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Building on cornerstone traditions in historical sociology, as well as work in environmental sociology and political-economic sociology, we theorize and investigate with moderation analysis how and why national militaries shape the effect of economic growth on carbon pollution. Militaries exert a substantial influence on the production and consumption patterns of economies, and the environmental demands required to support their evolving infrastructure. As far-reaching and distinct characteristics of contemporary militarization, we suggest that both the size and capital intensiveness of the world’s militaries enlarge the effect of economic growth on nations’ carbon emissions. In particular, we posit that each increases the extent to which the other amplifies the effect of economic growth on carbon pollution. To test our arguments, we estimate longitudinal models of emissions for 106 nations from 1990 to 2016. Across various model specifications, robustness checks, a range of sensitivity analyses, and counterfactual analysis, the findings consistently support our propositions. Beyond advancing the environment and economic growth literature in sociology, this study makes significant contributions to sociological research on climate change and the climate crisis, and it underscores the importance of considering the military in scholarship across the discipline.

Sociological insights are often underutilized in sustainability science. To further strengthen its commitment to interdisciplinary problem-driven, solutions-oriented research, sustainability science can better incorporate fundamental sociological conceptions into its core. We highlight four aspects of sociological thought that we consider crucial for advancing sustainability science research: (1) social construction and critical realism, (2) structure and agency, (3) historical specificity, and (4) collective action. We draw on examples from sociology to support a dynamic understanding of how social relations interact with the bio-geo-physical world. This necessary integration of sociological insights, we argue, is critical to generate comprehensive assessments of the causes and consequences of human-induced environmental change, and tend to be overlooked or oversimplified within the field of sustainability science. Beyond that, it can stimulate the development and implementation of viable solutions to sustainability challenges.

The demand-side perspective argues that the drug overdose epidemic is a consequence of changes in the economy that leave behind working-class people who lack a college education. In contrast, the supply-side perspective maintains that the epidemic is primarily due to changes in the licit and illicit drug environment, whereas a third, distinct perspective argues that income inequality is likely a key driver of the epidemic. To evaluate these competing perspectives, we use a two-level random intercept model and U.S. state-level data from 2006 to 2017. Contrary to the demand-side approach, we find that educational attainment is not associated with drug-related mortality. In support of the supply-side approach, we provide evidence indicating that opioid prescription rates are positively associated with drug-related mortality. We also find that income inequality is a key driver of the epidemic, particularly the lack of resources going to the bottom 20% of earners. We conclude by arguing that considerations of income inequality are an important way to link the arguments made by the demand-side and the supply-side perspectives.

For years, sociologists who study society and the environment have focused on resolving the debate regarding the relationship between economic development and environmental degradation. Studies from a family of critical perspectives tend to find that economic development is antithetical to environmental protection, whereas a suite of more optimistic perspectives has uncovered more hopeful findings. We attempt to resolve these differences by situating this debate within the larger framework of the anthro-shift. The anthro-shift explains how the society-environment relationship changes over time. The theory assumes this relationship is the product of interrelations among the state, market, and civil society sectors. We focus on two distinctive qualities of the anthro-shift: the role risk plays as a pivot for reorienting how society interacts with the natural environment and the multidirectionality of the theory, highlighting how it combines elements of many of the dominant critical and optimistic perspectives into a broader framework.

The planet is on a path to catastrophic warming which calls for structural changes in the operation of Global North economies, not merely a transformation of energy sources, the core of “green growth” approaches. Our research on inequality and working time shows that these are powerful drivers of carbon emissions that can be the center of a progressive agenda supplementing energy transition. Our work also shows that disproportionality in emissions sources presents a policy opportunity. We challenge Pollin’s view that only growth-centric approaches are politically viable, and argue that progressive politics has moved from growth-centricity to needs- and people-centered policies. In our response, we argue that the recent rise of the Green New Deal is a strong piece of evidence for our position. JEL Classification: Q5, Q54, Q56

