Has Obama lost environmental voters?
by Glenn Hurowitz.
Al Gore’s Rolling
Stone critique of President
Obama’s failure to act on the climate crisis is further evidence of
environmentalists’ broad frustration with this administration. Gore now
joins former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as yet another
former Clinton administration official whose dismay at Obama’s undermining of climate legislation, oil-industry cheerleading, enormous expansion
of coal mining for export to China, and capitulations on public
lands issues have
overcome their innate reluctance to criticize a Democratic president and
risk ostracism from the Beltway establishment. This increased boldness
follows a major evolution in the environmental movement itself: Driven
by grassroots frustration, major environmental organizations have
learned to shed their fear of standing up to the White House and have
even gotten results from doing so.
Of course, the White House is still betting that despite their carping, environmentalists
have nowhere to go: No matter how much Obama concedes to the oil and coal
industries, or how many times the White House rebuffs environmentalists on important
symbolic issues like solar
panels on the White House, or how many times they push off clean air
regulations, the Republican presidential nomineee is bound to
be worse. This dynamic was on display last night when I debated the Center for American Progress’ Dan
Weiss (defending the administration) and the American Enterprise Institute’s
Ken Green (defending polluters) on PBS
News Hour, moderated by Gwen Ifill:
As the debate reflects, environmentalists are torn. As great
as our disappointment with Obama is, we have seen the House Republicans and we
are afraid: This is a group of people for whom proving their “true
conservatism” apparently involves a competition to see who can repeal more laws
that protect children from poisoning and wildlife from extinction.
But will the Republicans’ presidential
nominee really have any similarity to a Tea Party Republican? Certainly, it’s possible that a climate-denying, EPA-repealing extremist like Michele Bachmann could turn the
Republican primary into a clownish right-wing race to the bottom. But we
shouldn’t forget that Republican primary voters want to win, usually choose establishment-backed candidates, and, like all
Americans, have deep concerns about the economy. That could hand
the nomination to someone like Mitt Romney or (less likely) Jon
Huntsman—people who are building their campaign not around fealty to an
agenda contrived by the far right, but around the notion that they are best
positioned to put America back to work.
Indeed, it’s notable that Al Gore (sort of) praised Romney just a week ago for “sticking to his guns in the face of the
anti-science wing of the Republican
Party.” And Romney has left himself room for climate action—endorsing a
transition to clean energy, but ruling
out international agreements that don’t require emerging countries like
China to take action as well, exactly the position of the Obama administration.
Of course, Romney’s record is very
mixed. Despite early support, he yanked
Massachusetts from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to slash carbon
pollution. And he supports crazy schemes like drilling for oil even on our most
ecologically sensitive public lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Nonetheless, he also supported large-scale clean energy investment—and that might
be enough to convince voters that he’s at least as green as Obama given Obama’s
very mixed record.
More broadly, Obama’s failure to create large investments in
the green economy will severely damage him at the ballot box: Clean energy and
ecological restoration create more
than twice as many jobs as investments in coal, oil, and nuclear. Every time Obama tries to buy off the
oil or coal industry with a new concession or delay of an EPA regulation, he is not only putting more money into the hands of industries broadly committed to
his defeat, but he’s also wasting billions on ineffective job-creation strategies
in established, polluting industries. Case in point: News today that European consortium Airbus just trounced Boeing at the Paris Air Show, landing orders for $72 billion worth of
new aircraft, compared to Boeing’s $22 billion. According to the Associated
Press, the European planes won the global competition because of “airlines’ desire to reduce sky-high fuel costs and cut their carbon dioxide emissions.”
That’s $50 billion worth of jobs not going to the United States because
of our failure to win the race for efficiency and clean energy. This is
not winning the future.
This type of frustration is going to
be deeply felt not just by environmentalists, but other parts of a
Democratic coalition already frustrated with Obama’s unwillingness or
inability to stand up to corporations and force them to do better, or already
angry that he would cut taxes for the ultra-rich while education is
being slashed.
All in all, Obama’s failures have put the Democratic Party,
the country, and the planet in a very risky, high-stakes position for 2012 and beyond. Al Gore is
once again issuing the national call to action we need to rescue ourselves from
this mess. It’s now up to
President Obama to act on it—and environmentalists to keep up the pressure to make sure that he does.
Related Links:
How better window glass will extend electric cars’ range
Critical List: McKibben’s march on Washington; speeding up permits for offshore drilling
Join us in civil disobedience to stop the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline
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