Neoliberal climate policy: from market fetishism to the developmental state

There is a broad literature that suggests that neoliberalism is the predominant force structuring climate change policy. However, analyses that focus only on the creation of carbon markets as neoliberalism's effect on climate policy are too restricted. Focusing on the United States, as the paradigmatic neoliberal state, it is demonstrated that, because neoliberal states must nevertheless intervene to promote accumulation, and because system-wide regulation of greenhouse gases has been impossible to achieve, the United States has developed a range of alternative means by which to pursue emissions reductions. These means derive from the ?strategic selectivities? (or historical path-dependencies) inherent in federal policy development in the United States. The focus is on three ways that this has occurred: the growth of sub-national regulation; the use of executive authority; and in particular the deployment of a dense network of research and development infrastructure through which the development of new energy and environmental technologies is supported. There is a broad literature that suggests that neoliberalism is the predominant force structuring climate change policy. However, analyses that focus only on the creation of carbon markets as neoliberalism's effect on climate policy are too restricted. Focusing on the United States, as the paradigmatic neoliberal state, it is demonstrated that, because neoliberal states must nevertheless intervene to promote accumulation, and because system-wide regulation of greenhouse gases has been impossible to achieve, the United States has developed a range of alternative means by which to pursue emissions reductions. These means derive from the ?strategic selectivities? (or historical path-dependencies) inherent in federal policy development in the United States. The focus is on three ways that this has occurred: the growth of sub-national regulation; the use of executive authority; and in particular the deployment of a dense network of research and development infrastructure through which the development of new energy and environmental technologies is supported.