In modern aquaculture, animal-production technology is used to increase aquatic food sources. Such controlled rearing of seafood can, in principle, shift the pressure off wild stocks and aquatic ecosystems by reducing fishing activities, which may advance marine conservation goals. We examined resource displacement-the reduced consumption of a resource due to its replacement with a more environmentally benign substitute-in fisheries. We employed panel regression techniques in an analysis of time-series data from 1970 through 2014 to assess the extent to which aquaculture production displaced fisheries captures for all nations for which data were available. We estimated 9 models to assess whether aquaculture production suppresses captures once other factors related to demand have been controlled for. Only 1 model predicted significant suppression of fisheries captures associated with aquaculture systems within nations over time. These results suggest that global aquaculture production does not substantially displace fisheries capture; instead, aquaculture production largely supplements fisheries capture.La Acuacultura y el Desplazamiento de Capturas de las Pesquerías Resumen En la acuacultura moderna, la tecnología de producción animal se usa para incrementar las fuentes acuáticas de alimento. Tal crianza controlada de peces puede, en principio, modificar la presión que afecta los stocks silvestres y los ecosistemas acuáticos al reducir las actividades de pesca, lo que podría acercarnos a la obtención de las metas de conservación. Examinamos el desplazamiento de recursos - el consumo reducido de un recurso debido a su reemplazo con un sustituto más benigno con el ambiente - en las pesquerías. Empleamos técnicas de regresión de paneles en un análisis de datos de series de tiempo de 1970 a 2014 para evaluar hasta dónde ha llegado el desplazamiento de las capturas de las pesquerías en todos los países que tenían datos disponibles. Estimamos nueve modelos para evaluar si la producción de la acuacultura suprime las capturas una vez que otros factores relacionados con la demanda han sido controlados. Solamente un modelo pronosticó la supresión de las capturas de las pesquerías asociadas con los sistemas de acuacultura en los países a lo largo del tiempo. Estos resultados sugieren que la producción acuícola no desplaza sustancialmente la captura de las pesquerías; en su lugar, la producción acuícola complementa en gran parte a estas capturas.现代水产养殖中会采用动物生产技术来增加水产品的来源。原则上, 这种人为控制的海产品养殖可以通过减少渔业捕捞活动来减轻对野生鱼类和水生生态系统的压力, 从而可能有助于实现海洋保护目标。我们分析了渔业中的资源替代, 即一种资源因存在更环保的良性替代品而减少对其消耗的情况。利用 1970-2014 年的时间序列数据, 我们用面板回归方法评估了所有有数据的国家中水产养殖生产对渔业捕捞的替代程度。我们检验了九个模型, 以评估在控制其它与需求相关的因素的情况下, 水产养殖是否能抑制渔业捕捞。结果显示, 只有一个模型预测, 随着时间推移, 各国与水产养殖系统有关的渔业捕捞将受到显著抑制。这些结果表明, 全球的水产养殖并不能在实质上替代渔业捕捞, 而是在很大程度上作为渔业捕捞的补充。【翻译: 胡怡思; 审校: 聂永刚】.

The Handbook of Environmental Sociology features a collection of 25 original chapters that define the contours of environmental sociology and invite readers to push boundaries in their exploration of this subdiscipline. This introductory chapter speaks to several themes in sociology that are of enduring interest and part of emerging areas of scholarship. The chapter and the volume itself are divided into the following four thematic areas: (1) Inequality, Political Economy, and Justice; (2) Climate, Energy, and Health; (3) Culture, the State, and Institutions; and (4) Population, Place, and Possibilities. Ultimately, this collection advances environmental sociology by identifying new theoretical lenses for understanding social processes and structural conditions that influence environmental outcomes, introducing new methodological approaches for studying the environment, and exploring new frontiers. Throughout the volume, contributors focus attention on the effects of power and inequality in shaping socio-environmental problems and solutions while helping to advance a vision of public environmental sociology by identifying the ways the subdiscipline can contribute to ongoing policy debates and public discourses.

