Abstract

When confronted with the demands of global climate change, why do some towns move the climate adaptation agenda forward in their communities while others seemingly get little accomplished? To answer this question, we look at the “big picture” of what’s going on across Connecticut on climate adaptation. We’ll first look at what is driving public policy based on past research, thus briefly discussing competing and complementary explanations for why some communities aggressively pursue climate adaptation policies, while others do less. We then dig into our data collected across the 169 towns in Connecticut regarding climate adaptation, linking policy actions to their fundamental global cause. The quantitative data is augmented with interview data from policy-makers and activists from around the New England region.