Climate Federalism at a Crossroads: From Compensatory to Coercive and Mitigation to Adaptation

Abstract A central idea in the climate federalism literature is that subnational action can help to compensate for federal inaction or hostility to addressing climate change. This article calls for a new course for climate federalism in light of two emerging shifts that challenge this notion of compensatory federalism. First, the first and second Trump Administrations, joined by some states, have sought not only to dismantle federal climate policy but also to prevent subnational governments from pursuing their own. I term this “coercive climate federalism,” a development that challenges established claims about redundancy, experimentation, and diffusion. Second, adaptation policy is rapidly growing in importance relative to mitigation, partly due to the acceleration of climate impacts and because it is less exposed to coercion. Together, these shifts call for refining the conceptual foundations of climate federalism and building a research agenda attuned to rapidly changing political and environmental realities.