Searching for Hope in the Wake of the
Midterm Climate Fiasco
BY
For
all those who support climate action, it
is hard to find a reason to hope in the wake of the 2014 midterms. The fact
that most of the new slate of Republicans deny the scientific consensus on
climate change and support fossil fuels warrants our despair. President Obama
cautions us to avoid cynicism. As Obama said in a recent mailing to his
supporters:
“The hardest thing in politics is changing the status quo. The easiest thing is to get cynical” President Obama said, “So don’t get cynical. Cynicism didn’t put a man on the moon. Cynicism has never won a war, or cured a disease, or built a business, or fed a young mind. Cynicism is a choice. And hope will always be a better choice. I have hope for the next few years, and I have hope for what we’re going to accomplish together.”
Prior to the midterms, Senator Mitch McConnell said he feels a “deep responsibility” to stop the
power plant regulations, and that his top priority will be “to try to do
whatever I can to get the EPA reined in.” More recently, Senator Shelley Moore
Capito (R-WV) told Fox News that she will be “extremely aggressive” in her
attempts to roll back the EPA rules, saying “We’ve been picked as a loser, and
I’m not going to stand for it. Rolling back the EPA regulations is the way to
do it.”
McConnell describes Obama’s climate policy as “a
massive, big-government boondoggle,“ and he has pledged to try and overturn it.
McConnell also pledged to “remove barriers to job creation and lower energy
costs for families,” which amounts to efforts that will block environmental
regulations.
Despite the President’s wise words, Republican gains
make avoiding cynicism nearly impossible.
Keystone XL
Even before the midterms, there were 57 Senators
that supported the Keystone XL. None of those Senators lost their seats and
there will be an influx of Republicans in the new year bringing support for the
pipeline to a filibuster-proof 60 Keystone supporters.
“This really drives home the overwhelming support we have for Keystone. I think you’re going to see us bring up energy legislation right away, and Keystone will be one of the first things we pass,” said North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven.
Although the future looks grim, passage of the
Keystone XL is far from a fait accompli. The President said he will only
approve the Keystone if it, “doesn’t increase climate change.” If the President
holds true to the terms for his approval he will be forced to use his veto
power. The pipeline could also be slowed or stopped by the courts.
US climate
leadership in doubt
By far the most serious implications of the 2014
midterms comes from the fact that U.S. leadership on climate change will be
much more difficult. As the world’s largest economy, U.S. leadership is
crucial, but now that Republicans beholden to fossil fuel interests are
in control of the House, Senate and many state governments, it will be that
much harder to secure a global climate agreement.
Americans don’t
vote for climate
No matter what Americans say about climate change,
it is little more than lip service.
While polls show
that a majority of voters think climate change is happening and want
governments to cut emissions, this did not alter the vote in 2014. The cold
reality is that although Americans claim to care about climate change, it does
not carry over to the ballot box.
As revealed by data from Pew Research Center, climate
change is not a top priority (it ranks 8th out of 11 issues) and a Reuters poll showed
that only 3 percent of Americans rank climate change as a top priority issue.
At the end of the day, short term economic concerns trumped
climate concerns.
Green money
Even though the environment was the third most-common topic in
political ads, it did not amount to much on election day. Despite spending more
than twice the amount of the previous two elections combined, green money did
not significantly alter the outcome.
Almost 100 million dollars was spent by
environmentalists like Tom Steyer and Next Gen ($67 million), the League of
Conservation Voters ($25 million), Environmental Defense Action Fund, the NRDC
Action Fund and the Sierra Club. Nonetheless, this year’s midterm elections
substantially increased the power of climate deniers.
“We lost far too many races…There’s no way, or no
desire, on any of our parts, to spin this, to try to throw some sunshine into a
story that has some pretty disturbing elements,” said Michael Brune, executive
director of the Sierra Club.
Almost 4 billion dollars was spent on this election
cycle, but environmental spending paled in comparison to conservative spending
by a margin of more than 10 to 1 ($1 billion vs $92 million). Despite being
outspent we must marshal the hope to move forward.
“We were clearly outspent in many of these races,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “And that’s why we’re all in for 2016, and for next week and next month.”
To his credit, Obama is doing all that he can within
the confines of his powers. “The president will use his executive action to
take some additional steps,” White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said, “but
he is also going to continue to talk about this issue in a way that lays the
groundwork for action by future presidents and future Congresses.”
As our window of opportunity for action closes, hope
gets harder by the day. However, we must find reason to hope precisely because
we know that pessimism impedes environmental
action. Now
more than ever, sensible people must come together to demand that the
Republican controlled Congress temper its obstructionism.
Our hope should be buoyed by the acknowledgement
that the fight against Republican ignorance is supported by the facts and the
realization that we simply cannot afford to lose.
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Richard Matthews is a consultant, eco-entrepreneur, green investor and author of numerous articles on sustainable positioning, eco-economics and enviro-politics. He is the owner of The Green Market Oracle, a leading sustainable business site and one of the Web’s most comprehensive resources on the business of the environment. Find The Green Market on Facebook and follow The Green Market’s twitter feed.