When University of Virginia environmental science professor Vivian E. Thomson researched and wrote this thoughtful account of environmental battles during her years on Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board (2002 to 2010), she could not have known how fortuitously timed her book’s eventual publication would be. But with Donald Trump’s election, and his administration’s efforts to dismantle federal climate and environmental protections, the states have a more important role to play than ever before as the U.S. tries to address the climate crisis.
Adding to Climate of Capitulation’s uncanny timeliness is Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s May 2017 executive directive requiring Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality to submit proposed regulations to limit climate-disrupting carbon-dioxide emissions from electric-power plants.
With DEQ likely to be in the spotlight for the rest of 2017 and beyond, Climate of Capitulation is must reading for Virginians concerned about climate change and carbon reduction, as well as for readers in other states interested in a look inside environmental politics at the state level.
Thomson notes that the part-time nature of Virginia’s legislature, combined with a chronically underfunded DEQ, deprives the state’s legislative and executive branches of the technical expertise needed to enforce complex air-pollution laws. As a result, Thomson argues, government officials end up relying for technical expertise on the large corporations that are regulated by those laws. The corporations, of course, are more than happy to oblige, and the result is predictable.
Perhaps the most provocative and insightful aspect of Thomson’s analysis is her description of what she calls “the third face of power.” The concept comes from the New York University sociologist Steven Lukes’s “three dimensions of power,” in his influential 1974 book "Power: A Radical View." The third, almost invisible dimension of power is the ability, in Thomson’s words, to shape people’s “perceptions over time without conscious knowledge.” She finds this third dimension of power in Virginia’s “traditionalistic political culture, which devalues public participation and civil servants” and “protects the status quo” and favors business interests over citizens. This culture is encapsulated in an expression heard often in Richmond—“the Virginia Way,” although Thomson doesn’t use that term. The Virginia Way too often involves maintaining the status quo, especially when that serves to favor large polluters. Thomson says “strong, sustained leadership” is needed to avoid capitulating to such a powerful, inertia-favoring force.
I wish Thomson had devoted more space to fleshing out this dimensions-of-power concept as applied to Virginia, for it seems key to understanding the commonwealth’s slow pace in deploying clean energy and addressing climate change. This has broader ramifications for dealing with climate change everywhere, as inertia is not our friend in dealing with the climate crisis.
Vivian Thomson has done a great service in describing the sometimes-hidden influences that hinder enforcement of our environmental laws and slow efforts to address climate change.
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