This study contributes to interdisciplinary research on the social and environmental determinants of population health, with a focus on the interaction between working hours and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration. The authors estimate longitudinal models of the relationship between US state-level average life expectancy and both average working hours and PM2.5 concentration for the 2005-2014 period. Results obtained from two-way fixed effects models indicate that average life expectancy is negatively associated with both average working hours and fine particulate matter concentration. Findings also indicate clear moderating relationships: the negative association between life expectancy and working hours is amplified as PM2.5 concentration increases, and the negative relationship between life expectancy and fine particulate matter concentration is amplified when average working hours increase. The results of this study underscore the need for additional research on the multiplicative impacts of socioeconomic factors and environmental factors in the modeling of population health.

Non-technical abstract The climate crisis requires nations to achieve human well-being with low national levels of carbon emissions. Countries vary from one another dramatically in how effectively they convert resources into well-being, and some nations with low levels of emissions have relatively high objective and subjective well-being. We identify urgent research and policy agendas for four groups of countries with either low or high emissions and well-being indicators. Least studied are those with low well-being and high emissions. Understanding social and political barriers to switching from high-carbon to lower-carbon modes of production and consumption, and ways to overcome them, will be fundamental.

Climate change is arguably the greatest threat to society as power plants, the single largest human source of heat-trapping pollution, continue to emit massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Sociologists have identified several possible structural determinants of electricity-based CO2 emissions, including international trade and global normative regimes, national political–legal systems, and organizational size and age. But because they treat these factors as competing predictors, scholars have yet to examine how they might work together to explain why some power plants emit vastly more pollutants than others. Using a worldwide data set of utility facilities and fuzzy-set methods, we analyze the conjoint effects of global, political, and organizational conditions on fossil-fueled plants’ CO2 emissions. Findings reveal that hyperpolluters’ emission rates are a function of four distinct causal recipes, which we label coercive, quiescent, expropriative, and inertial configurations, and these same sets of conditions also increase plants’ emission levels.

We test whether income inequality undermines female and male life expectancy in the United States. We employ data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia and two-way fixed effects to model state-level average life expectancy as a function of multiple income inequality measures and time-varying characteristics. We find that state-level income inequality is inversely associated with female and male life expectancy. We observe this general pattern across four measures of income inequality and under the rigorous conditions of state-specific and year-specific fixed effects. If income inequality undermines life expectancy, redistribution policies could actually improve the health of states.

This study examines the socio-structural drivers that influence the fisheries footprint and seafood consumption of nations. We assess how levels of economic development, population size, and transformations in food-system dynamics, such as those associated with terrestrial protein production and consumption, account for variation in ecological impacts and seafood consumption over time. The fisheries footprint indicator allows for a broader, ecologically grounded analysis. The seafood consumption indicator is a more restrictive measure, focused solely on direct human consumption. Using fixed-effects regression for 162 nations over the 1961 to 2012 period, we find that population and affluence are central drivers of nations’ fisheries footprint and seafood consumption. The results also indicate that diets within nations tend to become more protein intensive across different forms of animal protein. These findings suggest that modernization and changing dynamics of food systems have contributed to increased impacts on seafood consumption and, more generally, aquatic ecosystems.

Sustainability requires reducing the carbon intensity of human well-being (CIWB): the level of anthropogenic carbon emissions per unit of human well-being. Here, we examine how multiple forms of inequality affect sex-specific measures of CIWB using data for the 50 US states, while taking into account the effects of other socio-economic and political factors. Results from longitudinal models indicate that state-level female CIWB and male CIWB are both positively associated with (1) income concentration, measured as the income share of the top 10%, and (2) the percent of the population at or below the poverty line. Overall inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, has no net effect on male CIWB or female CIWB. These findings suggest that reducing forms of inequality, especially poverty and the concentration of income among the most affluent, are potential pathways to sustainability.

