Abstract
American environmental and energy policy has tended to be insular and introspective, lacking a global perspective that is suitably tuned to regularly finding, understanding and applying lessons from pioneering countries such as Germany to the United States. It is rare to find a city, county or state agency engaged in the regular pursuit of international best practices. It is equally rare to see national urban, energy, environmental, or planning organizations engaged in formal searches, reviews and applications of lessons from abroad for application in the United States. Much of this is because most international urban environmental and energy work in the United States takes place within one of two contexts. The first context is one in which the United States exports policies, ideas and technologies to developing countries. The other context is ‘soft diplomacy’ and the accidental contexts of random ‘social exchanges’ that lack formal problem-focused, goal-oriented searches and applications of technical or policy innovations in the United States from abroad (Dolowitz and Medearis 2009).
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Medearis, D. (2013). Formalizing the Transfer and Application of Environmental Policies and Lessons from Germany to the United States: The Case of Northern Virginia. In: Achilles, M., Elzey, D. (eds) Environmental Sustainability in Transatlantic Perspective. Energy, Climate and the Environment Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334480_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334480_10
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