The Do-Nothing Congress

The intense politicization of nearly all policy issues has made even routine congressional activities nearly impossible. The Republican preoccupation with reducing taxes and the size of government and eliminating the Affordable Care Act seems to have pushed out other issues, leaving no real opportunity for legitimate bipartisan policy conversations. Contemporary Congress seems unwilling or unable to engage in policymaking, resulting in a series of crippling struggles. In the fall of 2013, there was a government shutdown that lasted more than two weeks. Republicans, especially, use political weaponry to slow progress of any kind: They have used the debt ceiling for political leverage, putting the country's debt rating in jeopardy; they constantly threaten to filibuster in the Senate; and they have delayed the approval of presidential appointees. Democrats have also refused to compromise, often preferring appeals to their base constituency at the expense of progress. Moderates are a rare breed in today's Congress, which increases the distance between Republicans and Democrats. These are all indications of the degree of dysfunction in the federal government over the past several years.

Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) noted the lack of willing dealmakers: “You've got an atrophy of the middle, a cannibalization of the middle, and people are worried about their right flank if they're Republicans, some Democrats are worried about their left flank if they're Democrats, and the way this place works is by people hanging out in the middle and forging compromise” (qtd. in Welna, 2013). The political middle, which is generally where most Americans land on the political spectrum, has very few members left in Congress, and those few who remain have difficulty finding allies. It should come as no surprise that Congress has become increasingly unproductive. In December 2013, at the close of the first year of the 113th Congress, the Pew Center looked at how many substantive laws had been enacted (excluding ceremonial legislation like post-office renamings), and found that only 55 laws had been passed. This number is low even when compared to the 63 laws passed in 2011, the first year of the 112th Congress, which was already one of the least productive in recent history (Desilver, 2013).

Deregulation at All Costs

There seems to be no place in the Tea Party ideology for a sophisticated relationship between government and the private sector in pursuit of sustainable economic growth. In this view, government agents can only be power-grabbing, bumbling, communist bureaucrats, and regulation is never a good idea. On the one hand, it's true that regulation costs money, and some business leaders seem to have a reflex that causes them to oppose regulation whenever it is proposed. On the other hand, it's true that lawlessness and an absence of rules can be quite expensive. Although many of the costs of regulation are borne by individual businesses and their customers, the costs of a lack of regulation fall on the shoulders of all of us. In fact, most businesses do not believe in blanket opposition to all regulation because they understand that reasonable law helps ensure that everyone plays by the same rules. The anti-regulation attitude creates a powerful and dangerous political dynamic when it is coupled with the Republican Party's current anti-tax, anti-government ideology.

The danger of the Republican right wing's zeal against government and regulation is that it inhibits our ability to deal with the complexity and interconnectedness of modern life and the modern economy. The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan, and the damage to the environment caused by hydrofracking in Ohio and Pennsylvania are all the results of inadequate regulation—not too much government, but too little. The U.S. Department of Interior failed to adequately police deep-sea oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The Japanese government did not require the Tokyo Electric Power Company to guard the Fukushima plant against the threat of a tsunami. And more disasters are likely to emerge. The virtually unregulated extraction of natural gas in Pennsylvania and Ohio has resulted in preventable accidents and unnecessary damage. The chemicals in the fracking fluid are considered proprietary trade secrets, and without regulation it is impossible to determine or control what effect they will have on the ground and water where they are deposited. The damage caused by unregulated business not only brings harm to our planet, but also damages the economy and communities as well. The lack of adequate regulation of mortgages led to people buying and losing homes they couldn't afford and the lack of regulation on Wall Street led to a financial crash. Regulation is an important tool of economic development, but it must be properly designed and enforced to be effective.

Conservatives say that government is too ignorant of business practices to adequately police them. By that argument only criminals are qualified to serve as police. In the conservative view, regulations destroy initiative and hold businesses back from reaching their true potential. To some degree this is true, but when economic growth is slower and more cautious, it can also be more sustainable. It is true that you can regulate an activity to such a degree that you destroy it. You can also deregulate an activity to the point that modern business operates as ineffectively as it would the Wild West. Neither approach makes sense.

