UW Political Science Professor Aseem Prakash and his colleague Nives Dolšak from the UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs penned an article addressing President Trump’s climate politics and how environmentalists should respond to it for the website The Conversation. Based on the fact that “policies that create concrete benefits for specific constituencies are hard to discontinue,” their recommendation to environmentalists is:
“In our view, environmentalists need to defend environmental regulations by emphasizing their concrete benefits for well-defined constituencies, and mobilize those groups to protect their gains.”
That includes not just greens, but also workers. After all, “regulations can be job creators, but this truth needs to be told effectively.” Thus, instead of “fighting locally beneficial programs with global arguments,” environmentalists must stress the local importance of green regulations.
The article titled “Climate Politics: Environmentalists need to think globally, but act locally” appeared on The Conversation website on March 27, 2017. The Conversation “is an independent source of news and views from the academic and research community” that launched in October 2014.