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Viral Governance and

Mixed Motivations: How and

Why U.S. Cities Engaged on the

Climate Change Issue, 2005–2007

Toby Warden

Cities are oft en considered a valuable starting place for reducing greenhouse
gas emissions to address global warming. As primary actors on urban policies,
city leaders are also responsible for decisions on local land-use planning and
waste management—domains essential to the implementation of environmen-
tally sustainable policies (Betsill 2001; Bulkeley 2000). In addition, mayors and
city offi cials are oft en the fi rst responders when a natural disaster or an extreme
weather event has urgent local consequences.
Yet municipalities might abstain from eff orts to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions for numerous reasons. Betsill (2001) identifi ed the challenge of allo-
cating scarce local resources for a problem that was largely framed as a global
issue. Additionally, questions have been posed as to whether there can be suc-
cessful locally based mitigation without wide-scale national and international
participation. DeAngelo and Harvey (1998) pointed out that although a com-
munity may strive to control emissions locally, the resulting impact may not be
felt where the mitigation eff orts have taken place, thereby decreasing tangible
incentives for action.
Furthermore, global warming has been largely considered to be a “creep-
ing” problem; people have had a tendency to feel removed from the problem
in “space and time” (Betsill 2001; Wilbanks and Kates 1999). Turnpenny and

6

Th e research for this paper was made possible through fellowships from the Newkirk Center for Science and Society,
the University of California’s School of Social Ecology Dean’s Dissertation Writing Fellowship, and the generous
support of the Department of Environmental Health, Science, and Policy at the University of California, Irvine.