The anti-regulation movement is particularly pernicious because it prevents us from doing what we really need to do, which is to get better at developing and implementing effective regulation. Thanks to technology, the economic and social environment we live in is changing rapidly. We need to do a better job of understanding this environment and developing reasonable rules to govern economic competition within it. In any mining operation there are best management practices and there are also quick and dirty shortcuts. Like the citizens and wildlife that could be harmed, the companies that act responsibly are penalized in the absence of government rules and enforcement. Careless operators that damage the environment are rewarded by the lack of rules.

The Costs and Benefits of Regulation

We know that a clean environment has many more economic benefits than costs. First, there are reduced expenditures for health care. Second, clean air and water have economic value that is difficult to quantify, but areas with toxic orange air and burning water cease to be productive when residents move away. Third are the benefits of technological innovation undertaken to comply with regulation. In seeking to meet new standards, engineers are given the resources to develop engines that pollute less or air conditioners that use less electricity. All of these factors stimulate rather than stunt economic growth.

Since 1997 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has reported that the benefits of all federal regulations have far exceeded their costs. OMB submits a report each year to comply with the Regulatory-Right-to-Know Act. According to a draft 2013 report, the benefits of federal regulation over the 10-year period ending September 2012 totaled “between $193 billion and $800 billion, while the estimated annual costs are in the aggregate between $57 billion and $84 billion. These ranges are reported in 2001 dollars and reflect uncertainty in the benefits and costs of each rule at the time that it was evaluated” (OMB, 2013b, 3). Figure 7.1 provides a summary of these data for the decade between FY 2004 and FY 2013.

In an excellent summary of OMB's report, Katie Greenshaw of OMB Watch noted the prominence of air pollution rules in the federal regulatory analysis. According to that summary, “the highest costs and benefits come from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) air pollution rules. Specifically, the Clean Air Fine Particle Implementation Rule has the highest costs and benefits of any rule…The benefits, which far exceed the costs, include prevention of premature deaths, heart attacks, and respiratory illness among Americans” (Greenshaw, 2011). Greenshaw further observed that “Although many House Republicans claim that regulations are too costly and negatively impact jobs, this report presents findings consistent with recent independent research from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) concluding that the benefits of regulation greatly exceed the costs. The EPI research also indicates that ‘regulations do not tend to significantly impede job creation’” (Greenshaw, 2011).

It is hard to believe that we are reduced to making arguments on the necessity of regulation. It would be a much better use of our time and energy to focus our attention on developing more effective regulations. We need to learn more about the planet's conditions and the impact of our activities on productive ecosystems. It's true that regulations come with costs, but so does everything of value. It costs time and money when a driver stops at a red light, but the cost is lower than the cost of a road system without rules. Stopping is cheaper than crashing. The problem is that the benefits measured by OMB come to all of us, but some of the costs come to the kind of people who donate money to political campaigns.

The Climate Change Denial Machine

The influence of lobbyists is especially apparent when looking at climate change and renewable energy. The fossil fuel industry has caused much of the political division on climate change through aggressive action to promote skepticism among the public. The industry, typically through conservative think tanks, has funded opposing scientific opinions, economic reports, and public relations campaigns. Riley E. Dunlap and Aaron M. McCright describe the strategy well: “[T]he conservative movement/fossil fuels complex quickly adopted the strategy of ‘manufacturing’ uncertainty and doubt (perfected by the tobacco industry) as its preferred strategy for promoting skepticism regarding ACC [anthropogenic climate change]” (2011, 146). They provide a clear explanation for how the fossil fuel industry (e.g., Peabody Coal, ExxonMobil, and the American Petroleum Institute), corporate America (including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association) and conservative foundations (Koch-controlled foundations, the John D. Olin Foundation, and others) use conservative think tanks (e.g., American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, etc.) and front groups (e.g., Global Climate Coalition, Center for Energy, and Economic Development) to feed misinformation to the public. This gets repeated and amplified by an echo chamber of politicians, the media, and blogs who spread the message over and over again (Dunlap and McCright, 2011, 147). These think tanks and front groups gain credibility with the public and media by funding contrarian scientists who are treated as legitimate experts on the issue, without consideration of the relevance or quality of the work. Their studies are traditionally not peer-reviewed (peer-review is a hallmark of sound science), and often developed by scientists who may be credentialed but are not experts in the field of climate science.