Purpose Recent sociological research highlights the growth of military expenditures in hi-tech, capital-intensive armaments and technology. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of these capital-intensive expenditures on two related health outcomes: under-five mortality and life expectancy. Design/methodology/approach This research utilizes a series of cross-national panel models estimated for a diverse sample of developed and less-developed countries from 1975 to 2000. Findings The authors find that hi-tech military expenditures increase under-five mortality and reduce life expectancy over the period studied, by reducing the number and type of soldiers able to take advantage of increased health-related resources obtained in the military and indirectly, by increasing income inequality, which negatively impacts these health outcomes. Research limitations/implications This cross-national study should be supplemented by case studies to better understand the processes being examined. Practical implications The increase in capital-intensive military expenditures found worldwide reduces the total number of soldiers in the military and raises their enlistment requirements. This makes it difficult for people with limited human capital to take advantage of the military’s traditional pathway for upward mobility. New pathways for mobility will have to be developed to avoid the creation of a new permanent underclass. Social implications There are significant social policy implications for the findings. Hi-tech military expenditures have a significant negative impact on the short- and long-term health outcomes of children and adults, in both developed and less-developed countries, which must be addressed by public policy planners. Originality/value This is one of a handful of sociological studies on the impact of military establishment on society. These findings highlight the importance of “bringing the military back in” to the forefront of sociological research.

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This study contributes to the emerging literature on connections between climate change and economic inequality by investigating the relationship between domestic wealth inequality and consumption-based carbon emissions for 26 high-income countries from 2000 to 2010. Results of the two-way fixed effects longitudinal models indicate that the effect of wealth inequality, measured as the wealth share of the top decile, on per capita emissions in high-income countries is consistently positive and relatively stable over the time period. This finding is consistent with political economy theories arguing that the concentration of political and economic power that accompanies the concentration of wealth plays an important role in increasing environmental degradation and preventing proenvironmental actions.

This study investigates the relationship between U.S. state-level CO 2 emissions and two measures of income inequality: the income share of the top 10% and the Gini coefficient. Each of the inequality measures, which focus on unique characteristics of income distributions, is used to evaluate the arguments of different analytical approaches. Results of the longitudinal analysis for the 1997 to 2012 period indicate that state-level emissions are positively associated with the income share of the top 10%, while the effect of the Gini coefficient on emissions is non-significant. The statistically significant relationship between CO 2 emissions and the concentration of income among the top 10% is consistent with analytical approaches that focus on political economy dynamics and Veblen effects, which highlight the potential political and economic power and emulative influence of the wealthy. The null effect of the Gini coefficient is generally inconsistent with the marginal propensity to emit approach, which posits that when incomes become more equally distributed, the poor will increase their consumption of energy and other carbon-intensive products as they move into the middle class.

Originality/Value of Paper This study contributes to previous work by bridging the fields of social epidemiology and environmental inequality and by formally testing established theoretical models.

Although studies have shown that air pollution can be devastating to population health, little is known about the health implications of the intersection of air pollution and income inequality. We investigate if air pollution is especially detrimental to the health of US state populations characterized by more inequitable distributions of income. In other words, are the populations of states with higher levels of income inequality especially vulnerable to similar levels of air pollution? We use two-way fixed-effects panel regression techniques to analyze longitudinal data for 49 US states and the District of Columbia (2000–2010) to model state-level life expectancy as a function of fine particulate matter, income inequality, and other state-level factors. We estimate models with interaction terms to formally assess whether the association between fine particulate matter and life expectancy varies by level of state income inequality. Across multiple life expectancy outcomes and additive models, states with higher PM2.5 levels tend to exhibit lower average life expectancy. This general pattern is observed with our specifications for raw and weighted PM2.5 and with adjustments for income share of the top 10%, total population, GDP per capita, median household income, median age, percent college degree or higher, percent black, and percent Hispanic/Latino. We also find that the association between state PM2.5 levels and average life expectancy intensifies in states with higher levels of income inequality. More specifically, PM2.5 levels are more detrimental to population life expectancy in states where a higher percentage of income is concentrated in the top 10% of the state income distribution. We discuss the implications of our results for future research in social epidemiology and environmental justice., Highlights • We test whether state life expectancy varies according to air quality. • Particulate matter is inversely associated with state life expectancy. • This association is more pronounced in states with greater income inequality. • We discuss the implications for social epidemiology and environmental justice.

