ABSTRACT
Efforts to take action on climate change have encountered substantial social inertia as well as cultural, institutional, and individual resistance. The chapter provides an overview of research on institutional strategies to oppose limits on carbon emissions in the United States. Building on sociohistorical trends that have informed oppositional behaviours around environmental sustainability, current institutional forms and practices adopt various time horizons (short, medium, and long-term) to counter scientific evidence of global warming and undermine political support to address it. This organised countermovement has dramatic implications for ongoing efforts of political and cultural mobilisation to provoke meaningful action on climate change.
