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Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Big Green tried to play with Big Oil in the midterms and lost big.


By Marianne Lavelle, The Daily Climate
Denton-860
The lesson for climate activists from this midterm election may be climate change, like politics, is local. Frack Free Denton, a grass-roots group, prevailed in its campaign asking voters to ban hydraulic fracturing in Denton, Texas, despite being outspent 10-to-1 by pro-fracking groups. Above, Frack Free volunteers work a table at University of North Texas' Earth Day festival in April. Photo by Crystal J. Hollis/flickr.

The 2014 midterms may disappear into history as the election where moneyed environmental interests tried - and failed - to defeat far larger moneyed energy interests.

But the more important lesson could be that local concerns and grass-roots rabble-rousing trumps Big Green and can even beat Big Oil.

In north Texas, Denton voters said "no" to hydraulic fracturing despite a 10-to-1 fundraising advantage by pro-fracking forces backed by Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, XTO Energy, and others. 

Frack Free Denton, a grassroots campaign spearheaded by a local nurse, prevailed. Its argument: fracking saddled the town's citizens with the state's most unhealthy air and highest childhood asthma rates, while sharing in little of the economic gain generated by oil and gas development.


City vs. refinery in California

Chevron-620Similar home-grown concerns propelled a slate of anti-Chevron candidates to victory in a city council race in Richmond, Calif. The town is uneasy home of the company's 3,000-acre refinery – one of the region's top polluters as well as the state's No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases. 

Chevron, planning a major expansion of the facility, sunk a reported $3 million into political action committees to influence the make-up of the local body that will oversee its plans. Voters, who have coped with economic blight as well as high rates of cancer, heart disease, and asthma, instead overwhelmingly chose candidates who have been critical of Chevron. 

The David-versus-Goliath local victories against oil industry money stood in stark contrast to the losses in races that will set national policy on energy and climate change over the next two years. 
Pro-climate-action billionaire Tom Steyer and green groups spent an unprecedented $85 million on the effort to elect Democratic Senators and governors who would take bold steps on global warming. 

But they were soundly outspent by anti-regulatory forces; the Koch brothers' network alone spent $100 million on the election.

Key wins

In gaining control of the Senate, the GOP added at least four additional reliable votes (from Colorado, Iowa, South Dakota and West Virginia) for fossil-fuel agenda items like approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and curbs on the Obama administration's plan to regulate coal power plant emissions. 

Obama has portrayed those coal plant rules as his most significant climate change legacy-in-the-making, and GOP wins in key governors' races like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida may prove especially important. Scott Segal, who lobbies on behalf of energy industry clients as founding partner of Bracewell & Guiliani's Policy Resolution Group in Washington, D.C., noted that state regulators and elected officials have "the hardest tasks that anybody has been given" when it comes to implementing the new regulations.

"Does more than the usual uptick in Republican governors make a difference? In my view, it makes a huge difference," said Segal, raising the possibility that there may be "recalcitrant states." As with the Obama health care plan, some states may simply opt not to implement the federal mandate; since state lawmakers will have to pass legislation in some cases to put the required curbs on power plant emissions, it is likely to be a long-running battle in any case.

Seeing the positive

Some environmentalists on Wednesday emphasized the positive in the wake of Tuesday's grim results. "This election marked a pivotal change in how candidates confront the climate crisis," said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune in a statement. "Even the most anti-environmental candidates were compelled to greenwash their voting records and change their tune on climate denial. 

The climate on climate is changing."

The key challenge for climate advocates is not convincing voters of the science but having its urgency hit home in a meaningful way. This fall, Pew Research found that 61 percent of Americans believe that global warming is happening, but they rank it far below the militant Islamic State group, Iran's nuclear program, or North Korea's nuclear program as a major concern.

Economic concerns

The climate action movement also must grapple with and address the very real short-term economic concerns that seem always to tip the scales against long-term environmental action at the ballot box. 

One of the bluest of blue states, Massachusetts, voted Tuesday to keep gasoline prices low by preventing them from increasing with the cost of living. That doesn't bode well for political support for any effort to have fossil fuel prices reflect the carbon emissions cost to the atmosphere.

A way forward

But again, Tuesday's few victories against fossil fuel do point the way forward. Voters were stirred against the California refinery and Texas fracking not just because of noise, foul smells, and health concerns, but because they believed the operations were hurting their communities economically, lowering property values and delivering few jobs.

The economic costs of climate change were literally spelled out in only one ballot question on Tuesday – a post-Hurricane Sandy measure to approve $3 million in bonds for flood prevention measures in Rhode Island. 

That is likely to amount to only a small down-payment on the resilience measures that will be needed in the coming years on the Ocean State's coastline of more than 400 miles. But its approval by 71 percent of voters shows that some citizens are beginning to understand that climate change, like all politics, is local.

Marianne Lavelle is a staff writer for The Daily Climate. Follow her on Twitter @mlavelles.

Photo of Chevron refinery in Richmond, Calif. courtesy Scott Hess Photo.


The Daily Climate is an independent, foundation-funded news service covering energy, the environment and climate change. Find us on Twitter@TheDailyClimate or email editor Douglas Fischer at dfischer [at] DailyClimate.org