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

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

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.