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Why do two similar places respond to the same renewable energy technology development proposal in contrasting ways — as a problem in one community, and a non-problem in the other? In response to William Freudenburg's call to examine the role of ideologies in the social construction of both environmental problems and non-problems, and drawing from Ann Swidler's concept of cultural resources, this paper develops and applies an integrative framework the author calls industrial culture. The paper examines how industrial cultures — the stories, discourses, orientations, and practices around industrial development and accompanying environmental degradation that are commonplace in particular locales — shape community responses to proposed future development by both constraining and providing opportunities for new trajectories of action. This process is illustrated with a comparative case study of two …