Just how widespread is the misinformation campaign? In 2005, Chris Mooney of Mother Jones found 40 ExxonMobil-funded organizations that either sought to undermine mainstream scientific findings on climate change or maintained affiliations with a small group of skeptic scientists (Mooney, 2005). The coal industry and wealthy billionaires like the Koch brothers have similar influence, funding think tanks and PACs that serve to influence public opinion about the facts as well as Congressional action (or inaction) in Washington and at state levels. In 1998, in anticipation of an attempt to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, several members of the denial machine, including the Marshall Institute, ExxonMobil, and the American Petroleum Institute, proposed a $5 million campaign to prevent policymakers from taking action by convincing the public that climate science is riddled with controversy and uncertainty by training up to 20 “respected climate scientists” on media relations (Begley, 2007). This is a well-funded, well-organized machine that continues to take aggressive action against climate change mitigation efforts in any form. Industries are increasingly using the foundations to conceal their own donations, rather than making publicly traceable contributions. One effort to quantify this movement found that conservative foundations providing funding to the denial movement use foundations as pass-through mechanisms to conceal their identities. It found that “140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010. Meanwhile the traceable cash flow from more traditional sources, such as Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, has disappeared” (Fischer, 2013). The study concluded that only a fraction of sources of the hundreds of millions of dollars supporting the denial movement can be identified, while approximately 75 percent of revenue from these organizations is unidentifiable (Fischer, 2013).

While climate denial continues, the science is settled. Over 450 lead authors, with input from another 800 contributing authors, and another 2,500 expert reviewers developed the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007. The IPCC reports represent the most comprehensive synthesis of climate science (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2007). An IPCC report released in March 2014 confirmed the conclusions it had made in 2007 and earlier, and highlighted with renewed levels of certainty the risks we face for a changing climate.

A March 2014 study by geochemist James Lawrence Powell found that out of all 10,855 climate studies published in peer-reviewed journals during 2013, only 2 explicitly rejected anthropogenic global warming. Only 0.02 percent of published research denies outright the existence of man-made climate change (Atkin, 2014). Climate Progress, a blog from the Center for American Progress that provides information on climate science, solutions, and politics, points out that these figures are completely disconnected from the non-scientific debate about climate change in Congress:

Politicians tasked with making crucial decisions on national energy policy and air pollution have a propensity for ignoring the science. Approximately 56 percent, or at least 130 members, of the current Republican caucus in the House of Representatives deny the basic tenets of climate science. Sixty-six percent, or at least 30 members, of the Senate Republican caucus also deny the reality of climate change (Atkin, 2014).

What's ironic is that before climate science became the target of ideology, it was the American right wing that developed market-based methods of moving away from fossil fuels. One of their most creative methods was a form of regulation called cap and trade, designed to raise the price of fossil fuels in order to speed the day that renewable energy could compete with fossil fuels on price. However, in recent years, the Tea Party gained power, the climate deniers gained legitimacy, cap and trade was renamed “cap and tax,” and climate policy disappeared from America's federal political agenda.

The Impact of a Noisy Media

If the science is still in question, how can you take action? There is a scientific consensus on many environmental issues, particularly on climate science. Conservative members of the House of Representatives have been unwilling to engage in a discussion of the challenges of sustainability. Influential lobbyists push for a debate about the validity of climate science, which distracts attention from policy discussions. The media, always hungry for stories of government controversy and conspiracy, exacerbates the issue. In our view, the media, in attempts to offer balanced stories, give politically motivated climate change deniers too much airtime. Always reporting both perspectives equally does a disservice to the public and policymakers by giving a small handful of climate change contrarians significant attention—and legitimacy—despite the fact that nearly all climate scientists agree that climate change is underway and that it is caused by human activity. When they share equal airtime it sends the message that the science is more uncertain than it is.

Another problem that arises from this is that it can turn scientists into policy advocates. While scientists may be quite careful about the way they present scientific findings, they might be less careful about presenting policy solutions. Scientists, after all, are not policy experts. When the American right wing and the political assaults funded by their rich benefactors constantly call science into question, they prove to be a distraction to those interested in moving the planet to a path of sustainable economic growth. It is turning analysts into advocates and advocates into hysterics. Again, the media doesn't help the problem. The recent IPCC report focused a great deal of attention on solutions, but media accounts of the report focused on the possibility of food shortages and emphasized extreme catastrophe that is, in our view, unlikely. The result is a conflict-laden, unproductive policy process.

