By all accounts, House Democrats return
to Washington this week to begin planning their priorities for 2019 in
an aggressive frame of mind. But on climate change and energy issues,
rather than simply responding to Trump’s latest provocation (like those
regarding California wildfires), they must step back and take a
strategic approach.
This means Democrats must have the discipline to subordinate all
other considerations to the key goal of creating the political and
policy conditions needed to enact landmark energy and climate
legislation after 2020, when they may well win back the White House and
Senate. Indeed, how they handle energy and climate in the next two years
will play a critical role in determining whether they gain the power to
act.
Despite bright spots in Nevada and several Governors races, the
mid-term elections held some cautionary lessons. The defeat in
Washington State of a carbon tax referendum and several other
climate-related measures in Arizona and Colorado, along with apparent
state-wide losses in “ground-zero” climate impacts states of Florida and
Texas, should be sobering.
The politics of climate change are complex, even for voters already
suffering from its impacts. Swing voters will not respond to far-left
ideological crusades or simple-minded attempts to rigidly impose “best”
climate policies from above. Such approaches have largely failed as
political matter for nearly 30 years now.
The good news is that winning House control allows Democrats to
develop economically-framed climate change messages and policies that
are powerfully in America’s self-interest and also popular with voters.
Democrats must starkly contrast their cost-effective climate policies
with the nihilistic and defeatist policy rollbacks of Trump Republicans,
rollbacks that are putting our people, economy and security at risk.
But making climate action a popular mainstream political issue will
require a strategy that integrates climate policies more coherently into
broader economic, public safety and security messages and goals that
the American people already share, setting the stage for policy action
in 2021.
With these goals in mind, House Democrats should establish a set of
basic principles to guide their approaches on climate and energy over
the next two years, including:
Frame climate change as a kitchen table issue of rising economic costs, public safety and national security.
Climate impacts are here and now, already costing thousands of American
lives and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Stop “debating”
proven climate science, and focus less on technical issues. Discuss
climate change in immediate, human, local, economic, safety and security
terms. More dollars and sense, fewer charts and graphs. Here and now,
not about 2050.
Hold Trump accountable for policy rollbacks and the climate change impacts that are costing taxpayers billions, harming public health and worsening climate change.
Focus oversight attention on the huge economic and human costs of
climate impacts, including larger storms, bigger wildfires, sea-level
rise, infectious disease and other impacts. Use investigative powers to
dramatize how policy rollbacks on clean air and water are hurting
children’s health, leading to thousands more deaths and increased
chronic pulmonary and heart disease, and how freezing fuel economy is
hitting drivers at the pump. Shine a spotlight on Trump’s arbitrary and
capricious rollbacks of sensible regulations on super climate pollutants
like methane and HFCs.
Integrate climate policy into infrastructure, tax reform, national security, and disaster-response bills, instead of standalone “climate” proposals. When
climate action is included as part of overall pro-growth economic and
security policies that benefit middle class and working-class Americans,
it will be more popular. For example, do not pursue standalone carbon
taxes legislation; such taxes should only be included as part of overall
pro-growth tax reform proposals (and be voted on no earlier than 2021).
Repeal the Republican tax giveaway and replacing it will tax policies
that benefit the middle and working class. In other words, undertake
climate action as part of pro-growth economic, job creation,
infrastructure and security policy, not just environmental policy.
Don’t force Democrats to take purely symbolic but politically problematic votes. Keep your power dry. Save difficult votes for 2021 or whenever Democrats next have the actual power to make key climate legislation become law.
Invoke a can-do Democratic spirit: America can meet the energy and climate challenge and lead the world, if Democrats are in charge.
Trump and Republicans are climate defeatists, who deny the very
existence of climate change because they have no solutions to deal with
it. Simply put, Trump and Republicans are climate wimps—the problem is
just too tough for them. But not for Democrats. The party of John
Kennedy’s Space Race and the Apollo Project must embrace the opportunity
to create American Energy Abundance and Climate Protection together. We
have the technology; now Democrats must inspire the country to provide
the political will.
Most of all, create a DEMOCRATIC brand of economically-focused energy and climate action—separate and apart from national environmental groups.
For too long, Democrats have ceded their climate messaging to green
groups and alienated huge parts of the electorate. Embrace the full U.S.
energy economy miracle that occurred under Obama, including renewable
energy, efficiency, new advanced technologies and well-regulated natural
gas and oil production. Use the Select Committee on Energy Independence
and Climate Change to gain attention to the role of Democratic policies
in creating the US remarkable clean energy economy boom, cutting US oil
imports, creating millions of good new jobs, while transitioning to a
much lower carbon economy.
The focus must be on creating policy measures
and the
political conditions that together will allow climate change to play a
far larger, more advantageous role in the 2020 campaign against Trump,
and that will lead to enactment of effective climate policy when
Democrats win back all levers of federal power.
Just as war is too important for generals alone, climate change is
far too sweeping and important an issue to be dealt with by far-left
environmentalists. It is not, ultimately, even an “environmental issue”
as we classically think of them. Instead, it is about protecting our
safety, security, and economy, and providing ourselves and our children
the more hopeful future that all Americans desire. Democrats have a
chance to deliver on this promise in the near future, if they will be
politically strategic, now.