CONFERENCE CHATTER: Can Democrats Make Climate Change Key Issue in 2024 Election?

As most polls continue to suggest the United States' November presidential election between incumbent President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump will be a toss-up, some current White House officials and climate policy officials are concerned at the prospect of a second Trump Administration rolling back some of the regulatory reforms and policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Biden.

White House officials sounded the alarm over Trump's plans to gut the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and various clean energy and climate change mitigation measures included in the legislation during a POLITICO Energy Summit event 5 June 2024 in Washington, D.C.

“That agenda doesn't just stop [progress] it puts us on a U-turn trajectory,” said Ali Zaidi, assistant to the president and White House national climate advisor. “The guardian against that is investing in the political economy to sustain going in this direction. The way we do that is by linking this set of climate solutions to economic opportunity and good jobs for the middle class.”

Making Their Climate Pitch

Democrats making the case for a more robust climate agenda are contending with another challenge - polls indicating a lack of enthusiasm for environmental policy as a general election issue.

Some senior Democratic Congressional leaders are unfazed, arguing they can make up ground with a key part of their constituency.

“The polls miss the generational intensity of the climate change issue among younger voters,” said Sen. Ed Markey, (D-Mass.)

Further complicating the dynamic are sentiments among younger voters who may be reluctant to support Biden given their views that the Biden Administration is too sympathetic to the fossil fuel industry, despite shutting down the Keystone Pipeline and signing into law one of the largest climate bills in U.S. history.

“We applaud the president's efforts around kickstarting the renewable energy economy,” said Betamia Coronel, senior national organizer for climate justice at the Center for Popular Democracy. “I think we want Joe Biden to do better in addressing the crisis at the scale that is needed, and with a phasedown and eventual phaseout of the fossil fuel industry.”

In addition, when parsed out more particularly as a question of long-term concern, climate change does rank among the issues facing Americans, said and there is also data to support that voters are concerned about how much effort will be needed to combat climate-related challenges in the future, said Jon Krosnick, a professor at Stanford University.

GOP, Industry Pushes Back

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.) said the Biden Administration's coal moratorium is harmful to innovation, where alternative uses for coal have emerged as paving materials and in the manufacturing of bricks. Lummis did say she would look to find common ground with the Biden Administration on developing clean nuclear energy, which she called a “bright spot” of the president's energy agenda. Her home state has led the country in uranium mining since 1995, and it hosts the largest-known economic uranium ore reserves in the U.S. Lummis said in order to meet the increasing demands of American energy consumption that has been spurred by the prevalence of artificial intelligence and cloud computing and the transition to electric vehicles, the U.S. cannot afford to abandon fossil fuel.

She also underscored the importance of America's role as an exporter of clean energy to its geopolitical partners, referencing conversations with U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel during a recent trip to Asia.

Her House of Representatives colleagues, Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), co-chair of the Climate Solutions Caucus, and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, took to the same stage later in the afternoon to emphasize opportunities to work across the aisle to incentivize tax credits for clean energy transitions and other industry-driven partnerships.

“You don't govern by the extremes, you govern by listening to people,” said Tom Perez, senior advisor and assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. “There's overwhelming consensus that what we're doing in the climate space, that's the right thing to do.”

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