It is important to note that the American public shares a growing belief that the media exaggerates the impact of climate change. Steven F. Hayward, from the Pacific Research Institute, suggests that survey findings imply that the public has become jaded about environmentalism due to extensive “greening” (2011, 250). Observers have described this as apocalypse fatigue resulting from the public's growing skepticism of the flood of media and marketing content touting weak environmental claims. This fatigue, in part because of greenwashing, can be a problem not just for companies engaging in the marketing practices, but for the field of sustainability as a whole. Hayward points to a New York Times article that attributes “green noise” to consumers feeling apathetic, hostile, and suspicious to green claims (Williams, 2008). There is a serious risk of the public becoming tired of and overwhelmed by sustainability. Williams points out:

the news media issues dire reports about disappearing polar bears; Web sites feature Brad Pitt arriving at a movie premiere in his hydrogen-powered BMW…An environmentally conscientious consumer is left to wonder: are low-energy compact fluorescent bulbs better than standard incandescents, even if they contain traces of mercury? Which salad is more earth-friendly, the one made with organic mixed greens trucked from thousands of miles away, or the one with lettuce raised on nearby industrial farms?…If even well-intentioned activists are feeling overwhelmed, the average S.U.V. driver must be tuning out (2008).

We need the media to highlight issues of sustainability, but it becomes dangerous when exaggerated claims cause Americans to tune out. In the 2014 Gallup environment poll, 42 percent observed that media reports of climate change were exaggerated, 33 percent said that the seriousness of the issue was underestimated, and 23 percent thought that reports were generally correct (Jones, 2014). While it is not clear if this is a commentary on the news media or on the issue itself, it reinforces the impression that Americans are not too worried about climate change. And other sustainability issues face the same problem. We need an engaged and informed public, and the media plays an important role in bringing information to the people. But they should not use extremes to terrify people into action, or bombard people with information that seems to overwhelm most audiences instead of inspiring them.

Public Opinion Polling

To understand where Americans stand on these issues, policymakers, politicians, the media, and business leaders rely on public opinion polling. Opinion polls are important resources to help policymakers better understand factors that shape public sentiment. A number of studies examine the historical influence of public opinion on policymaking, and many state that environmental policy is strongly affected by it (Hays, Esler and Hays, 1996). One study found that public opinion's influence on policy increases with public awareness and concern. This correlation holds true even in the face of activities by interest organizations and political parties (Burstein, 2003, 29). Another study found that shifts in public opinion correlate to changes in government attention, which implies that the government is attentive to the public (Pulia, 2008, 9). Not surprisingly, politicians take a keen interest in what their electorate thinks.

However, polls may not always be true representations of what the public really believes. We must consider the accuracy of public opinion data. What do the numbers actually represent? Brace and his colleagues argue that it's necessary to consider factors like social composition, demographic characteristics, and the institutional design of policies when measuring public opinion on issues (Brace et al., 2002, 184). These factors can alter public opinion in some way. The kinds of polls that are conducted also depend on who has the money, personnel, and formal organization to carry them out (Sparrow, 2008, 588). It can be surprisingly easy for politicians—or anyone—to manipulate polls for their own needs.

Sometimes the way the question is framed may not accurately capture public views. It is important to understand the method in which questions are asked, since this can have a significant impact on the results of a study. A team from Stanford University (Yeager et al.) tested variations of the same questions in three different subject groups in order to effectively measure the most important problem that Americans consider the country or world is facing (2011, 126–136). Their study found that applying different methods when asking about Americans' priorities resulted in different outcomes. When asked the traditionally phrased question (What is the most important problem the world is facing?), respondents seldom mentioned global warming or the environment. But these were the most frequent responses when subjects were asked to identify the most serious problem the world will face in the future if nothing is done to stop it. The authors recommend that future surveys pose this question in a variety of ways, because how the questions are phrased can elicit different responses in public opinion polls. It's also important to be aware of the fact that poll questions can also change year to year (adjusting for changes in culture, technology, science, politics, etc.), making comparisons across time difficult.

While we must be careful about how we interpret public opinion polls, and look closely at their design, they nonetheless remain a critical resource for policymakers—one of the few that allow us to take the pulse of the American public's attitudes about given problems and activities.

