Abstract for: Spiraling Opposition: Feedback Loops in Energy Politics

This paper analyzes the feedback loops hindering renewable energy policy in the United States, particularly at the state level, by drawing from Leah Cardamore Stokes's arguments in her book Short Circuiting Policy. It formalizes her arguments with a causal loop diagram to the study the interaction between renewable energy policies, advocates' resources, and opposition from energy incumbents like utilities and fossil fuel producers. The analysis reveals a reinforcing loop where policies increase advocates' resources, enabling further policy support. This is countered by balancing loops through which, after a perception delay, incumbents resist policy change to protect their interests. The paper suggests Stokes’ solutions to promoting climate policy largely consist of adjusting the strength of the system’s feedback loops, which systems change theory argues would be effective, but she may ignore other solutions. Most notably, she under-emphasizes solutions that change energy politics’ goals, one of the most effective ways change any system. Thus, this paper advances understanding of renewable energy policy dynamics by integrating system dynamics with political science to propose novel, systems-thinking-based solutions for promoting climate policy, and it enables future work in system dynamics and other fields to study these dynamics in more detail.