Ambient air pollution, in the form of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), poses serious population health risks. We estimate cross-national longitudinal models to test whether the negative relationship between life expectancy and PM2.5 concentration is larger in nations with higher levels of income inequality. The dependent variable is average life expectancy at birth, and the focal predictor variables include PM2.5 concentration, income inequality, and the two-way interaction between them. We also estimate the average marginal effects of PM2.5 concentration from low to high values of income inequality, and the predicted values of life expectancy from low to high values of PM2.5 concentration and income inequality. Results indicate that the negative relationship between life expectancy and PM2.5 concentration is larger in nations with higher levels of income inequality, and the reductions in predicted life expectancy are substantial when both PM2.5 concentration and income inequality are high. We suggest that the theoretical principles of Power, Proximity, and Physiology help explain our findings. This study underscores the importance in considering the multiplicative impacts of environmental conditions and socioeconomic factors in the modeling of population health.

While an extensive body of social science research focuses on the interrelationships among economic development, energy systems, and the environment, studies involving the analysis of historical time series data are limited outside the field of economics. Along with the typical statistical challenges that accompany longitudinal data, time series data are likely to experience time-variation and bidirectionality in their relationships with one another. We address these issues and illustrate the utility of semiparametric, time-varying vector autoregressive (VAR) models for analyzing socioecological relationships. We analyze data for the United States from 1870 to 2017, and show how the relationships between GDP per capita, trade openness, fossil fuel intensity, and GHG emissions per capita have changed over time. We conclude by suggesting potential avenues for future research that use these methods.

A central premise of development strategies is that nations use natural resources, such as fossil fuels, to raise population living standards and enhance well-being. However, research shows that the relationship among human well-being, resource use, and the associated emissions is complex and context specific. To better understand if natural resource use plays a historic role in generating human well-being in the United States, the authors conduct a time-series analysis of greenhouse gas emissions and average life expectancy from 1913 to 2017. The results show that increases in greenhouse gas emissions per capita have an instantaneous, negative effect on life expectancy. The authors also find evidence that income inequality has a long-run negative effect on life expectancy. Additional analyses provide mixed results regarding whether and how the effects of emissions on life expectancy are conditional on income inequality. These findings contradict the assumption that reductions in emissions necessitate trade-offs in human well-being in high-income contexts.

The article begins by summarizing sociological approaches to (1) ecologically unequal exchange, and (2) foreign investment dependence and environmental load displacement. These areas of sociological inquiry consist of structural theories and cross-national statistical analyses that test hypotheses derived from both approaches. It concludes by briefly describing sociological research on global civil society and the environment, with a focus on the world society approach to environmental change. This area of theory and research provides some insights on ways in which global and transnational civil society groups, such as environmental international nongovernmental organizations, can partially mitigate the environmental harms caused by ecologically unequal exchanges and environmental load displacements. Key words: ecologically unequal exchange, environmental load displacement, foreign investment dependence

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the International Energy Agency (IEA), and several nations suggest that energy efficiency is an effective strategy for reducing energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Skeptics contend that because efficiency lowers the price of energy and energy services, it may actually increase demand for them, causing total emissions to rise. While both sides of this debate have researched the magnitude of these so-called rebound effects among end-use consumers, researchers have paid less attention to the conditions under which direct rebounds cause CO2 emissions to rise among industrial producers. In particular, researchers have yet to explore how organizational and global factors might condition the effects of efficiency on emissions among power plants, the world's most concentrated sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Here we use a unique dataset containing nearly every fossil-fuel power plant in the world to determine whether the impact of efficiency on emissions varies by plants' age, size, and location in global economic and normative systems. Findings reveal that each of these factors has a significant interaction with efficiency and thus shapes environmentally destructive rebound effects.

