Heading into the 2022 midterm elections and beyond, the Republican voter base will likely count among the most impassioned and indignant voting blocs in recent memory. This suggests that the Biden administration’s climate policy efforts, however bold and progressive, must be able to withstand potential regressive efforts by future Republican legislative majorities and administrations. I will analyse three ways in which the Biden administration may be able to do this.
The Affordable Care Act as a Useful Analogy
First, the Biden administration can emulate past policy efforts which have endured beyond the administrations that set them in motion. The Affordable Care Act presents a useful case study—despite being passed completely along party lines, the ACA has survived persistent repeal attempts by the Trump administration. This is because Democrats had successfully embedded several widely popular elements in the Act, like coverage for pre-existing health conditions, and making dependent child health coverage available until a child reaches the age of 26. These provisions continue to mobilise deep reservoirs of support even in politically conservative red states. Even Republican critique of the ACA has involved co-opting these provisions, by reassuring the public that favourable elements, like coverage for pre-existing conditions, will be retained even if the ACA were to be repealed. The inclusion of these provisions has made it significantly difficult to roll back the Act, and the Biden administration can implement a similar strategy in relation to climate policy. Climate initiatives which the Biden administration would be most likely to receive bipartisan support are those which would maximise job creation—this includes support for infrastructure upgrading, domestic farmers, and renewable energy. Job retraining initiatives for the thousands of fossil fuel industry workers who have lost their jobs over the past decade would also be highly popular. Crucially, there has to be shovel-ready programmes in green industries which can begin within the first two years of Biden’s presidency, to convince voters in the leadup to the 2022 midterm elections that investments into clean energy do indeed better the economy and their individual economic fortunes.
Understanding Climate as an Issue of Security
The second major way in which the Biden administration could enact resilient climate policy is by conceiving of climate change as a core national security issue. This would entrench climate-consciousness at every level of the bureaucracy, making it difficult for a future Republican administration to comprehensively dismantle. Most recently, Biden’s appointment of John Kerry as his special presidential envoy for climate constitutes the first time that the National Security Council has included an official specifically dedicated to climate concerns, reflecting the way in which the Biden administration will seek to pursue climate action as a central foreign policy and national security priority. Integrating climate concerns into national security considerations will ripple throughout the entire bureaucracy, given the pre-eminence that issues of national security occupy across the federal landscape. By expanding climate considerations beyond the exclusive purview of environmental agencies, the Biden administration can enact a deep shift in what the decision-making calculus, subscribed to across the government, will look like for the foreseeable future. In a similar vein, while this was not specifically mentioned in Biden’s campaign manifesto, the Biden administration could further cement the centrality of climate considerations by also viewing climate change as a crucial threat to America’s financial stability. In line with the recommendations of a recent bipartisan report by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, all federal financial regulatory agencies should integrate climate-related risks into their mandates and their work, including into their existing monitoring and oversight. This would similarly entrench climate considerations across the bureaucracy, making rollback attempts far more difficult.
Leveraging on Market Forces
Third, the Biden administration can rely on market forces to facilitate and develop a more enduring transition to a green economy and a cleaner energy industry. Businesses have increasingly been factoring climate change into their investment decisions—major US utilities like Duke, Xcel Energy, Dominion and most recently, Southern Company, have been committing themselves to a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The Biden administration can facilitate this momentum with a range of market-centred initiatives, working primarily through incentives as opposed to sanctions. This is an approach that would likely be more palatable for Republicans, given their aversion towards extensive, negative interference in the economy by the state. For one, the Biden administration can boost the development of the offshore wind industry, by supporting states and companies seeking approval for this venture. It can also facilitate the sale of electric cars by imposing tighter fuel economy standards, significantly reducing transport emissions.
In fact, it may well be that bipartisan support for climate legislative efforts may not be as elusive as one would expect—it seems inevitable that Republicans will have to pivot on climate change in the near future. Climate change is becoming an increasingly electorally determinative issue, emerging as a top concern in the 2020 election exit polls, with more than 50% of Republicans expressing support for climate initiatives, according to a Pew Research Centre’s survey earlier this June. In particular, climate action seems to garner bipartisan support among young voters, who make up a growing portion of the electorate—in 2018, voters below the age of 53 cast 62.5 million votes, outnumbering voters over the age of 53, who cast 60.1 million votes. Additionally, the Republican Party’s geographical stronghold of the South has suffered and stands to suffer disproportionately from climate change. This explains why, notwithstanding Trump’s anti-climate rhetoric, there have been numerous instances of bipartisan cooperation on the issue of climate change, often initiated by prominent Republicans themselves. In September this year, senate Democrats and Republicans cooperated on a bipartisan energy bill to limit the use of hydrofluorocarbons, and passed the America’s Conservation Enhancement Act, a bipartisan effort to facilitate species conservation and the protection of vital ecosystems. The Growing Climate Solutions Bill was also co-sponsored by Republican senators Mike Braun and Lindsey Graham earlier this June. This recent Republican push on climate policy may be viewed as a coordinated attempt to counter the Democrats’ Green New Deal, clearly illustrating how the window of discourse has shifted in favour of climate action and protection. It may well be that future political disagreements between both parties regarding climate policy will be characterised more by one-upmanship, as opposed to fundamental disagreements on whether policies should be undertaken at all, particularly since Biden’s electoral victory heralds a decoupling of individual Republican politicians’ political fortunes with that of Trump.
We can also perhaps take comfort in the fact that the US has never elected a President with as much experience navigating the upper houses as Joe Biden. Given his widely acknowledged adeptness at mobilising bipartisan support for policies, and given that Republicans have demonstrated a steady inclination towards cooperating with Democrats on climate change, it may well be that the threat of complete rollback of Biden’s climate policy package is overstated. Nonetheless, political polarisation across the US remains unabated, and as common ground across a whole range of political propositions dissipates, it is imperative—for Midwestern communities at risk of extreme temperature increases, and indeed, the rest of the world—that the Biden administration’s climate policies be resilient and enduring.