scholarly journals Planet or pocketbook? Environmental motives complement financial motives for energy efficiency across the political spectrum in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 101938
Author(s):  
Hale A. Forster ◽  
Howard Kunreuther ◽  
Elke U. Weber
2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Steinmetz

The widespread embrace of imperial terminology across the political spectrum during the past three years has not led to an increased level of conceptual or theoretical clarity around the word “empire.” There is also disagreement about whether the United States is itself an empire, and if so, what sort of empire it is; the determinants of its geopolitical stance; and the effects of “empire as a way of life” on the “metropole.” Using the United States and Germany in the past 200 years as empirical cases, this article proposes a set of historically embedded categories for distinguishing among different types of imperial practice. The central distinction contrasts territorial and nonterritorial types of modern empire, that is, colonialism versus imperialism. Against world-system theory, territorial and nonterritorial approaches have not typi-cally appeared in pure form but have been mixed together both in time and in the repertoire of individual metropolitan states. After developing these categories the second part of the article explores empire's determinants and its effects, again focusing on the German and U.S. cases but with forays into Portuguese and British imperialism. Supporters of overseas empire often couch their arguments in economic or strategic terms, and social theorists have followed suit in accepting these expressed motives as the “taproot of imperialism” (J. A. Hobson). But other factors have played an equally important role in shaping imperial practices, even pushing in directions that are economically and geopolitically counterproductive for the imperial power. Postcolonial theorists have rightly empha-sized the cultural and psychic processes at work in empire but have tended to ignore empire's effects on practices of economy and its regulation. Current U.S. imperialism abroad may not be a danger to capitalism per se or to America's overall political power, but it is threatening and remaking the domestic post-Fordist mode of social regulation.


2019 ◽  
pp. 149-166
Author(s):  
Brett Krutzsch

The epilogue moves past the period of 1995 to 2015 to consider responses to the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida that left forty-nine people, predominantly LGBT people of color, dead. In the wake of the massacre, legislators at each end of the political spectrum used the shooting to advance their own political agendas, from advocating for stricter gun laws, to lobbying for policies that would restrict Muslims from entering the United States, to creating awareness of the unique vulnerabilities of LGBT people of color. As the largest mass killing of LGBT Americans in U.S. history, the shooting, and the myriad political responses to the tragedy, revealed the precarious position of many LGBT people even after the purported victory of “marriage equality” one year earlier. The epilogue also offers possibilities for how to engage in memorialization in ways that promote greater awareness of, and space for, gender, racial, religious, and sexual diversity.


1969 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard B. Rosenberg

It is not surprising that the United States produced a Socialist Party; it would be astonishing if one had not developed. American history is filled with radical and protest parties, ranging through every shade of the political spectrum and sharing the conviction that the major parties did not or would not represent their particular interests.


Author(s):  
Gregory A. Barton

The movement to maintain the influence of the countryside and of farmers in particular dominated political thought in England and the United States throughout most of the nineteenth century, and still influenced millions into the mid-twentieth century. Aspects of agrarianism, romantic farm literature, and its many variants on the continent of Europe—including biodynamics and German biological farming—all can be seen as building blocks that merged with the organic farming protocols pioneered by Albert Howard (discussed further in later chapters). The reaction against industrialism must be understood as both a cultural and a political movement. This explains why—though socialist and leftist thinkers of all stripes also shared agrarian ideals—the main arguments against the effects of industrialism were from those on the right of the political spectrum.


2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Galella

The two white male cosponsors, a Democrat and a Republican, dressed as King George and Hamilton, respectively, as they rapped the resolution in the state senate. InHamilton, chief creator Lin-Manuel Miranda stakes out space for an immigrant from the Caribbean who was in the room where the United States of America was founded. Based on Ron Chernow's biography,Hamiltonfollows the struggles and successes of Alexander Hamilton in a story largely told by his nemesis, Aaron Burr. The musical opened Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in 2015 and subsequently moved to Broadway. With its Founders Chic historical approach, hip-hop aesthetic, and multiracial cast, this Broadway blockbuster has earned substantial commercial and critical acclaim from across the political spectrum. Former President Barack Obama joked, “Hamilton, I'm pretty sure, is the only thing Dick Cheney and I agree on.”


