As we enter the heart of the election season, policy items related to climate and sustainability will once again play a significant part in each candidate’s platform. The debate over climate topics spans much further than just the health of the planet, with impacts on jobs, the economy, and more – ensuring it will once again be top of mind for voters as they vet their preferred candidates. Below is just a sampling of recent media coverage discussing climate policy, the upcoming election, and what we can expect to be a part of the discussion over the next few months:
The climate vice president? What Tim Walz brings to the Harris ticket. – Grist
Before his cable news commentary went viral and Harris ushered him into the national spotlight, the former soldier, football coach, and high school teacher was in the midst of an unexpectedly ambitious and productive second term as the chief executive of the North Star State. A progressive with a rural background and a penchant for coalition building, Walz was able to wield a precarious Democratic trifecta to achieve a slew of progressive priorities. The biggest of these took place just a few months after the 2022 midterm elections, when Walz signed a law that requires the state’s utilities to get 100 percent of their electricity from clean sources by 2040.
Walz’s experience in Minnesota could be a boon to Harris as she crafts an on-the-fly legislative agenda that builds on progress made by the Biden administration. Biden’s crowning policy achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, is sending billions of dollars to states and tribes for clean energy projects and deployment. It’s unlikely that Congress will pass another law like it in the short term… Much of the climate action we’ll see in the next few years will likely come from states.
Gov. Hochul Ponders a Relaxation of Goals Under New York’s Landmark Climate Law – Inside Climate News
After state officials admitted last month that New York State will likely miss a key deadline required by its ambitious 2019 climate law, business groups have seized the moment to lobby Gov. Kathy Hochul to relax the law’s basic mandates. And Hochul sounds receptive to the idea. ‘The costs have gone up so much I now have to say, ‘What is the cost on the typical New York family?’’ the governor said in a recent TV interview. ‘The goals are still worthy. But we have to think about the collateral damage of these decisions. Either mitigate them or rethink them.’
The five-year-old Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), enacted by a Democrat-controlled Legislature under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, seeks to slash the state’s greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change. It requires the state obtain 70 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030. But that’s not going to happen, the state Public Service Commission (PSC) admitted in a draft report July 1. That 70 percent renewables target will not be met before 2033, it said.
Gen Z Voters Support Climate Action and Nuclear Energy, Poll Finds – Wall Street Journal
Two-thirds of respondents to a poll of first-time young American voters agreed the U.S. must plan to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and about four in five supported ‘new generation’ nuclear energy to supplement renewable power sources.
Asked whether the U.S. should be a ‘net exporter of energy,’ support went from a minority of voters to a majority after deliberation, with support increasing by more than 20 percentage points among both Republicans and Democrats. Support for ‘energy independence’ increased by 14 points following discussion, ultimately garnering support from three-quarters of respondents.
Musk might be the only person Trump listens to on climate – POLITICO
The world’s richest man is perhaps the one person who could sway Trump on climate policy if the former president returns to the White House, according to GOP lawmakers. Musk, who plans to publicly interview Trump on Monday, told Tesla shareholders in June that the Republican presidential nominee regularly calls him.
Many Republican lawmakers are excited about the advisory role Musk could play in a rebooted Trump administration. They brushed off concerns that Musk could use the position to promote his companies and protect his investments.
How a Republican election sweep could transform U.S. climate policy – Washington Post
These are just some of the ways Republicans could shift U.S. climate policy if they win the White House, flip the Senate and maintain their House majority in the November election. While such a scenario seemed less likely a few weeks ago, it appears more probable in light of President Biden’s disastrous debate performance, an increasingly brutal Senate map for Democrats, and an attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump that has invigorated his base.
More broadly, Project 2025 suggests eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which forecasts weather and tracks climate change, describing it as ‘one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.’ The plan endorses shuttering an Energy Department office that has roughly $400 billion in loan authority to help emerging clean energy technologies. And it would cut the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, which aims to address the pollution that disproportionately harms poor and minority communities.
What Project 2025 would mean for the fight against climate change – The Hill
Project 2025, a controversial conservative roadmap that aims to guide the next Republican administration, calls for the elimination of multiple energy- and environment-related offices and rules — moves that would restrict the government’s ability to combat climate change and pollution.
At the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the plan calls for the consolidation of science and policy under political officials. Its plans for doing so include appointing at least six political appointees who are in charge of overseeing and changing the agency’s research and science activities. It also calls for moving high-ranking career officials out of the EPA’s Office of Water, and eliminating the agency’s civil and criminal law enforcement office — instead moving the law enforcement officials to the agency’s office of general counsel.
