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House Democrats Must Be Strategic To Win On Energy And Climate Change

This article is more than 5 years old.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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 replace it with 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.