Drawing from multiple bodies of literature, the authors investigate the relationship between consumption-based carbon emissions and domestic income inequality for 67 nations from 1991 to 2008. Results of two-way fixed-effects longitudinal models indicate that the relationship between national-level emissions and inequality changes through time and varies for nations in different macroeconomic contexts. For high-income nations, the relationship shifts from negative to positive, suggesting that in recent years, income inequality in such nations increases carbon emissions. For middle-income nations, the association is negative, and becomes increasingly negative in the later years of the study. For low-income nations, the relationship between carbon emissions and domestic income inequality is null for the entire 1991 to 2008 period. These diverse results hold, net of the effects of other well-established human drivers of emissions, including population size, level of economic development, and urbanization. The authors conclude by emphasizing the need for future research on greenhouse gas emissions and domestic inequality, and the central role that sociology should play in this emerging area of inquiry.

This article provides a review of recent anthropological, archeological, geographical, and sociological research on anthropogenic drivers of climate change, with a particular focus on drivers of carbon emissions, mitigation and adaptation. The four disciplines emphasize cultural, economic, geographic, historical, political, and social-structural factors to be important drivers of and responses to climate change. Each of these disciplines has unique perspectives and makes noteworthy contributions to our shared understanding of anthropogenic drivers, but they also complement one another and contribute to integrated, multidisciplinary frameworks. The article begins with discussions of research on temporal dimensions of human drivers of carbon emissions, highlighting interactions between long-term and near-term drivers. Next, descriptions of the disciplines' contributions to the understanding of mitigation and adaptation are provided. It concludes with a summary of key lessons offered by the four disciplines as well as suggestions for future research. This article is categorized under: Climate Economics > Economics and Climate Change.

Building on prior research, this study investigates the effects of urban slum prevalence or proportion of the total population living in urban slum conditions on multiple macro-level health outcomes in developing nations. Results of two-way fixed effects panel analyses of 43 countries for the 1990–2007 period indicate that infant and under-five mortality rates are positively associated with urban slum prevalence, while average life expectancy for both women and men exhibits a negative association. These findings are statistically significant, net of various other factors including overall urbanization, economic development, fertility rates and HIV prevalence. Overall, the results highlight the importance of examining the ‘upstream’ effects of the built urban environment on human health in the developing countries and the challenges confronting the sustainable development of human societies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

We utilize first-difference panel regression analysis to assess the direct effect of urban slumprevalence on national level measures of under-5 mortality rates over the period 1990 to 2005.Utilizing data on 80 less developed countries, the results illustrate increasing urban slumprevalence over the period is a robust predictor of increasing child mortality rates. This effectobtains net the statistically significant influence of gross domestic product per capita, fertilityrate, and educational enrollment. Cross-sectional analyses for 2005 that include additionalcontrols provide further evidence of the mortality / urban slum relationship. The results confirmurban slum prevalence growth is an important contextual dynamic whereby the socialproduction of child mortality is enacted in the less developed countries.

What are the effects of increased stuctural integration of international trade on the environment of relatively poorer countries, particularly in the southern hemisphere? This is the key question addressed by Corey Lofdahl in his book Environmental Impacts of Globalization and Trade:A Systems Study. Given the theme for this special issue of the Journal of World-Systems Research, a discussion and evaluation of this book seems rather timely and relevant. An immediate fact of interest is that Lofdahl is not an environmental sociologist, let alone acquainted with relevant empirical works grounded in a world-systems perspective. Rather, he is trained as a political scientist, and works in the simulation and information technology sector.

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This study examines the relationship between national-level militarism and consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions. We analyze panel data from 1990 to 2010 for 81 nations to determine whether the magnitude of the effects of (1) military expenditures as percent of total gross domestic product and (2) military personnel as percent of total labor force on carbon emissions change over time. Results of two-way fixed effects models highlight the temporal stability of the environmental impacts of both national-level military characteristics. The findings also reveal that the effect of military expenditures on emissions is larger in the more developed OECD nations than in the developing non-OECD nations. Overall, the results support the treadmill of destruction perspective, which suggests that the nations’ militaries are an important social institution to consider in sustainability science research on the human drivers of global environmental change.

