Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: As agreed upon by international climate scientists, decarbonization in the American Midwest is critical to keeping the planet below the 1.5C increase in global temperature from pre-industrial levels. However, most previous research that evaluates climate action plans (CAPs) to find their weaknesses and provide policy recommendations neglects this crucial region of the United States. To fill this gap, this paper replicates Deetjen et al.’s (2018) review of CAPs in 29 US cities by applying their CAP rubric to 11 Midwestern cities. The results of both quantitative analysis were used to analyze the differences in plans in the Midwest versus the Non-Midwest. Since the original data set was expanded, CAPs from cities with state plans and without state plans were also compared. Analyzing the compiled data reveals that the Midwest is lacking in policies relevant to density, but excelled in policies relevant to appliance efficiency and architectural form. However, there was no significant difference in average scores between Midwestern cities and other, more studied cities’ CAPs, and cities from states with state CAPs did slightly better on average.
Source: Lincoln (University of Nebraska)
Author: Baker, Megan
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7019472182