期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2015
卷号：112
期号：27
页码：8254-8259
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1417806112
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：SignificancePopulation and affluence have long been seen as major drivers of environmental stress. A substantial empirical literature now substantiates their role in anthropogenic environmental change. Using data on greenhouse gas emission from US states, we show that the effects of population and affluence can be substantially moderated by political factors and in particular support for environmentalism. Our results indicate the potential of politics to ameliorate the effects of the scale of economic activity on the environment and our methods provide a vehicle for testing the influence of diverse hypothesized human drivers of environmental change. Starting at least in the 1970s, empirical work suggested that demographic (population) and economic (affluence) forces are the key drivers of anthropogenic stress on the environment. We evaluate the extent to which politics attenuates the effects of economic and demographic factors on environmental outcomes by examining variation in CO2 emissions across US states and within states over time. We find that demographic and economic forces can in part be offset by politics supportive of the environment--increases in emissions over time are lower in states that elect legislators with strong environmental records.
关键词：greenhouse gas emissions ; human drivers ; environmentalism ; STIRPAT ; multi-level models