How Americans View Sustainability

Let us return to the question: What does the American public think about sustainability? According to research gathered from public opinion polls conducted by various organizations such as Pew Research Center, Gallup, and ABC news, the American public ranks the environment, specifically global warming, as a low priority compared to other issues (Hayward, 2011, 243). An analysis of the Pew Research Center's annual survey found that consistently from 2007 to 2013, the economy, jobs, terrorism, and the budget deficit rank at the top of Americans' national priorities, while energy ranks in the middle, and the environment ranks at the bottom with illegal immigration, global trade, and global warming (ecoAmerica, 2013, 10). In Pew's 2014 survey, 80 percent of those polled rated strengthening the nation's economy as a top priority for the president and Congress, while 49 percent rated protecting the environment as a top priority, and 29 percent selected dealing with global warming, making it the second-lowest of the 20 items, just above dealing with global trade issues, which was the top pick for 28 percent (Doherty, Tyson and Dimock, 2014, 1). Despite occasional increases from year to year, issues like energy, the environment, and global warming remain on the low end of concerns compared to other national priorities.

While most Americans may prioritize the economy, this does not mean that the public is willing to trade a clean environment for economic growth. The Pew poll does not pit one against the other; in the case above, survey respondents were ranking a long list of priorities. Many polls are designed with questions where Americans are asked to choose between the environment and economy, and as we have noted before, these are false choices, as sustainability is a requirement of long-term economic growth. In the annual Gallup environment poll, respondents must trade off environmental quality against economic growth. Since we think that economic growth depends on environmental quality, we find the question misleading. Despite the false premise, until recently, Americans have historically believed that protecting the environment should be given a higher priority than economic growth. According to polling data from throughout the 1980s and 1990s, well over 60 percent of the American public favored protecting the environment even if it harmed the economy, and less than 30 percent favored economic growth that might damage the environment (Swift, 2014). The gap between these numbers closed during the George W. Bush administration, and during the Great Recession the focus on economic growth at all costs grew, reaching a peak in 2009 when 54 percent favored that over the environment and only 36 percent favored environment over economic growth. In recent years, the traditional pattern has resumed, and in 2014, 50 percent prioritized environmental protection over economic growth and only 40 percent favored economic growth over environmental protection (Swift, 2014).

When polls do not pit the economy and environment against one another, they can find that support for environmental issues is higher than originally suspected. Unfortunately, even when polls show evidence of broad support for environmental goals, that support can be shallow, and not necessarily substantial enough to lead to action or to persuade certain groups of people “to give up things they enjoy or need—cheap gasoline, jobs in industries like coal mining or logging—in order to advance environmental needs” (Yglesias, 2014). So even if polls say that a majority is in favor of “protecting the environment,” that support might not be as strong as it seems (Shellenberger and Nordhaus, 2004, 11).

How Americans View Climate Change

As you might expect, one of the most commonly polled sustainability issues over the last decade is climate change. It is pervasive in public discourse because it has become a mainstream, almost definitional environmental issue (Burns, 2008, 8). According to a Gallup poll in March 2014, 60 percent of Americans say there is already scientific consensus for climate change (Dugan, 2014). The majority of Americans (65 percent in 2014) believe that the effects of global warming are happening or will begin to happen during their lifetimes, yet at the same time, only 36 percent (as of 2014), believe that “it will pose a serious threat to their way of life during their lifetimes” (Jones, 2014). The scientific community appears to have had some success in communicating the consensus that global warming is occurring, but there is a gap between perceived existence and perceived threat.

Climate change reached the top of the international agenda in 2007 and 2008 following former vice president Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) receiving the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in raising awareness about the threat of climate change, and public support for action. Then in 2008 and 2009, a series of events quickly led to a decline in belief in climate change. A study led by Anthony Leiserowitz at Yale University attributes this decline to several potential causes: the poor state of the economy, a new administration in Congress, abnormal weather, and distrust of scientists.