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hale A Forster ◽  
Howard Kunreuther ◽  
Elke U. Weber

While policies to encourage low-cost energy saving behaviors have increasinglyincorporated nonfinancial behavioral science interventions to motivate behavioral change, policies to encourage large structural energy efficiency upgrades have been slow to adopt such tools to motivate consumers, relying instead on economic incentives to reduce upfront cost and targeting financial and comfort motivations. This research examines whether adding an emphasis on environmental benefits can increase interest in these upgrades and explores whether political ideology moderates the effectiveness of different environmental benefits frames. In Study 1, we explore how homeowners rate the importance of financial and nonfinancial decision factors of weatherization, a large energy efficiency upgrade, including the financial, informational, environmental, material, and social benefits and costs. We find that environmental benefits explain the most variance of any decision factor in reported likelihood to upgrade. In Study 2, we examine whether adding a description of environmental benefits of upgrades to their financial benefits can increase upgrade likelihood across political ideologies. We find that adding environmental benefits framed as mitigation of climate change increases liberals’ likelihood to upgrade but has no effect on conservatives; however, adding benefits framed as an increase in environmental stewardship and energy independence increases both liberals and conservatives’ likelihood to upgrade. This research demonstrates that, contrary to existing practice, adding environmental messages after characterizing financial benefits is likely to increase investment in energy efficiency upgrades across the political spectrum.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4(73)) ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
A.S. Abramyan

The purpose of the article is to identify the main measures of populists to combat the removal of COVID 19 on the example of the United States of America and Italy. The study analyzes populist leaders across the political spectrum coped with the COVID-19 outbreak. The observation shows how, in the example of the United States, Italy such as their optimistic bias and complacency, ambiguity and ignorance of science. The study analyzes the measures taken by the Italian government and the US President. The results of the research allow us to use its materials and theoretical results primarily in political science. They can also be used in the development of specialized courses on modern globalization processes, political leadership, party development, and multiculturalism policy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-372
Author(s):  
DANIEL K. WILLIAMS

Is American Evangelicalism a politically progressive tradition? For contemporary observers who are familiar with American Evangelicalism only in its modern, politically conservative guise, the idea that many American Evangelicals have traditionally been on the left end of the political spectrum might come as a surprise. Yet, according to Randall Balmer's Evangelicalism in America and Frances Fitzgerald's The Evangelicals, both of which offer two-hundred-year surveys of Evangelical political activism in the United States, the Christian Right is an aberration in American Evangelicalism and not representative of the tradition's political orientation.


2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Desch

Why has the United States, with its long-standing Liberal tradition, come to embrace the illiberal policies it has in recent years? The conventional wisdom is that al-Qaida's attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent war on terrorism have made America less Liberal. The logic of this argument is straightforward: interstate war has historically undermined domestic liberties, and the war on terrorism is causing the United States to follow this well-worn path. This explanation confronts a puzzle, however: illiberal U.S. policies—including the pursuit of global hegemony, launching of a preventive war, imposition of restrictions on civil liberties in the name of national security, and support for torture under certain circumstances—manifested themselves even before the September 11 terrorist attacks and were embraced across the political spectrum. Indeed, it is precisely American Liberalism that makes the United States so illiberal today. Under certain circumstances, Liberalism itself impels Americans to spread their values around the world and leads them to see the war on terrorism as a particularly deadly type of conflict that can be won only by employing illiberal tactics.


1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 18-23
Author(s):  
Robert G. Gilpin

The strategic consensus that has characterized American official and popular thinking about nuclear weapons since World War II has greatly eroded in recent years. That consensus consisted not only of an American determination to use nuclear weapons to deter a direct Soviet attack on the United States but also of a commitment to extend the American deterrent to cover a Soviet nuclear or large-scale conventional attack on America's principal allies. In the face of the recent massive and continuing growth of Soviet nuclear and conventional capabilities this consensus has come under growing challenge.This challenge to the consensus on the policy of nuclear deterrence has come from both ends of the political spectrum. On the political “right,” the Reagan administration has argued that deterrence alone is too weak a reed to forestall a Soviet attack on the United States or one of its allies; the prevention of a Soviet attack requires the development of a nuclear war-fighting strategy similar to that which the Soviets themselves are presumed to possess. On the political “left,” a large and highly vocal antinuclear movement largely under the banner of the “freeze,” challenges one aspect or another of the deterrence strategy and demands a deemphasis on, if not the complete elimination of, nuclear weapons. Both of these positions, I believe, are flawed and fail to provide a satisfactory solution to the difficult situation in which the United States finds itself in the closing decades of the twentieth century.


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