Figure 4.13: The figure above shows a brief explanation of how the water recycling process works. The recycling of water is becoming a valuable part of the recycling processes throughout the United States, especially in water-strained areas such as the Southwest. Source: Malama Honua, (2020).
Often states leave city-level governments to decide the details of their recycling
programs, but this is not always the case (Higgins, 2020). Usually a recycling system works as follows: the recyclable items are collected, then the items are brought to a recycling center and put into a large machine to separate the items by type, then the items are purchased (recyclables are a popular commodity for large corporations and other entities), and lastly the items are taken to be processed into raw materials and make them into new products. The value of recycled good has increased over time due to a rise in environmental awareness (Higgins, 2020).
Recycling began as a primarily progressive issue, but has gained wide-spread popularity and support from both Democrats and Republicans over the years. The little controversy
surrounding the topic of recycling once again is regarding whether or not someone believes in the impact humans have on the environment and whether or not there is already or will soon be an environmental crisis. If one does not believe that humans are the cause of climate change, or that consumption and waste production have a negative impact on the environment, then they are more likely to question the efficiency of diverting energy and resources into recycling policies and plants. Those who agree with most scientists about the status of the environment tend to understand the importance of recycling, as not only a means of helping the environment through its own, but also as a vital part of spreading awareness about the state of the environment.
Recycling symbols and cans are widespread, and are utilized as a valuable symbol of protecting the environment throughout the United States.
All five of these environment-related policy areas have entered into recent state legislative discussion: renewable energy policy, greenhouse gas emission policy, resource
extraction policy (fracking), resource conservation policies, and recycling policies. As noted throughout this review, there are many factors that lead to different state positions and responses to the underlying issues. Among these are both political orientations as well as geographic location and related access to and importance of various natural resources.
Similar legislative issues might rise and fall at different times in different states. States, after all, are learning from each other in dealing with common issues. This chapter has laid the foundation of state environmental policy that will be considered in evaluating the effects of
COVID-19 as a possible policy disruptor. What factors are generally important in explaining state environmental policy agendas? To what extent have these agendas been sidelined by COVID-19? These are important questions to be addressed in the next chapters.
Chapter 5: COVID-19 Factors
In what ways has COVID-19 impacted environmental policy in a broad sense? Before we dive into more specific case studies, it is pertinent to see how COVID-19 has impacted all 50 states. This chapter identifies and provides evidence to support ways in which state legislatures have been altered since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially from an
environmental policy standpoint. This information will help address some of the hypotheses made in chapter 3, while setting the stage for the two sets of comparative case studies that are to follow this chapter.
COVID-19 has taken attention away from environmental issues (the dependent variable) throughout the United States. This assessment is backed up by the information provided by the National Conference of States Legislatures (NCSL). This database lists every bill introduced, debated, and enacted by all 50 state governments throughout recent history. To test the impact that COVID-19 has had on environmental legislation, the date March 11, 2020 was chosen to represent the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, as this was the day the World Health
Organization declared COVID-19 an international pandemic. As previously mentioned in chapter 4, the dependent variable ‘environmental legislation’ was broken up into 5 broad categories: renewable energy policy, greenhouse gas emission policies, resource extraction policies, resource conservation policies, and recycling policies.
The findings of this test were very profound. Every state had reduced introductions of environmental legislation between the dates of March 11, 2020 and December 31st of 2020, compared to the amount of environmental legislation introduced and/or enacted between March 11, 2019, and December 31, 2019. Out of all 5 environmental legislation categories (renewable energy policy, greenhouse gas emission policies, resource extraction policies, resource
conservation policies, and recycling policies) across all 50 states (a total of 250 different legislative opportunities), only 7 times did a state have an increase in the number of
environmental bills introduced within a singular environmental category post-COVID-19. Even states which are generally considered to be strong proponents of environmental legislation, such as Hawaii and California, had large reductions in their environmental legislation since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the year leading up to the pandemic, 233 climate-related bills were introduced in the California legislature, but since the beginning of the
pandemic, this number had reduced to almost half, and is currently only at 130 climate change-related bills. There are even some states, such as North Dakota, Alaska, Wisconsin, and New Mexico that have introduced zero new environmental bills since the beginning of the pandemic.
While this rapid decline in policy is an interesting one, it is also important to note that these same states that have passed zero environmental legislation in an entire year have also introduced a plethora of bills related to COVID-19 in that same time frame, so legislatures are not simply just coming to a halt because of the pandemic. It seems that, in general, states have shifted their focus away from environmental legislation since March 11, 2020.
The sharpest decline in environmental legislation since the beginning of the pandemic has been seen in the state of Hawaii, where the state legislature went from 258 bills introduced in the year before the pandemic (the most of any state), to a measly 25 since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Figure 5.1 is a map showing the number of environmental bills introduced in each state legislature pre- and post-COVID-19, with the pre-pandemic numbers appearing in green, and the pandemic numbers appearing in red. As can be seen, in every state, the post-Covid-19 numbers are smaller than the pre-post-Covid-19 numbers.
The differences in the numbers prior to COVID-19 and afterwards are flagrant. Across all states in the year before the COVID-19 outbreak, a total of 3,121 pieces of environmental
legislation were introduced, averaging out to 62.42 pieces of legislation per-state. In the year after the COVID-19 outbreak, a meager 810 pieces of environmental legislation were introduced nationwide, averaging out to only 16.2 pieces of legislation introduced per-state. This means that only approximately 26% of the total environmental legislation introduced between March 2019-December 2019 was introduced between March 2020-2019-December 2020, a notable drop off. This
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Figure 5.1: The image above shows the number of environmental policies introduced by each state before the COVID-19 pandemic (appearing in green), compared to the number of policies
introduced by each state after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (appearing in red). In all 50 states, the green number is larger than the red number.