{"id":3520,"date":"2019-07-01T07:35:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T07:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=3520"},"modified":"2019-07-01T07:35:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T07:35:46","slug":"americas-bipartisan-climate-policy-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=3520","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s bipartisan climate-policy failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mark Paul<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

SARASOTA \u2014 US President Donald Trump\u2019s anti-climate agenda is in full swing. His administration has already taken action\u00a0117 times\u00a0to repeal or weaken climate regulations, and much more deregulation is in the works. By unravelling environmental protections on an unprecedented scale, including through\u00a0executive\u00a0orders, Trump is using every tool at his disposal to increase fossil-fuel extraction and the production of dirty energy. Apparently, he is hell-bent on topping his predecessor\u2019s own fossil-fuel boom.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is right, former President Barack Obama\u00a0presided\u00a0over a fossil-fuel boom: the domestic shale-energy revolution enabled by the advent of hydraulic fracturing (or fracking). The fact is that neither major party in the United States has been the climate champion that the country and the world needs. While\u00a0young activists\u00a0around the world are\u00a0stepping up\u00a0to show what true climate leadership looks like, politicians are barely taking note. As Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic US senator from California, dismissively\u00a0told\u00a0a group of young people advocating a Green New Deal\u00a0(GND): \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The longer both parties cling to a policy of \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d, the more likely we are to face a climate catastrophe in which millions of people perish or have their lives upended. In reality, though, the responsibility for adopting a new paradigm ultimately rests with the Democrats. While Trump has been disastrous for the planet, his administration\u2019s policies are in keeping with a Republican Party that will not change anytime soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a recent review of more than 1,000 climate-related bills introduced in the US Congress since 2000, we found that, in the past decade alone, Republicans presented 187 that would increase greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Most of these bills have sought to advance the interests of the fossil-fuel industry over those of everyone else. The Republicans\u2019 purported rationale is to achieve \u201cenergy independence,\u201d which, in practice, has meant offering special treatment to the oil, gas and coal companies that\u00a0spend exorbitant amounts\u00a0on campaign contributions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not long after coming to office, Trump promised that by unleashing America\u2019s fossil-fuel reserves, his administration would \u201ccreate countless jobs for our people, and provide true energy security to our friends, partners and allies all across the globe\u201d. Following the same logic, Don Young, a Republican congressman representing Alaska, has introduced the\u00a0American Energy Independence and Job Creation Act, which would allow exploration and extraction of oil and gas reserves in Alaska\u2019s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Adding insult to injury, the bill would direct half of the tax revenues generated by the exploitation of public resources to a pot of incentives for the fossil-fuel industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the real insult is the behavior of Democratic leaders, who continue to abide by what James K. Boyce of the University of Massachusetts\u00a0calls \u201cclimate-change denial lite\u201d. Consider the case of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Last year, the DNC decided that it would no longer accept contributions from political action committees affiliated with the fossil-fuel industry, only to\u00a0reverse course\u00a0and embrace an \u201call-of-the-above\u201d energy policy just months later.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though congressional Democrats have introduced modest proposals to curtail GHG emissions, they have not made any major push for climate legislation since the failed\u00a0American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009\u00a0(the Waxman-Markey bill). And even that bill would not have reduced emissions\u00a0fast enough, relative to what the climate crisis demands.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the more meaningful climate bills introduced by Democrats in recent years is the\u00a0100 by \u201850 Act, which includes provisions to \u201cachieve 100 per cent clean and renewable energy by 2050\u201d. But, again, this falls far short of what is needed to limit global warming to 1.5\u00baC above pre-industrial levels, the threshold beyond which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change\u00a0forecasts\u00a0devastating consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately, a growing chorus of Democrats has begun to demand genuine action that would start to make up for decades of climate-change denialism lite. They understand that without significant, comprehensive action by the US, the climate cannot possibly be stabilised at a level that is still conducive to human flourishing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather than talking about what people must give up to reduce emissions, the climate realists are trying to sell voters on a new vision of the economy, one that offers long-term economic security and environmental stability. The GND resolution introduced earlier this year has rapidly shifted the window of discourse, such that once-radical proposals are now garnering public support and being debated seriously.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though the details of the GND still need to be fleshed out, Democratic presidential contenders such as Washington Governor Jay Inslee are already\u00a0offering\u00a0concrete proposals in accordance with its prescriptions. The GND\u00a0could be the \u201cnorth star\u201d\u00a0of the country\u2019s decarbonisation path. But much will depend on Democratic congressional leaders such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has scoffed at ambitious climate proposals as a \u201cgreen dream.\u201d Either that changes, or we will all find ourselves in an environmental nightmare.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark Paul is an assistant professor of economics at New College of Florida. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2019.\u00a0www.project-syndicate.org<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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By Mark Paul SARASOTA \u2014 US President Donald Trump\u2019s anti-climate agenda is in full swing. His administration has already taken action\u00a0117 times\u00a0to repeal or weaken climate regulations, and much more deregulation is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[46,48,57,68,76,77,82,87,90,96,99,107,109,111,113,137,139,146,148,160,174,183,184,201,202,209,222,230,232,233,244,246,249,256,262,263,267,277,279,288],"class_list":["post-3520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-carbon","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-decarbonising","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-eastmed","tag-embargo","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-energy-peace","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-greece","tag-greenenergy","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-pollution","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-solar","tag-solar-power","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}