Will the left become the new obstructionists on climate action?
The list of authors reads like the headline event of the official GOP victory celebration. A celebration you might expect to see when you consider that this is just the third occasion since the 1930’s when Republicans control the Presidency along with both the House and the Senate. Most governorships are held by the right, as well as the bulk of state houses. In such an environment, a team that includes some of the most established stalwarts of the Republican Party could have come together and put forward virtually any agenda they saw fit. What they chose to present was an action plan to address, of all things, climate change.
The paper, released in February under the auspice of the newly-formed Climate Leadership Council (CLC) and titled The Conservative Case for Climate Dividends, is groundbreaking. Carbon taxes have been floated before, but the sight of prominent conservative leaders addressing a conservative audience has been sorely lacking in a national dialogue dominated by activists from political left. The first line of the statement sets the stage: “Mounting evidence of climate change is growing too strong to ignore.”
This is not empty talk or pandering. If implemented, the plan would do more to reduce carbon emissions than all the Obama-era regulations put together. A carbon tax has been championed as the best option for rapidly reducing emissions by everyone from economists to Elon Musk. It is the way to go.
The broad strokes of the plan are straightforward. An initial levy of $40/ton would be placed on all carbon emissions beginning in 2019, and escalating thereafter. All proceeds would be returned to taxpayers as a clean, even dividend (they estimate a family of four could expect around $2000 in the first year), and relevant adjustments would be made to imports and exports to ensure that American companies are not made uncompetitive.
As the tax ramps up, the current slew of carbon regulations could be scaled back; this is a trade-off that climate advocates should embrace, given that even if we assume that the Obama regulations remain in place, they are only projected to reduce carbon emissions by 16% from 2005 levels by 2025. The tax and dividend system proposed here would reduce them by an estimated 28% - the highest target set by the Paris Agreement.
As for the dividend, Department of Treasury estimates that the bottom 70% of Americans would come out financially better off because of it. This is vital, as any proposal that raises gas prices without directly offsetting this cost to consumers would be dead on arrival. Particularly with working-class voters.
In spite of its merits, like everything else in the rancorous partisan stew in which the climate debate has been embroiled, this proposal is controversial. Some people love it. For others, the idea is goes over about as well as a Make America Great Again sign in the window of a San Francisco gelato shop.
But unlike the standard playbook of advocacy from the left and pushback from the right that has largely defined the climate debate among the general public, recent history somewhat muddies the waters in this case on where opposition might rear its head.
When a similar plan was proposed on a ballot measure in Washington state during the 2016 election, it was infighting among Democrats – rather than inflamed skepticism on the other side – that killed the legislation.
Boiling down more or less to a disagreement on how to allocate the tax’s revenue, major environmental groups rallied against it. Even by the chaotic standards of 2016, a political circus that allied the green-blooded Sierra Club with the ultra-conservative Koch Brothers was bizarre. In the end, the measure failed with only 42% of the electorate in support. Concern over the equitable distribution of carbon dividends to minority communities, as well as confusion over what the bill actually was, proved to be a key elements in this outcome.
While the practical consequences of one state’s proposal falling through are probably nominal, there is a real chance that this failure could do lasting damage to our ability to build a coherent national dialogue around this issue. Climate advocates are not climbing onto the world stage and announcing that unfettered carbon emissions are going to present human civilization with a mild to moderate inconvenience; they are claiming it could imperil civilization altogether. Leading climate scientists have formed organizations dedicated to promoting WWII-scale mobilization to tackle the problem. A casual internet search on the subject is a master class in doomsaying.
When you are claiming the stakes are as high as that, you do not have the luxury of equivocating on tertiary priorities. Not if you want anyone outside your political tribe to take you seriously. The large swath of the country that believes climate science is hokum is not made up of people who have looked at the evidence itself and decided it doesn’t wash – just as the vast majority of people who count it as one of their top priorities haven’t taken a real look at the data either; they just have more faith in the messengers. The so-called climate skeptics take the position that they do out of the belief that leftist environmentalists are simply ringing the alarm bells of the apocalypse in order to push their own agenda. It does nothing to dispel this impression when advocates turn down sensible solutions that might have national appeal.
Activists who balk at pairing back regulations in favor of a more than offsetting carbon tax, or insist that revenues from the tax itself be diverted into projects of their liking, would be well-served to take a look around. The current occupant of the White House ran on an aggressively pro-coal campaign, and he could be in office for the next eight years – if that sounds crazy, stack it up against where his odds of winning in the first place stood four years ago, and compare them to those of an incumbent president winning re-election. Scott Pruitt is head of the EPA, despite having sued the EPA more than a dozen times. Rick Perry is Secretary of Energy, having previously recommended the department be disbanded. Republicans control both the House and the Senate, as well as the lion’s share of local political offices and governorships, making state-level action more of a challenge.
The country has just been presented with the most impactful carbon-reduction plan that has ever been seriously proposed in what had every right to be the worst year for climate advocates in decades. And with oil prices still at historic lows, there may never be a more politically feasible time to enact a tax like this one. Yet there is now a genuine concern that climate action groups have been fighting for so long that they won’t realize that it is possible to win without seeing the other side lose. If we had decades with which to address the concern, this might not be a problem. But as the advocates themselves will endlessly point out, the clock is ticking.
Opposition from the right is to be expected. From environmentalists, it is severely misguided. If climate change is the existential crisis that they insist it is, then reducing carbon emissions is the overriding prerogative. Not economic equality, preserving their own accomplishments, or refusing to follow the lead of their historic opponents. If they are unwilling to give ground on issues such as these in order to make the biggest strides towards a fossil fuel-free economy, then they should change their rhetoric to describe climate change in accordance with their actual beliefs – as a mid-level priority on a long list of others.
There are no illusions about this being an easy sell to Republican leadership in either the White House or in Congress, and co-author and former Secretary of State Jim Baker himself acknowledged that they are facing an “uphill slog” on that score. But no one who was awake during the past year is likely to claim that anything is certain in the current political scene, particularly as a record number of Americans are becoming concerned about the climate problem.
If by some miracle the Trump Administration warms to the plan put forward by the CLC, it would be a tragedy if the left were the ones to mount an opposition – whether in the form of environmental groups defending their turf, individuals who are just viscerally opposed to anything endorsed by the White House, or by advocates who insist on radical, all-or-nothing solutions that dismiss political realities.
We ought to keep in mind that if that does happen, the people who say that liberals aren’t as concerned about the consequences of climate change as they claim to be won’t just be skeptics. They won’t be ignorant, disdainful, or obstructionist. They’ll be right.