First, the House of Representatives' climate bill stalled in the Senate while President Obama remained focused on his fight for health care reform (Leiserowitz, et al. 2013, 2). Second, there was a media frenzy surrounding what came to be known as Climategate, in which deceptive emails between British and American scientists were released to the public. Adding to the public's skepticism of climate scientists' claims, the scientists who authored the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment report faced allegations that they had been pressured to suppress certain articles, a claim the IPCC denied. While several minor mistakes were later identified in the report, an independent review of the IPCC process found that the errors did not undermine the conclusions of the report. Additionally, December 2009 brought record cold temperatures and snowfall in the eastern half of the U.S., leading to some climate skeptics and deniers to assert that climate change was a hoax (a claim repeated during the polar vortex winter in early 2014). In fact, a 2014 study published in Nature found that the polar vortex—the unusual freezing temperatures that much of the U.S. experienced—may actually be linked to decreases in Arctic sea ice cover from global warming (Schultz, 2014). Finally, the global recession appeared to influence the public's views: “As concerns about one risk increase (e.g., the economy), concerns about other risks tend to decrease. Thus, soaring public worries about jobs and the state of the economy may have contributed to the decline in public concerns about climate change and other issues” (Leiserowitz, et. al. 2013, 4). Following this plunge, the U.S. public's belief in climate change has gradually begun to climb back up, but still remains low compared to other nations.

According to the Pew Research Center, since the low point in 2009, the percentage of Americans saying there is solid evidence of global warming has steadily increased to 69 percent in 2013. For comparison, 2009's low was 57 percent and the high, in 2006, was 77 percent. The same trend line is found in those who say that the rise in the earth's temperature is attributable to human activity. That high, from 2006 through 2008, was 47 percent. This number ticked down to 34 percent in 2009 before rising back to 42 percent in 2012 and 2013 (Dimock, Doherty, Christian, 2013, 3). However, poll responses always seems to account for how individuals are affected by the issue. The general public may not understand how a certain environmental concern directly affects them; for example, opinion polls show that people view the effects of climate change on their personal lives differently than its effects on wider society (Lorenzoni and Pidgeon, 2006, 80). People care about issues that they can see and feel. If problems are so abstract that people can't make that connection, it is difficult to capture their attention.

U.S. Public Opinion and Political Ideology

According to most U.S. public opinion polls, political ideology is the most consistent predictor of environmental opinion, with Democrats and liberals showing greater concern for the environment than their Republican and conservative counterparts (Konisky, 2008, 144). Gallup's analysts consider the evolution of hyperpartisan politics to be the driver of the trend to prioritize environment over economy or vice versa. According to the Gallup Poll Social Series survey, before George W. Bush's presidency, both Republicans and Democrats prioritized environmental protection over economic growth; in 2000, 60 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of Democrats prioritized environmental protection over economic growth in response to Gallup's standard trade-off question. By 2011, the percentage of Republicans who were environmental advocates had declined to 19 percent, recovering to 32 percent in 2014. Similarly, Democrats favoring economic growth at the cost of environmental damage peaked at 44 percent in 2009, but by 2014 had declined to 27 percent. The number of Democrats prioritizing the environment over economic growth grew from 55 percent in 2013 to 66 percent in 2014 (Swift, 2014). Clearly, we are seeing a result that combines objective economic conditions with partisan politics. The shock of job loss and economic insecurity dominated American politics from 2008 until 2011, but by 2014 we saw the political impact of the Great Recession begin to fade.

We can see the politicization of the climate issue even more clearly when looking at the poll by political party. “In 2009, 35% of Republicans, 53% of independents and 75% of Democrats said there was solid evidence of rising temperatures on earth. Today, half of Republicans (50%), 62% of independents and 88% of Democrats say this” according to Pew's October 2013 survey. However, less than a quarter of Republicans (24 percent), less than half of independents (43 percent), and only two-thirds of Democrats (66 percent) say that there is solid evidence that global warming exists and is the result of human behavior (Pew Research Center, 2014).

An analysis of other environmental issues can also illustrate the party split. A March 2013 survey displayed broad public support (66 percent) for the building of the Keystone XL pipeline (Dimock, Doherty, Christian, 2013, 1). However, a sharp divide on the issue by political parties was apparent. Participants were asked whether they “favor or oppose building the Keystone XL pipeline that would transport oil from Canada's oil sands region through the Midwest to refineries in Texas?” Republicans overwhelmingly favor the construction of the pipeline with 82 percent supporting, compared to 70 percent of independents, and about half of Democrats (54 percent) (Dimock, Doherty, Christian, 2013, 8).

