Politics, the State, and Sea Level Rise: The Treadmill of Production and Structural Selectivity in North Carolina’s Coastal Resource Commission

ABSTRACT

Treadmill of production theory offers a perspective for understanding the relationship between modern social institutions and environmental sustainability. We use this approach to analyze North Carolina’s Coastal Resource Commission (CRC), a state agency charged with overseeing economic development and environmental concerns on the coast. Data from CRC meetings provide insights into the policy-formation process and related policy outcomes associated with long-term ecological and social concerns, specifically related to sea-level rise. Findings indicate that the CRC continually developed policies and fashioned regulatory decisions that favored economic growth over environmental protection. Importantly, the CRC failed to prepare for the long-term effects of climate change, such as sea-level rise. Our analysis extends the treadmill of production perspective through a deeper engagement with Marxian state theorists. Our analysis suggests that the state’s various branches and levels contain internal “selectivities” that favor pro-growth policies while simultaneously filtering out stronger environmental protections.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• environmental sociology
• treadmill of production
• state theory

Notes

1. For more detailed theories in environmental sociology, see Dunlap et al. (eds) (2001) Sociological Theory and the Environment.

2. This act establishes the CRC as the main body to issue permits around dredging and beach fills. These permits govern the location, width, depth, and length of dredging activities.

3. The passages used throughout the article are reproduced exactly as they were found in the data source.

4. It is important to note that the interests of labor, part of the growth coalition as formulated by Schnaiberg (1980), were not mentioned directly, but only indirectly in the sense that struggling communities needed economic development and jobs. Labor interests did not have an immediate role in deliberations, or more generally any direct voice at the policy table.

5. For clarification purposes, Poulantzas’s view of the state includes governing bodies and agencies that oversee and direct state policies. While the North Carolina CRC is not a nation-state level agency, it still constitutes a body of the state, generally speaking, simply at a different (regional) level.

6. The Democratic Party controlled the selection of 9 of the 13 members of the CRC in 1993–2013. During these years, specifically 2010–12, some of the most crucial challenges to the science report occurred. When the Republicans took the governor’s seat at the beginning of 2013, Governor McCrory reappointed 4 of the 9 selections from the previous administration.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jason S. Allen

Jason S. Allen is a PhD candidate in sociology at North Carolina State University. His primary research interests are environmental sociology, political sociology, political economy, and state theory. He is currently working on the political economy of pollinator decline for his dissertation.

Stefano B. Longo

Stefano B. Longo is Associate Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University. His research examines political economy and socio-ecological systems, with an emphasis on the marine realm. His work has been published in a variety of scholarly journals and books.

Thomas E. Shriver

Thomas E. Shriver is Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University. His primary research interests are environmental sociology, social movements, political sociology and environmental justice. He studies protest and repression in various political and historical contexts. He is currently studying dissident activism in authoritarian settings, as well as and local environmental justice activism in several contaminated communities in the United States and the Czech Republic.