Issue framing within the climate debate: An analysis of US environmental policy outcomes

This paper argues different policy issue framings of climate change—ranging from security to energy, economics, humanitarian response, and health frames—play critical roles in altering policy outcomes. Specifically, we focus on the several windows of opportunity that altered the pathway of the US climate change debates from 1985 to 2017. Progressing from the underpinnings of issue framing literature and public policy discourse, we conduct content analysis of news articles, academic papers, policy documents and other archival evidence, to show why and when environmental framings shift, and to what effect. Our innovative models provide generalization of these trends and their implications for environmental agenda setting, complemented by a qualitative section that contextualizes impact as well as the feedback mechanisms of issue framing on environmental politics in the United States. The findings highlight the need for future case study analysis to trace the causal mechanisms between climate change framings and US policy outcomes.