The Market’s Next Black Swan Is Climate Change – Bloomberg
Failing to do more to slow the planetary heating caused by greenhouse-gas emissions will gouge 40% from global equity valuations, estimates a new study by the EDHEC-Risk Climate Impact Institute. Accounting for climate-change-accelerating ‘tipping points’ such as Amazon-rainforest dieback or a Big Burp of gas from melting permafrost, the market losses rise to 50%.
But such numbers drastically understate the potential effects of climate change on economic growth. As Rebonato notes, extreme heat, sea-level rise and other long-lasting impacts of global warming will do much more damage to human health and productivity than individual disasters like hurricanes or wildfires.
Democrats’ VP pick Tim Walz welcomed as climate champion by green advocates – The Guardian
During his tenure, the governor has also funded clean energy career training and allocated $2bn to natural resources, climate and energy projects in a bill that has been compared to the Inflation Reduction Act.
In 2019, he formed a climate crisis sub-cabinet and advisory board within his administration and, three years later, unveiled a plan that aims to slash planet-heating emissions in half by 2030 and boost the share of electric cars on Minnesota roads to 20%. “This issue will transcend whoever’s elected,” Walz said at the time. “This issue is not going away. It needs to be addressed.”
Also among Walz’s climate accomplishments: boosting Minnesota’s mass transit, including by championing a new Amtrak rail line, between the Twin Cities and Chicago, which came online in May.
Tim Walz’s Big Climate Ambitions – The New York Times
Walz is trying to accelerate that transition even more. As Davenport reported, his efforts put Minnesota on track to transition to clean energy even faster than California, which for decades has been at the vanguard of efforts to tackle climate change.
In 2023, Walz signed a law requiring Minnesota to generate or procure all of its electricity from wind, solar and other carbon-free sources by 2040, eliminating the climate-warming pollution from coal and gas-fired power plants. Working with Democrats in the State Legislature, Walz managed to push through nearly 40 other climate initiatives.
This year he signed into law a bill to speed up permits for renewable energy projects, something his colleagues in Washington are still struggling to do.
New Jersey’s state protections against climate change are under fire – Fast Company
“It will significantly harm the economy of our shore and river communities, and is premised on the policy that people and businesses should be forced to retreat from the coast,” said Ray Cantor, an official with the group and a former advisor to the Department of Environmental Protection under Republican Gov. Chris Christie.
“We do believe that we need to consider sea level rise in our planning efforts,” he said. “However, this rule is based on flawed scientific assumptions and will force a retreat from the Jersey Shore and coastal communities.”
Rutgers defended its projections as consistent with 2021 sea-level projections for Atlantic City of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “a trusted, highly credible, heavily reviewed source of information for climate change.”
Study offers new policy tool for considering ‘Indigenous climate justice’ – Carbon Brief
In many parts of the world, Indigenous communities bear the brunt of adverse impacts from climate change, as well as facing systemic disadvantages in climate change mitigation efforts due to structural inequity.
The paper says that, even if a policy is deemed “just”, it will still be inadequate because “true” justice “cannot be achieved in the context of a dominant colonial, capitalist patriarchy whose associated hierarchical structures, oppressive dynamics…are antithetical to Indigenous ways of being”. However, recognising the long-term nature of systemic change, the authors highlight the potential to make progress within current systems.
The tool is, therefore, designed to empower Indigenous communities to realise progress within existing governance systems, even though the authors say they recognise that justice is conditional upon “system transformation”.
How a Republican election sweep could transform U.S. climate policy – The Washington Post
““There is no doubt that a second Trump administration would pick up where it left off — whether it was conventional energy, oil and gas pipelines, or the market-dictated acceleration of the renewable energy transition,” said Herrgott, who served as executive director of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council under Trump and now leads the nonprofit Permitting Institute.
It is difficult to predict how these and other decisions could affect the level of carbon emissions in Earth’s atmosphere, the main driver of global warming. But a recent analysis by Carbon Brief, a United Kingdom-based climate policy and science publication, found that a Trump win in November could cause an additional 4 billion metric tons of carbon emissions by 2030 — equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan.”
Trump effect in clean tech sector deepens angst in Europe’s boardrooms – Reuters
“European companies focused on clean energy are abandoning expansion plans, bracing for lower sales or see funding of U.S projects in doubt because of fears over what a potential election victory for Donald Trump could mean for their sector.
Trump has dismissed President Joe Biden’s policies to fight climate change as a “green new scam” and is expected to try to undo much of his administration’s work, including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that offers tax breaks and subsidies to U.S. and foreign companies investing in sustainable energy.
The law passed in 2022 has acted as a powerful incentive for European companies from the sector to expand or establish their U.S. presence, but a spectre of a second Trump presidency is giving them a pause.”
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***Climate Policy news roundup guest post from FischTank PR interns Baylee Matthews and Uju Ike***