A similar September 2013 Pew survey assessed EPA regulations, and found that nearly two-thirds of the public favor stricter emissions limits on power plants; again we saw a significant difference by party: 74 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of independents, and 52 percent of Republicans were in favor of restrictions (Dimock and Doherty, 2013, 2). In 2011, during Congressional hearings regarding loosening standards of the Clean Air Act, the American Lung Association released a bipartisan survey examining the public views of the EPA's updating and enforcing clean air standards (American Lung Association, 2011). Based on the survey's findings, three out of four voters supported EPA efforts to set stricter standards on specific air pollutants and fuel efficiency. In addition, 68 percent thought Congress should not stop the EPA from updating the Clean Air Act standards, and 69 percent believed that EPA scientists rather than Congressional members should be the ones setting pollution standards. “The survey demonstrates that when it comes to protecting EPA's ability to update and enforce clean air standards, Independents and moderate voters are more in line with Democrats and liberals” (American Lung Association, 2011). These findings indicate the broad public support for the regulation of air quality—an issue closer to people's everyday lives than climate change. Gallup's 2014 survey also found that Americans care about the quality of the environment and focus more on immediate environmental insults (like air pollution) than on issues like climate, which they consider a long-term threat. Bipartisan support can be found for having clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and an environment free of toxics.

Opinions on Government's Role in Sustainability

The 2014 Gallup poll also asked respondents about the government's role in environmental performance over time. It found that Americans are not sure if the environment's quality is getting better or worse: 50 percent think it is getting worse and 42 percent think it is getting better (Riffkin, 2014). Back in 2008, 68 percent thought the environment was getting worse and 26 percent thought it was getting better. The next year, with newly elected and still-hopeful President Obama in office, the number of people who thought the environment was getting worse dropped by 17 percent and the number of people who thought it was getting better increased by 15 percent. In 2007, before Obama was elected, only 9 percent of all Democrats thought the environment was getting better, but by 2009 that had grown to 39 percent. While the views of Democrats shifted dramatically, the percentage of Republican environmental optimists remained in the 40 percent range for most of the past decade.

This means that some of the responses to this question recorded perceptions of the government's performance in improving and protecting the environment. In our view, this question does not provide a clear read on people's perceptions of the nation's overall environmental quality because it is measuring a management dynamic: Is the situation getting better or worse? People are telling the pollsters whether they believe that government is making the situation better or worse.

When you look at polls question by question, the overall impression may be that the public is just confused, but there is a compelling logic here. Let's think of all of these survey questions as elements of a multiple-indicator measure of American environmentalism. Here's what the polls tell us: People know that the planet is under threat, and they are willing to address the most urgent threats—especially if they directly experience them. In that respect, climate change is a tough issue. It is caused everywhere and its impacts are subtle and largely in the future. Drinking water in Charleston, West Virginia, air pollution in Los Angeles, California, and toxics in New York City's waterways can be seen, smelled, and felt. Americans understand those issues. They understand the threat posed by climate change, but they consider the threats posed by poisoned land, air, and water to be a higher priority.

Americans think that it is government's job to keep the environment clean enough to protect their health and the health of their loved ones. Some think that government is doing a good job in delivering that protection; some do not. But overall, Americans believe that many other public policy issues are more urgent. They understand and want to see action on environmental issues. It may well be that Americans have judged that government is making sufficient and steady progress in protecting the environment. In that sense, the issue works like crime or education. These issues have great latent potential, but only become a high priority when government is perceived as not doing enough.

The Role of Citizens

We know that public policy is much more likely to be politically durable if it touches on an issue that is salient to the broad public (Patashnik, 2003, 205). And we have seen that issues that are close to people's everyday lives can achieve this more easily. Sustainability rises in importance when it is transformed from an environmental issue into one of integrating economics and overall quality of life. Environmental issues that are supported only by environmentalists are unlikely to achieve political momentum and effect change. We also know that policymakers are more likely to take action on an issue when the public as a whole, outside the community of environmental specialists, takes an interest (Burns, 2008, 8). Making sustainability a high-profile issue by showcasing that it is critical to our economic growth and tied to our overall well-being can give issues of environmental sustainability greater legitimacy and political support. According to Steven Burns: “Given an infinite number of issues and a limited amount of time, policymakers have more reason to work on high-profile matters and have less to gain politically from their efforts on lesser-known issues” (Burns, 2008, 10).

