Title: Using local knowledge to shrink the individual carbon footprint
Abstract: Key words: climate-change mitigation, environmental federalism, GHG emissions, GHG-emitting behaviors, greenhouse-gas emissionsEntire texts have been devoted to exploring the meaning of the term “lifestyle”
and sociological understandings of lifestyle are complex and nuanced.1 For
present purposes, however, a more simple articulation of the term will suffice.
Lifestyle can mean “mode of living” (Sobel 1981) including “patterns of
action” (Chaney 1996: 11) and “patterns of ways of living” (ibid.: 12). Without
rendering judgment, one observation about the current lifestyles and associated
behaviors of Americans is that they indirectly and directly lead to the emission
of a high volume of greenhouse gases (GHGs).2 One American diplomat is said
to have remarked, in preparing for the Rio Earth Summit, “the American lifestyle is not up for negotiation.” (Salzman 1997: 1256) A growing number of
legal scholars recognize the need for environmental policy to capture individual
GHG emissions, and have begun to explore whether and how the law can or
should be used to change individual, GHG-emitting lifestyles and behaviors
(Babcock 2009a, 2009b; Dernbach 2008; Doremus and Hanemann 2008; Green2008; Lin 2009; Vandenbergh et al. 2008; Vandenbergh and Steinemann 2007:
1712-14, 1726-27). One consideration in designing a policy aimed at individual
GHG-emitting behaviors will be the division of authority between different
levels of government. As evidenced by the opening quotations, local governments are often characterized as well situated to influence individual behavior,
particularly GHG-emitting behaviors (ICLEI). This idea links concepts developed in the environmental federalism literature with work discussing the use of
law to influence environmental behaviors to consider the competence of local
governments with respect to influencing individual, GHG-emitting lifestyle
and behavior choices (Vandenbergh 2004: 597-99, 2005a: 1103-4; 2005b:
2, 4; Vandenbergh et al. 2008: 1715-16; Vandenbergh and Steinemann 2007:
1688-89, 1696).
Many local governments have been surprisingly active in adopting measuresto mitigate climate change. Local mitigation efforts include everything from
self-imposed GHG emissions-reduction targets and renewable portfolio standards, to “green” building codes (Healy 2007). This local action is surprising
because local efforts to mitigate climate change defy a bedrock principle
of environmental federalism – namely, that jurisdictions cannot be relied upon
to curtail environmental harms where they do not internalize the costs and
benefits of doing so (Stewart 1977: 1215-16; Adelman and Engel 2008:
1846-47). Notably, in the context of climate change, localities that undertake
climate-change mitigation efforts internalize all of the costs of such measures
yet share the benefits (reduced emissions and potentially lessened climatechange impacts) with the world (Trisolini and Zasloff 2009).
The unexpected willingness of local governments to engage in climate-changemitigation has occasioned a flurry of reflection and debate about whether local
efforts are meaningful (ibid.: 88),3 the implications of local climate-change
initiatives for theories of environmental federalism (Adelman and Engel 2008:
1847-49; Engel 2006: 1026-28), and how the motivations of local actors
can be understood (Engel 2006: 1023-25; Trisolini and Zasloff 2009: 90).
Additionally, there has been much discussion about the efficacy of local actions
and the appropriate role for local governments in addressing the climate-change
problem.4