increasingly play the leading role. Energy policies and climate change as political topics were openly raised and discussed during the presidential election in 2008. The President George W. Bush era introduced no ground breaking changes in energy policies, but concentrated for the most part on increasing domestic production of fossil fuels and their alternatives, such as biofuels and ethanol, rather than putting the emphasis on decreasing energy consumption. Partisan division on topics related to energy and environment existed before, but it has become very prominent during the President Barack Obama administration. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has had a great impact on energy and environmental issues.
