Doctoral Dissertation Research: Climate Change Denial and the Politics of Coastal Restoration in Southern Louisiana

本研究将评估路易斯安那州东南部弱势群体对环境风险的看法，并分析这些看法与该地区沿海恢复问题的地方一级政治进程之间的联系。这项研究将集中在普拉克明和圣伯纳德教区——路易斯安那州与密西西比河河口相邻的两个教区。该研究将调查居民对气候变化的态度，并评估这些态度与当地环境政策之间的关系。由于影响社区的社会和环境因素的独特配置，包括环境风险、对采掘业的经济依赖、气候变化否认率高以及石油和天然气就业的高度集中，该地区受到特别关注。本研究将挑战气候怀疑论的主流观点，将经济、文化和情感因素纳入否认气候变化的话语中。通过对气候变化否认的更全面和细致的理解，这项研究将为气候倡导者提供新的工具，解决政治舞台上的气候否认问题，从而对气候话语和政策的未来产生潜在的变革性影响。该研究将集中在居民如何解释社区环境安全和经济繁荣之间的关系，以及这两个社会优先事项的谈判如何在当地政治进程中发挥作用等核心问题上。路易斯安那州东南部的居民经常遭受环境破坏，但在经济上仍然与剥削当地环境的工业联系在一起。虽然环保意识很普遍，但社会上对气候变化的否认却一直存在。社会组织否认理论探讨了否认气候变化的社会维度，将被应用于调查这些态度和因素的起源，这些态度和因素使该地区普遍存在气候怀疑主义。本研究将利用内容分析和半结构化访谈来更好地了解当地对经济与环境关系的解释。研究的内容分析阶段将利用当地印刷媒体建立一个话语场，在这个话语场中形成对环境问题的态度。该项目的访谈阶段将利用社区中广泛的受访者样本的回答。访谈将集中在几个主题上，包括新闻获取、政治态度、对当地经济问题的态度、对海岸恢复和气候变化等环境问题的态度，以及对社区中围绕这些问题的政治进程的态度。这些方法的结合将使研究人员能够将受访者的证词置于公共环境话语的背景中，从而产生丰富的数据，这将有助于深入探索当地的环境态度和政治。

This study will assess perceptions of environmental risk among a vulnerable population in southeast Louisiana and analyze the connections between these perceptions and local-level political processes surrounding coastal restoration issues in the region. The study will focus on Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes--the two Louisiana parishes adjacent to the mouth of the Mississippi River. The study will investigate residents' attitudes on climate change and assess the relationship between these attitudes and local environmental policy. This region is of specific interest due to the unique configuration of social and environmental factors that impact the community, including environmental risk, economic dependence on extractive industry, high rates of climate change denial, and high concentration of oil and gas employment. This study will challenge dominant perspectives on climate skepticism by incorporating economic, cultural, and emotional factors into the discourse on climate change denial. By contributing to a more complete and nuanced understanding of climate change denial, this study will have potentially transformative impacts on the future of climate discourse and policy by providing new tools for climate advocates to address climate denial in the political arena.The study will focus on the central questions of how residents interpret the relationship between environmental security and economic prosperity in their community, and how the negotiation of these two social priorities plays out in local political processes. Residents of southeast Louisiana regularly experience environmental harm yet remain bound economically to industries that exploit the local environment. While environmental awareness is common, climate change denial is persistent in the community. The theory of socially organized denial, which explores social dimensions of climate change denial, will be applied to investigate the origins of these attitudes and factors that perpetuate widespread climate skepticism in the region. This study will utilize content analysis and semi-structured interviews to better understand local interpretations of the relationship between economy and environment. The content analysis phase of the study will utilize local print media to establish a discursive field within which attitudes form on environmental issues. The interview phase of the project will utilize responses from a broad sample of respondents in the community. The interviews will focus on several themes including news acquisition, political attitudes, attitudes toward local economic issues, attitudes toward environmental issues such as coastal restoration and climate change, and attitudes regarding the political processes around these issues in the community. The combination of these methods will allow the researchers to contextualize respondents' testimony within public environmental discourse, yielding rich data that will facilitate a deep exploration of local environmental attitudes and politics.