Browning of America

Why is aggressive green legislation so difficult to get passed in the US Congress?

(Table and map source, USEIA, 2017; image by author)

Item: “The House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act on June 26, 2009. This bill was supported by some major companies and trade associations, including the Edison Electric Institute and the Nuclear Energy Institute.” (1)

In 2009 The American Clean Energy and Security Act passed the House but not the Senate.

Let’s repeat: two major energy industry research and policy groups came out in support of the first carbon emission legislation in the US.

Item: On all environmental focused bills passed in Congress and signed into law, Republicans have played a pivotal role in helping these bills get passed. Besides the American Clean Energy and Security Act (2009), these include the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and “pro-environment provisions as part of a broader bill such as the Energy Policy Act of 2005.” (2)

So why NOW are modest Congress environmental initiatives summarily dismissed as ‘never-will-happens?’

NOW when clues abound — another dried up reservoir here, another flood-wracked community there?

NOW when our global neighbors are threatening America with increased tariffs based on our missing global emission agreements and goals?

Why is aggressive green legislation so difficult to get passed in the US Congress by our representatives?

“A perfect storm” — in my opinion — of five interrelated myths — as ‘American as apple pie’ — are curbing our attempts to reckon climate destruction.

The Myth of Resiliency

This myth arrives in two forms: one a strain of the ‘America is exceptional’ delusion. That we are capable of repairing climate destruction AND have the wherewithal to wait out the next cataclysm and repair that one, too. And on and on. Until one day, it all comes crashing down. Not in a special effects-inspired catastrophe but in the chance remark of a Louisiana Congresswoman, who when asked why it was ok to accept disaster relief funds for her state post-Katrina but voted against the same relief. for New Jersey, post-Sandy, answered

‘I thought we were the party of fiscal responsibility.’

The other form is what I call the “ghost of Yankee ingenuity,” another delusion strain which promises that if we convince ourselves we ‘can solve’ it, ‘it’ goes away.

‘There is an app for that.’.

To echo 45’s public shaming of California after surveying the Paradise fire, ‘You need better forest management,’ (did he mean ‘controlled burning,’ which he mistakenly referred to as ‘leave raking?.’) (3)

Yes, of course…bring on the controlled fire zones, the sub-Nevada mega aquifers; the uber sized pipes carrying water from the Great Lakes to Las Vegas.

Bring it on!

These forms of resiliency rest on a faulty ‘after the fact’ logic. One half of what the Congresswoman said is true: one doesn’t save money by duplicating efforts. The other half is equally false: one is not responsible for the other’s plight.

In most states driving away from the scene of an accident or refusing to offer help is a crime.

The Myth of History

‘We have time, yet…’we’ve gotten this far…’

We act as if we have no history of delay, denial, delusion. We let ‘history’ run smack into the ambiguity of the future and we lose the present.

We mentally reduce the numbers and blind ourselves to where’s and what’s. ‘Glass half-fulls’ reign. We watch as habitats crumble. Remember Rachel Carson, Bill McKibben, Greta Thunburg? (4). All ‘first’ to document climate destruction. Voices challenging denial get compartmentalized. But, we argue, America only contributes 20% to ‘global warming,’ forgetting that per capita consumption puts America in the top spot of global polluters.

Another consequence of the myth of history is its mirror: that when we are overwhelmed with new information, most of it dire, we rely on spreading this myth. Al Gore said it best, reflecting on why the Clean Energy and Security Act failed to pass the Senate in 2009:

“I asked Al Gore why he thought climate legislation had failed. He cited several reasons including Republican partisanship, which had prevented moderates from becoming part of the coalition in favor of the bill. The Great Recession made the effort even more difficult, he added. ‘The forces wedded to the old patterns still have enough influence that they were able to use the fear of the economic downturn as a way of slowing the progress toward this big transition that we have to make’” (7)

The Myth of Competition

This myth states that the ‘free market’ will take care of reducing carbon emissions. That the ‘free market’ Is the appropriate-most-efficient method of restoring climate stability. ‘We’ll get to where we want to be if we just keep our hands off this notion of ‘market resiliency.’

This is ‘pie in the sky’ thinking.

What if the ‘free market’ is controlled?

What if we wake up one morning and realize that we are playing by someone else’s rules? Consider the power and perniciousness of the oil and gas lobby. Legislators are tethered to anti-hydrocarbon emission-capping interests. Witness the ‘redundant scourge of Manchins,’ which does nothing but argue the point: break the hold on the legislators and one gets all the cap-and-trades one wants.

It’s that simple.

The Myth of Freedom

The perennial non-starter for deliberation on a green path forward is the reduction of any climate effect mitigation to an impending “gas tax.” Like the firearm, the notion that governing an emission spewing appliance or transportation habit entails a personal loss of freedom has become an epithet: another example of “big government” coming after ‘my freedom of moving around.’

This reasoning is dangerous on two levels:

1.It masks a real threat of disproportionality (see following “Myth of Justice”)

2.It skews the economic argument towards scarcity, that somehow my sacrifice is perceived as another’s gain (zero-sum).

The Myth of Justice

This myth proposes that ‘everyone is affected by climate change, equally.’ Further, those arguing this myth validate this premise by the ‘delusion of equal share,’ that because humans. breathe air and drink water our species (can) will be equally affected by emission and waste pollution.

Not true.

Because emission and waste pollution has a source, those habitats closer to the source suffer disproportionately. Stretch this thought from a local to regional to global scale: as we move out, pollution spread is assisted by forces which we also unwittingly presume are equally shared.

Not true.

1.Regional inequality/disproportionality. I live in a state which is more dependent on coal energy than California. (4)

That’s a problem.

For these states disproportionately reliant on transitioning away from coal dependency, the effort(s) it will take to curb emission is greater than other states. In the Senate, however, each state has equal voice. Add to this scenario that some states produce as well as consume coal disproportionately. The same institutions which defend ‘equal voice,’ ‘equal access,’ end up skewing equality.

2.Local inequality/disproportionality, I have a friend who lives in Manville, New Jersey.

After Hurricane Ida, that’s a problem. (5)

In the end what we do share equally is inequality.

Disproportionality is not limited by scale or scope. After Hurricane Ida swelled the Raritan River and flooded Manville, New Jersey (6), President Biden visited the devastated areas and promised Federal support. And yet the takeaway is that as in the past, Manville feels forgotten. Once the home of Johns Manville, residents have been living with the effects of climate and environmental inequality: first, from toxic waste, to disinvestment, to Ida and the flooding of the town. Visiting an environment-climate-redlined human habitat and promising federal dollars for what — we’re not sure — is benign neglect.

Our institutions are not equipped to reckon climate destruction. Why should they?

Here is where climate justice, not climate change denial, needs applying. In a sense these myths shore up climate change denial. It feels perverse, echoing Naomi Klein’s point, (7) to think that climate deniers have done a better job of calling out our reluctance to face the challenge(s) of reckoning climate injustice than defenders of environment and habitat protection.

But she’s right.

Summary

We can look at these five interrelated myths as. rationales for inactivity OR we can look at these five interrelated myths as influencers to our thinking AND proceed “accordingly.”

As human species we are capable of both.

October 22

1-https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2010/10/12/8569/anatomy-of-a-senate-climate-bill-death/

2-ibid

3- https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/20/trump-blames-california-for-wildfires-tells-state-you-gotta-clean-your-floors-1311059

4-https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/21/greta-thunberg-accuses-world-leaders-of-being-in-denial-over-climate-crisis

5-

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37034

6-

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/us/manville-nj-ida-biden.html

7-https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/10/naomi-klein-green-groups-climate-deniers