One potential pathway towards sustainability involves reducing the level of anthropogenic carbon emissions per unit of human well-being, also known as the carbon intensity of human well-being (CIWB). I estimate longitudinal models, which indicate that for OECD and non-OECD nations, income inequality began increasing CIWB in the 1990s, and the effect of inequality on CIWB continued to increase in magnitude through time. This suggests that reducing inequality in nations throughout the world could enhance both climate change mitigation efforts and human quality of life.

We investigate the potentially changing effect of urbanization on per capita and per unit of GDP carbon dioxide emissions for 69 nations from 1960 to 2010. We examine the effect of urbanization, measured as the percent of nation’s population residing in urban areas, for the overall sample as well as for smaller regionally-defined samples of nations. The results of two-way fixed effects longitudinal models for both outcomes highlight that the changing effects of urbanization on national carbon emissions throughout the world regions are far from monolithic, and these differences are hidden by the analyses of emissions for the overall sample. We provide tentative explanations for our regionally-specific findings, and conclude by emphasizing the need for more nuanced urban data and future research to increase our collective understanding of the carbon emissions / urbanization relationship.

Recent analyses of sustainability emphasize the tradeoff between human well-being and stress placed on the environment as measured as the ecological intensity of human well-being (EIWB), a ratio of environmental stress to human well-being. Here, we examine the effects of economic growth on EIWB for developed and less developed nations over the last half century. We find that since the early 1970s economic growth has little effect on EIWB in less developed countries and leads to somewhat increased intensity in developed countries. This suggests that current trajectories of economic growth will be problematic for sustainability unless special steps are taken to reduce the unintended harm placed on the environment.

Comparative international sociology is a cornerstone of sociology. "Large N" cross-national analyses are commonly published in leading sociology journals as well as in science and policy journals. The topics studied in macrosociological work and the methodologies employed to examine them vary considerably and have become increasingly diverse and rigorous. The four articles in this issue, all authored by sociology Ph.D. students, exemplify the substantive and methodological variation in the comparative international tradition, engaging core theoretical works and applying appropriate statistical modeling techniques.

Sustainability is fundamentally a challenge of tradeoffs. In order to improve human well-being through economic development we consume nonrenewable energy and other natural resources, relying on a broad range of ecosystem services. Enhancing sustainability requires reducing the “energy intensity of human well-being (EIWB)”: the amount of energy used per unit of human well-being. In this study we employ longitudinal analysis techniques to assess the temporally dynamic relationship between EIWB and economic development for a sample of 12 Central and Eastern European (CEE) nations for the 1992 to 2010 period. These are nations that have recently transitioned, which is still an ongoing process, from socialist command economies to market demand economies. During this ongoing transition, many of them have experienced declines in energy intensity, coupled with increased energy efficiency, while human well-being has improved considerably. The results of the analysis indicate that the relationship between EIWB and economic growth in CEE nations is complex and has changed dramatically through time. Of particular importance, the later years of the study exhibit an increasingly sustainable relationship between EIWB and economic development. The findings point to future possibilities for relatively more harmonious relationships between development, human well-being, and the natural environment.

Economic development improves the conditions of human life, but at a cost to the natural environment. Research now estimates the relationship between economic development and the carbon intensity of human well-being—the ratio of anthropogenic carbon emissions to average life expectancy at birth—globally, over 40 years. Most of the countries studied, including African nations over recent decades, followed unsustainable paths of development.

In recent years, several scholars have recommended that countries reduce their energy-related CO2 emissions by setting carbon intensity targets for their electricity sectors. Other research by Freudenberg suggests that countries could substantially cut their emissions simply by focusing on lowering the intensities of electricity’s most extreme polluters. Using a unique international data source on power plants, we inform this issue by analyzing the distribution of CO2 emissions and intensities within countries’ electricity sectors. We find that the dirtiest 5 % of power plants are responsible for huge shares of their sectors’ total emissions. If these plants continued generating the same amount of electricity but met particular intensity targets, the world’s total electricity-based CO2 emissions could be reduced by as much as 44 %.

