What to do about climate change? The question has become a salient issue on the agendas of government and business as well as a concern of publics around the world. This book focuses on responses in the United States. It presents an analysis of the changing patterns and trends in perspectives about climate change, preferences about a broad array of actions that can be undertaken to address it, and the record of government and business responses to the problem. The analysis is also, in part, an account of how and why business and government in the USA have fallen behind efforts to address the problem in many other countries. The book thus addresses a wide range of questions: What does the public want government and business to do and not do? What are the specific measures that have and have not been taken by government and business? Why have government and business in the United States been laggards in their responses, compared with governments and firms in other countries? What are the economic and political constraints that need to be overcome for them to respond more effectively? What could be done to provide more leadership, domestically and internationally, on the issues?

The book offers a political economy perspective that answers these and other questions on the basis of an analytic framework with the following themes:

• In order to understand the responses to climate change in the USA, it is necessary to understand the distinctive patterns in the interests, ideologies, institutions, and influence in the US political system. Much of the book is about the economic geography and the political geography of the interests at stake, and how business, government, and the public have responded within the institutional context of the political system.