Science-based regulatory policies and a White House climate office could help counteract warming, no legislation required.
Read the full Risky Climate column at Bloomberg Green.
If there’s one thing working on climate for a living teaches you, it’s coping with uncertainty. If there are two, it’s how politics seemingly trumps all else.
Welcome to the wondrous world of climate politics.
On Friday morning, votes were still being counted, leaving Democratic candidate Joe Biden on the brink of claiming victory over President Donald Trump. Control over the U.S. Senate—through which much of Biden’s $2 trillion climate agenda would need to pass—looks likely to hang in the balance of two runoff elections in Georgia. Biden in the White House with Democratic allies in total control of Congress could clearly do much more to rein in carbon-dioxide emissions than a president working alone.
Still, there’s a lot a climate president could do. Even the simple step of returning to science-based policymaking would be an enormous improvement and an important first step. A task force put together during the campaign and led by former Secretary of State John Kerry and Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, identified 56 policy moves on climate and energy that that don’t need help from Congress.
To help sort through some of the possibilities, I checked in with energy economist and lawyer Danny Cullenward and political scientist David Victor, authors of the timely new book Making Climate Policy Work. They both emphasized the reality of polarization that will hold true regardless of what happens in Georgia.
“The Senate balanced on a knife-edge will mean that putting through new legislation will require a careful effort to bring along many different interests,” Victor says. “Climate policy by itself won’t carry the day—it must be linked to broader agendas of social justice, addressing inequality, and first and foremost economic recovery.”
Continue reading at Bloomberg Green.