The authors assess the extent to which particular characteristics of economic globalization at the national level influence the likelihood of individuals expressing concern for the natural environment. The globalization characteristics of interest include relative levels of exports, measured as exports as percent total gross domestic product (GDP), and the vertical flow of exports, measured as the percent of total exports sent to high-income countries (HICs). Results of multilevel logistic regression analyses of more than 48,000 individuals within 37 nations indicate that the two characteristics have opposite effects on environmental concern, net of various country-level and individual-level factors. In particular, exports as percent of total GDP lessens the likelihood of environmental concern, whereas percent exports to HICs increases the likelihood of individuals expressing concern for the environment. The results highlight the need for the development of theorization that considers the complex interrelationships between environmental concern and economic globalization characteristics.

The authors assess the extent to which national-level integration in the world polity influences individual-level concern for the environment. While theoretically-derived propositions about such relationships have a deep history in comparative sociology, they—with few exceptions—remain untested. Consistent with past research, employed national-level measures of world polity integration include the relative presence of environmental international nongovernmental organizations (EINGOs) and the existence of environmental ministries. Results of multilevel analyses of individual-level environmental concern in 37 nations indicate that both forms of world polity integration increase the likelihood of individual-level environmental concern, net of other national-level factors and individual-level characteristics; although we find stronger support for the influence of EINGOs as a key variable indicating world polity connection. The findings provide unique support for world polity theory, suggesting that future research should consider how elements of world polity integration influence other forms of individual attitudes and behaviors. The results also highlight the importance in considering global and transnational factors when assessing the determinants of individual attitudes about the environment.

Past research on the disproportionality of pollution suggests a small subset of a sector’s facilities often produces the lion’s share of toxic emissions. Here we extend this idea to the world’s electricity sectors by calculating national-level disproportionality Gini coefficients for plant-level carbon emissions in 161 nations based on data from 19,941 fossil-fuel burning power plants. We also evaluate if disproportionalities in plant-level emissions are associated with increased national carbon emissions from fossil-fuel based electricity production, while accounting for other well-established human drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. Results suggest that one potential pathway to decreasing nations’ greenhouse gas emissions could involve reducing disproportionality among fossil-fuel power plants by targeting those plants in the upper end of the distribution that burn fuels more inefficiently to produce electricity.

In this article, we elucidate two new mechanisms for the rise in earnings inequality during post-socialist transition. First, the integration of transition country firms into globalized production networks (GPNs) should increase inequality independent of foreign direct investment (FDI). Second, because EU integration hastened the transition from Soviet-era labor-market practices, the distributional effects of private markets and world-economic integration should be larger among acceding countries. A longitudinal analysis of Gini coefficients among sixteen transition countries from 1991 to 2009 supports these interventions: GPN integration increases inequality independent of FDI, and both private markets and world-economic integration have stronger effects in EU transition countries. These results are robust to a host of alternative explanations, to varying operationalizations of the labor-market effects of EU integration, and to alternative estimators. Through counterfactual analysis, we show that inequality would have increased less dramatically in the absence of EU integration.

Drawing from emergent areas of sociological research and theorization, theauthors consider the environmental impacts of militaries from a comparative-international perspective. The article begins with an overview of treadmill ofproduction and treadmill of destruction theories, the latter of which high-lights the expansionary tendencies and concomitant environmental conse-quences of militarization. This theoretical overview is followed by a narrativeassessment of military growth and energy consumption, with a particular fo-cus on the US military over the past century. Next, the authors detail the var-ious environmental impacts associated with the growth and structure ofnational militaries, briefly discuss potential future research directions, andconclude by calling for scholars in future studies on society/nature relation-ships to seriously consider the environmental and ecological impacts of theworld’s militaries. KEYWORDS climate change, conflict, environmental sociology, globalization, militariza-tion, resource consumption, sustainability, treadmill of destruction