With a moonshot US$500-billion spending programme announced in 2022, President Biden put the US on the map in terms of global climate policy. Thus far, the Democratic Party’s new candidates have been quiet on the issue. But the US climate community has no shortage of suggestions. Paul Hockenos reports.
Vice President Kamala Harris walks backstage prior to participating in a virtual roundtable with women’s leadership groups on the American Rescue Plan in February 2021. Credits: White House | Lawrence Jackson.
One can’t be hard on Kamala Harris for not pulling fully fledged policy platforms on every relevant issue from the war in Ukraine to the cannabis sector out of a hat. After all, she was only catapulted to the party’s top candidate a month ago – and that came with little forewarning. It can take think tanks years to develop and polish the kind of policy programmes that candidates eventually call their own, tout in campaigns, and then, ideally, implement. Nevertheless, lip service alone can go a long way, too, when the nitty gritty isn’t there.
I would have been ecstatic just hear either Harris or nominee for vice president Tim Walz – or Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland or any other Democrat at the convention – simply make the case why climate protection is so vital – and, after all, they could have said: we have everything we need to make this transformation: the science, the technology, the policies, the money, and the best practices. Moreover, Biden-administration spending has created 330,000 new jobs in the US. Since when isn’t this kind of accomplishment something to boast about?
But the fact is that Harris does not – yet – have a palette of climate protection convictions and policy proposals that she and her running mate Walz call their own. Close inspection of her month-long initiation by fire shows infrequent mentioning of the issue, nor was it ever front and center at the four-day Democratic National Convention. Harris mentioned it only passing in her acceptance speech, as did Biden – a little more prominently – on day one.
It was Haaland who made the case most forcefully by pledging that Harris and Walz would ‘fight for a future where we all have clean air, clean water, and healthy communities.’ Walz, as Minnesota governor, passed dozens of initiatives that promoted clean energy and transportation, air and water quality, and environmental justice. Some climate advocates suggest that the Democrats’ soft pedaling of the issue was conscious and strategic – an attempt to not alienate voters in the fossil-fuel bastion of Pennsylvania, the US’s third largest state producer of carbon-based energy (and holder of a meaningful number of electoral votes).
Ideas for Kamala
Over the last decade, an impressive community of climate wonks, scientists, NGOs, and specialist media has emerged in the US. These voices, as an excellent expose (What climate world wants from Kamala) in the portal Heatmap illustrates, have a surfeit of ideas for Harris and Walz, who they believe can be brought on board when the time comes.
The Heatmap investigation divides the climate community’s proposals for a new Democratic administration into three categories: staying the Biden course; reaching beyond the Biden administration’s signature Inflation Reduction Act (IRA); or coming up with something completely new – a gamechanger in its own right.
The first path entails shoring up the Biden administration’s climate agenda, which revolves around the tweaking and implementation of the IRA. Top on this list is greasing the tracks where the IRA’s buildout of renewables is slowed or derailed: for example by expanding the electricity grid more quickly, and streamlining permitting and other bureaucratic procedures. Some communities are overwhelmed by the procedures of rolling out renewables and clean tech as prescribed in the IRA – and need assistance.
Jillian Blanchard of Lawyers for Good Government’s climate change programme told Heatmap that localities on the ground could benefit from ‘more tangible policies like granting federal funding to hire community engagement specialists or liaisons or paying for the time of community leaders to provide local governments with key information on where the communities are that need to be benefited, and what they need.’
Pump up the volume
A second route is amping up the Biden agenda. After all, the US is not on track to meet its self-set goal: namely to slash greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. Thus, there has to be an expansion of the IRA and other climate measures, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) climate pollution reduction measures: More money for more renewables, green jobs, more reliance measures – and with this larger emissions cuts, which would put the US on track to hit the 2030 target. This entails investment in high-impact sectors and more EPA Climate Pollution Reduction Grants and expanding resources for the states, which among other things would make the US a global leader in climate protection.
Going beyond the IRA also means thinking beyond the 2030 goal, Adrian Deveny, founder of the decarbonization strategy group Climate Vision told Heatmap. ’We designed the IRA to think about meeting our 2030 target. And now we have to think about 2035.’
A third way
And then there is thinking really big about the climate crisis, in terms that would furnish the kinds of emissions’ reductions that would make the path to zero emissions evident in every sector and provide faster relief to the extreme weather conditions battering the US, among other countries. ‘The question is,’ said Saul Levin, the political director of the Green New Deal Network, ’Are we going to just ride the coattails of the IRA as if this problem is mostly solved? Or are we going to put forward a whole new, bold vision of how we can take things on?’
The Harris-Walz candidacy is just finding its feet and, as one might expect, the convention was lacking in details in a number of fields. But without losing a lot of time, Harris-Walz could settle on one of the three paths outlined by Heatmap. Groups like the Green New Deal Network, Lawyers for Good Government, and Climate Vision are out there, doing the thinking that the campaign can’t while it’s busy winning the election. Once it takes office, these groups and others have to hand them specific, detailed policy proposals that will enable it to hit the ground running – and make the kind of progress on climate protection that the Democrats promise.
The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union.