John C. Pierce

Resilience and sustainability in US urban areas

The relationship between the level of resilience and the level of sustainability plans and policies found in 40 American urban areas is examined. The resilience index reflects motivation, capacity and information; sustainability plans and policies are measured by a content analysis of city documents. The results show that: the presence of sustainability plans and policies is related to resilience, but not to aggregate measures of diversity, formal education or proportion of persons living in poverty; resilience has a significant impact on sustainability plans and policies even when controlling for diversity, education, poverty, and inequality; resilience is more likely to be present in a communitarian political culture; and resilience retains its impact on sustainability plans and policies even when controlling for type of political culture.

Environmental Value Considerations in Public Attitudes About Alternative Energy Development in Oregon and Washington

The 2013 Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy signed by the Governors of California, Oregon, and Washington and the Premier of British Columbia launched a broadly announced public commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through multiple strategies. Those strategies include the development and increased use of renewable energy sources. The initiative recognized that citizens are both a central component in abating greenhouse gas emissions with regard to their energy use behaviors, and are important participants in the public policymaking process at both state and local levels of government. The study reported here examines whether either support or opposition to state government leadership in the development of alternative energy technologies can be explained by environmental values as measured by the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP). The research results are based on mail surveys of randomly selected households conducted throughout Oregon and Washington in late 2009 and early 2010. Findings suggest that younger and more highly educated respondents are significantly more likely than older and less educated respondents to either support or strongly support government policies to promote bioenergy, wind, geothermal, and solar energy. Those respondents with higher NEP scores are also more supportive of government promotion of wind, geothermal, and solar technologies than are those with lower NEP scores. Support for wave energy does not show a statistical correlation with environmental values, maybe a reflection of this technology’s nascent level of development. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of these findings for environmental management.

Social Capital and Emergency Management Planning: A Test of Community Context Effects on Formal and Informal Collaboration

Using a sample of U.S. counties, this article explores the relationships between community level resilience, represented by capacity (social capital), information (uses of technology), and motivation (perception of threats to county,) on the one hand, and county levels of emergency management (EM) collaboration on the other. We hypothesize that the greater relative presence of bridging social capital networks will be associated with greater levels of collaboration in county EM planning, while the greater relative presence of bonding social capital networks will be associated with lower levels of collaboration. Results indicate that first there are two collaborative environments to assess—the formal and informal—and, second, the presence of political networks (seen as predominantly bridging) relative to the presence of religious networks (viewed as predominantly bonding) has a significant and positive effect on informal collaboration levels, but not on formal collaboration levels. These findings provide insight into how community context in the form of network social capital matters for collaborative EM planning efforts. These results add to prior research that focuses primarily on organizational and institutional sources of collaboration and much less on the community level contextual factors at play.

The Impact of Auditory and Visual Experience with Wind Turbines on Support for Wind Production and Proximity-Based Opposition

ABSTRACT Community acceptance is a key factor contributing to the outcome of wind power deployment efforts. This study considers the views of an experientially informed subset of the public: individuals living in select Washington and California counties that have active wind farms. We divide respondents into two groups based on a qualitative measure of their proximity—those who can see or hear turbines from their homes and those who cannot—and empirically examine the effect that exposure has on the support expressed for wind farms at different proposed locations. We find that negative perceptions of aesthetics and fear of property value reductions are major determinants of opposition. However, all else equal, those currently living near turbines are more sympathetic toward them, feeling that turbines are more attractive and less disturbing than those who live farther away. We propose four possible explanations for this phenomenon: familiarity, rationalization, desensitization, and economics.

Social capital, institutional performance, and sustainability in Italy's regions: Still evidence of enduring historical effects?

Abstract Robert Putnams celebrated book, Making Democracy Work, identified “path dependent” sources of differences in social capital in Italys regions as an explanation for their variations in success at “overcoming dilemmas of collective action” (1993, p. 167). This article identifies among Italys regions: (1) the relationships among Putnams historical legacy-based levels of social capital on the one hand, and subsequent contemporary levels of social capital on the other hand; and, (2) the relationships of both of these sets of measures to variations in contemporary Italian regional institutional performance and sustainability indicators. The results show that: (1) historic and contemporary social capital levels at the regional level are strongly linked; and, (2), that they both are strongly related to contemporary indicators of regional institutional performance and sustainability initiatives, but that the historic effects appear to take a path through contemporary social capital levels. These findings are consistent with Putnams theory of path dependence in explaining the persisting differences in performance across Italian regions.