An engaged citizen base is an important driver of public policy. Advocacy groups can influence the policy process, particularly in the agenda-setting stage (Johnson et al., 2010, 2284). Many achievements in the environmental arena dealing with clean air, water, and toxic sites, happened in the wake of grassroots mobilization and public support (Loewentheil, 2013). Sustainability is connected to people's daily lives—protecting families' health, advancing the source of their economic well-being, and providing a better quality of living. Sometimes, this can happen after the passage of environmental legislation. An active public may not support an issue until they recognize the benefits of a given policy. Huber and Stephens find that reform policies that quickly receive support do so because citizens enjoyed the benefits—the policies themselves changed the preferences of the public (2001, 29).

The Role of Policy Design and Implementation

The implementation of any given policy is inherently political, which is important given that policies often continue to be defined during this process (Lockwood, 2013, 1340). It is important for a policy to be designed with enough flexibility to evolve to meet the needs of changeable circumstances. Policymaking is an iterative process and program design is incredibly important in ensuring that later stages of implementation can adjust to new information, knowledge, and technology while adhering to the original goals of the policy. It is possible for a policy to become so rooted in our culture and political practice that it becomes essentially irreversible; it is even possible with environmental reform, such as with the Clean Air Act of 1970 (Patashnik, 2003, 211). The Clean Air Act has stood the test of time, despite efforts to limit its scope, challenge its legitimacy, and reduce funding for its enforcement. It is now being used to address climate change in ways that the writers of the legislation couldn't have possibly predicted. Even so, it was written in such a way that it can be utilized to address this new problem. Because acceptance of a policy or passage of a law is simply the first step, making changes to support its survival is an important process. Many scholars cite the importance of a policy feedback effect among politically important groups or even among the public in order to enable its existence in the long term (Lockwood, 2013, 1341; Patashnik, 2008). The job is not done once legislation is passed, and the coalitions of stakeholders cannot drop support after the president signs a bill.

The Role of Science

Finally, we must address the role of science in decision making, policy, and politics. Science and sustainability policymaking ought to go hand in hand. Science should inform what gets on the sustainability political agenda, what laws are needed and how laws are implemented. Policy should be based on information about the world around us. Scientific evidence can play a large role in decision-making, particularly as science identifies new risks; however, implications for policy are rarely clear cut, and scientific evidence can be a source of political conflict (Rayner, 2006, 4; Sarewitz, 2004, 393). We see this most clearly with climate change but it cuts across all issues. The more knowledge we have, the more questions arise, and the more information becomes available for interested parties to choose from. Science is inherently tied to uncertainty of varying levels. We cannot avoid that, but we should use the best knowledge we can obtain to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, we have seen that opposing scientific views on a single issue can have the effect of canceling each other out (Rayner, 2006, 5). Science is consistently subject to being politicized, which can lead to gridlock on policy reform, sustainability or otherwise, but in the end it's not about the science. The controversy only exists because of the underlying conflict over values and interests (Sarewitz, 2004, 397).

Ultimately, our lifestyles are an expression of our values. Those values find expression in our use of energy and in the coastal locations of our cities and homes. Efforts to change those values directly will tend to fail. While crises and catastrophes might change attitudes and behavior for a time, political propaganda that calls the science fake can also influence public opinion. For many people, it is preferable to doubt environmental science because if it is true they will need to sacrifice their comfortable ways of life. As long as the issue is framed as a stark trade-off, people will resist its premises. It is a political non-starter to argue that we must turn off the lights and get out of our cars or we will all be flooded out by sea-level rise. Politicians must reframe the issue, highlighting how our economy and lifestyles depend on a sustainable planet, and they must do it soon.

Toward a New Politics of Sustainability

Sustainability integrates economic development with environmental protection. The old politics of environmental protection and the old politics of economic development are combined. Infrastructure that might be built by government to facilitate development is now assessed for its impact on water and energy consumption and its ecological impact. Environmental regulations are designed not simply to preserve resources, but to ensure they are available for human use. The political dynamics of this transition from environmentalism to sustainability is still underway. The old political paradigm of choosing between environment and economic growth is breaking down, but it still influences decision makers and politics. Our prediction is that this old way of thinking will continue to wither away.