CLIMATE POLITICS
by Jay R. Mandle
The years of global climate abuse are taking their toll. Brutal heat, uncontrollable forest fires, flooding caused by hyper-intensive storms, sea rise, and unremitting drought have led Serge Schmemann of the New York Times to designate this as “the summer from climate hell all across Earth.” Even though the covid pandemic resulted in a 5.6 percent decline in global carbon dioxide emissions in 2020, by the following year almost all of that reduction had been reversed. There will be no respite in the immediate future from the devastation inflicted by changing weather patterns.
Even so, at long last this country is poised to undertake a serious response to climate change. Key is the passage of the Biden Administration’s grossly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Properly understood, the act is a government effort to fight climate change by steering the economy toward the increased use of renewable energy.
Although adopted only a year ago, almost all assessments of the IRA’s impact already are positive. The consulting firm, Deloitte, comments that “within weeks of the IRA’s passage it became clear that the incentives [contained in the legislation] will likely bring significant new manufacturing of clean energy components to the United States.” It goes on “investments are flowing. Two months after the bill’s enactment, one tally calculated about $28 billion in new manufacturing investment in the solar battery and EV manufacturing sectors had already been announced.”
From within the renewable energy industry, the same optimism is heard. Just last month, Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, wrote, “recent Congressional actions have unleashed a wave of investment that is accelerating the transition to clean, secure and affordable domestic energy…” He explained, “the domestic investments announced in the last twelve months exceed the combined clean energy investments made over the previous eight years,” concluding “the past year has sown the seed of nothing short of a clean energy revolution.”
In this regard it is important to note that the IRA was not intended to incentivize only factories and corporations. As Professor Leah Stokes emphasized during a PBS interview, the legislation is for “everyday people. It contains $50 billion of rebates, direct payments that are going to flow largely to disadvantaged communities to help folks from all across the income spectrum get advantage of those energy technologies.”
In addition to its economic and environmental impact, the IRA was targeted to achieve a political purpose – to move rural and working class voters from their support of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Two sources of leverage suggest the IRA possesses the potential to succeed in this effort.
The first is the fact that age-based fissures are already appearing within the Republican Party with regard to the environment. Both Pew and Gallop polling make it clear that young self-identified Republicans (aged 18-29) do not agree with their party’s unwillingness to address climate change reality. Pew reveals that almost half these young people (48 percent) agree that fossil fuels should be phased out completely. But far fewer older Republicans agree – only 32 percent of 30-49 year olds; 25 percent of 50-64; 20 percent of 65+. Gallop’s data tell a similar tale. Almost a third (32 percent) of 18-34 year old respondents report that they “worry a great deal about the quality of the environment.” In contrast, 18 percent of those 35-54, and only 14 percent of those 55+ shared that level of concern.
It is uncertain whether the continuing implementation of the IRA will move young Republicans to finally challenge their party’s indifference to global climate change. But the legislation does provide a foundation upon which they could engage their elders on the issue. As the ravages inflicted by the environment intensify, there is a reasonable chance that they will do so.
It is the IRA’s generation of new clean energy jobs that provides the second source of optimism that it can alter the strong Republican aversion to addressing climate change. In fact, Axios has reported that the IRA is already “splitting conservatives across rural America.” Almost three-quarters of the 75,000 new jobs that the legislation has thus far created are in districts represented by Republicans. This geographic targeting was purposeful. It was designed to politically undermine voter support for Republicans who continue to cling to Trumpian climate change denial.
As with young Republicans, it is not certain that this effort to peel off voters will work. But the IRA’s success in addressing climate change provides a model of how carefully crafted legislation can weaken Trumpian Republicans who insist on policies that threaten our environment and our democracy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jay Mandle is the Emerita W. Bradford Wiley Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Colgate University. His many books include Change Elections to Change America: Democracy Matters Students In Action, and Creating Political Equality: Elections As a Public Good. Mandle’s regular monthly editorials, Money On My Mind, appear on the Democracy Matters website where they explore the role of private money in politics and other critical social issues.
The views expressed in Money On My Mind are those of the author, (not necessarily those of Democracy Matters, and are meant to stimulate discussion.