Sociopolitical sources of creative cultural capital in U.S. counties

ABSTRACT This article examines the social, political, and demographic sources of variation in creative cultural capital in over 3,100 U.S. counties. The analysis presented here focuses on institutionalized forms of creative activity, as reflected by employment in museums, libraries, and the visual and performing arts sectors. Study results indicate that community-level variables account for a statistically significant portion of variation in creative cultural capital. Cultural industries are likely to thrive in communities that rely on different forms of social and religious capital and the presence of certain types of political culture legacy. Mean education level tends to increase creative cultural capital, whereas income inequality and Internet connectivity tend to depress it. These effects, however, vary by metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural geographical settings. Clearly, there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to the goal of enhancing creative cultural capital at the local community level.

Job satisfaction in Cascadia: A comparison of British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington civil servants

Abstract Canada and the USA share a common cultural source in the British Empire, yet within shared democratic traditions, very different political structures, policy processes, and values have been identified. Canada is seen as having a more deferential culture more supportive of government while Americans have been argued to be more individualistic and cynical about the role of government in society. Using a political culture framework, this study examines the degree to which Canadian and U.S. civil servants perceive societal respect for their public sector jobs, and the impact of those perceptions on individual job satisfaction. It is argued that if civil servants feel more valued by society, they are more likely to have higher levels of public service motivation, which then contributes to higher levels of individual job satisfaction. This study employs surveys of Oregon, Washington and British Columbian civil servants conducted in 2011 and 2012 to investigate this relationship. Findings suggest that British Columbian civil servants feel more valued by society when compared to Oregon and Washington civil servants, and these perceptions of positive societal support are associated with higher levels of individual job satisfaction.

Oregon Coast Wave Energy

Wave energy development off the coast of Oregon is still in its infancy. In 2015 a major developer—Ocean Power Technologies—pulled out of its plan to place 100 wave energy buoys off the coast of Reedsport, Oregon. The developer stated that the project had become too expensive and “too complicated” (Schwartz, Wave energy development pulls plug on Oregon project. Oregon Public Broadcasting. http://www.opb.org/news/article/wave-energy-developer-pulls-plug-on-oregon-project/. Accessed 15 Aug 2016, 2015). There are still many areas available for future development with much support from the state government; however, developers will need to demonstrate that “…surrounding ecological and economic resources won’t be adversely impacted” (Schwartz 2015). There also are still many critics of wave development, including various fishing interests, environmental groups, and the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. With efforts underway to develop the resource and the need for Oregon to meet the 2007 RPS to provide 25% of retail sales of electricity from renewable sources by 2025, the development of wave energy will continue to generate ‘green versus green’ conflict.

What Has Been Learned? Process and Values Matter!

This concluding chapter summarizes what has been learned from this work’s case studies and the surveys of citizens in the western U.S. As discussed in the introductory chapter, the three Pacific Coast states of Washington, Oregon and California have been active participants in the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy. These three states are host to numerous alternative energy technology (AET) installation controversies; each state has a long history of environmental concerns and has spawned major home-grown environmental movements; and each state has extensive experience with both carbon-based and non-carbon-based (such as hydroelectric) energy production for the power grid. The state of Idaho is included in the analyses as the case of a neighboring state that has not been so proactive promoting non-hydro AET. The case studies demonstrated that the process of siting AET should be transparent, fair, and incorporate local concerns about the local environmental consequences of AET siting. The case studies and survey data also reveal that values—including political orientations, postmaterialism, and most importantly the NEP—are important predictors of support for renewable energy technologies, but also play a role in predicting public preferences concerning environmental tradeoffs. At the same time, this study also found that globalists (strong environmental values with strong support for AET over local environmental concerns) differ in certain of their values from localists (strong environmental values with strong support for local environmental concerns over AET).

Background: Energy Use, Capacity, and Policies

This chapter provides background and context for the book, including the four alternative energy case studies provided in Part II and the analysis of public opinion data in Part III. The development of alternative energy technologies is a primary focus of energy policy in California, Oregon, and Washington, with each of the states engaged in regional efforts with British Columbia to promote the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy of 2013. Although more conservative Idaho is not a signatory to the action plan, it does have enormous renewable energy capacity and does offer some renewable energy incentive programs in conjunction with utilities. This chapter provides each state’s energy profile in terms of overall consumption and the major sources of energy currently in use, followed by an overview of state renewable energy capacity, as well as current regional and state energy policies.