Local Governments, Not So Local Problems
In August 2015, President Obama publicly rolled out new and unprecedented carbon emission limits on existing power plants, which are the U.S.’s leading source of heat-trapping emissions. The EPA formulated these rules pursuant to its authority under the Clean Air Act and the 2007 Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA. Aside from raising the Corporate Average Fuel Economy of personal automobiles and light-duty trucks, these emission limits will be the most aggressive action taken by the Administration to address climate change. This executive action should be lauded given the refusal of Congress to act and the fact that 70 percent of Americans support setting stringent limits on carbon emissions from existing power plants.
While federal regulations are important, scant attention has been paid to the initiatives on both the state and municipal levels to address climate change and on the efforts by Tea Party-backed politicians to dismantle them and their associative gains. While action taken on the national and international level will ultimately determine the trajectory of climate change mitigation and adaptation, it is crucial that activists focus their efforts on states and localities as well, for the initiatives that are in place and the decisions that are made now will have lasting consequences.
Climate Activist in Washington D.C. (The Nation)
With over 56 percent of Congressional Republicans rejecting rudimentary climate science, states and municipalities have spearheaded most of the country’s existing efforts to address climate change. The Northeastern States established the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-trade program that would have been the bedrock of a national cap-and-trade scheme had the Senate passed the Waxman-Markey Bill in 2009. 29 states have implemented Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) requiring that a specified proportion of electricity generation come from renewable energy sources, boosting the domestic renewable energy market. Big cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco have enacted strategies addressing energy consumption, energy efficiency, and transportation, which have been some of the most effective measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – discussed in further detail in a Last Week Tonight episode – and the Tea Party have endeavored to roll back and dismantle these state and municipal gains. ALEC has been campaigning against RPSs since 2013, though none of its “model” legislation has succeeded in gaining traction in any of the RPS states except Ohio, which froze its RPS last year. ALEC has also been promoting legislation that penalizes homeowners for installing distributed renewable energy systems. In response to ALEC’s activism and public position that climate change is not real, corporations such as Microsoft, Google, and even Shell have cut their ties to ALEC.
Senator Inhofe (R-OK) disproving the existence of climate change by displaying a snowball to the U.S. Senate. (C-SPAN)
On the executive level, Tea Party-backed politicians have worked to undo existing climate change initiatives. Governor Christie of New Jersey unilaterally removed New Jersey from RGGI, being the only RGGI state to do so; North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources deleted climate change-related information from its website; Florida officials are forbidden from using the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in official government correspondence; and states like West Virginia have RPSs that designate coal as an alternative energy resource. On the municipal level, climate change deniers have opposed efforts by public planners to consider the effects of sea level rise on zoning. These accounts are common throughout the country, but the media has not sufficiently connected the dots and considered the bigger picture of a systemic effort to undo state- and municipal-level climate change initiatives.
In light of all of this, it is imperative that environmental activists focus “Get Out the Vote” efforts on state and municipal elections. Consider the ongoing efforts by activists in the Northwest to obstruct the export of coal to Asia by hindering the construction of coal-export terminals. Their efforts were helpful in filling town council seats with sympathetic candidates, putting the fate of one of the export terminals into question. Activists have also been instrumental in the enactment of local hydraulic fracturing bans around the country that, notably, played a vital role in pressuring New York Governor Cuomo to ban the practice in New York State. Until Congress gets its act together and becomes amenable to tackling climate change, which is not probable given the existing Republican majority in Congress, it is critical that municipal and state initiatives to address climate change not be rendered null and void by radical right-wing activists.
Climate change is a complicated issue that necessitates a polycentric and multifaceted strategy to address it, which means it cannot disqualify municipal and state action. The world simply cannot afford to wait until national and international schemes fall into place. Because of the nature of path dependence, the gains of small-scale victories have the potential to manifest in much larger ways. Consider how zoning in the 20th century is one of the main reasons why the nation was put on the unsustainable trajectory of urban sprawl and excessive private automobile usage in the first place. The tide may be turning against climate activists, with President Obama giving Shell final approval to drill for oil in the Arctic and no mention of climate change in the latest Republican primary debate, but we must be mindful that small victories are always significant.
