by M. K. Dorsey, Dartmouth College
In University survey showed Americans say that a candidate’s views on global warming will be either the ‘single most important issue’ (2%) or ‘one of several important issues’ (52%). The Yale survey also found ‘that a large majority of Americans (66%)’ support locking the US into global treaty to ‘cut emissions 90% by 2050’. A smaller majority (65%) also said ‘developing sources of clean energy should be a very high (30%) or high (35%) priority.’
Even the often misjudged ‘marginalised, non-environmental demographics’ or African Americans, ‘believe that global warming is causing serious problems now, and more than 80% want the federal government to take strong action to deal with it’ as another December survey, from the Commission to Engage African Americans on Climate revealed.
So it’s fair to say most Americans, like a majority of the world’s citizens, share the President's concerns that ‘differences’ in Congress ‘may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change’.
Further, it is clear: All Americans, regardless of difference, want real commitments and government action on both climate policy and energy and policy.
On good days, beyond the gridlocked Congress, Washington’s energy and climate policy process
seems ripped from pages of a how-to-guide for crony capitalism. Self-dealing insiders along a fantastic and unlikely spectrum from greedy oil companies, to obsequious lawyers, avaricious financiers over to 'corporate captured' environmental groups - I would argue - configure dirty deals, move money into their own coffers, harm marginalised communities and lock the planet on
a pathway to climate catastrophe—all in one go. I've heard that representatives from some oil companies even have a name for the stakeholder collaborations they engage in and donations that they openly make to large conservation groups: ‘reputation insurance’. It’s all just business as usual on a good day.
On bad days, which are more normal deep inside Washington’s divided government, energy and climate policy coordination is little more than kakistocratic—what the Greeks called government by the worst or least qualified representatives. Sitting Senators and Representatives openly deny the established climate science and face no consequences. Those in the State Department openly recognise that climate crisis will become a big problem and simultaneously negotiate to consider taking decisive international action. Those taking arguably the most action, do so in secret, like those in the CIA’s Center on Climate Change and National Security.
So when the State of Union references energy policy 23 times and climate policy once, it’s not just lopsided, but symptomatic of the best of the White House and what and whom surround it (right down to its foggiest bottom).
Focusing on just energy, outside of a major climate policy overhaul, is not enough—even if Congress is divided.
The President and his advisors need to follow the lead of a more diverse ecosystem of environmentalists—not just upper-middle class activists and policy wonks, but working class citizens on the boundary of polluting refineries.
Those on the domestic and global margins must be part of the unfolding dialogue to reboot US climate policy—which presently stalls building robust global climate policy.
US African Americans and Native Americans, whom studies show would have born the brunt of havoc from a ruptured Keystone XL pipeline, must be included as much as Afro-Brazilians, indigenous people, and countless other groups too often left out of critical multilateral discussions.
In the White House and across many agencies, officials have to work both across the aisle and with new constituencies. To be fair, some already do this—but more must.
That the White House’s Michael Strautmanis watched the State of the Union with one of the co-chairs from the Commission to Engage African Americans on Climate is good sign.
Resuscitating old, failed alliances with overly corporatised NGOs in bed with Big Oil and other polluting firms is a recipe for disaster. Those in power are forging new ties with not only the 80% of African Americans that openly say they want the federal government to take strong action to deal both climate and energy policy—but also bringing their Afro-Brazilian counterparts to the table on the Road to Rio.
A newly created joint White House - US Environmental Protection Agency’s effort seeks to forge new multi-stakeholder collaborations on bilateral environmental justice concerns, beginning initially with dialogues between affected African American and Afro-Brazilian communities, their two governments, firms and, other institutions.
Failure to broaden the tent, and engage many hands-on-deck will yield doomsday, albeit for the marginalised. UN agencies forecast that, left unchecked, a climate change-related body count could pass 300,000 a year—concentrated in the poorest reaches of the developing world. If the deaths don’t come, livelihoods will be decimated, as crops fail, diseases scourge and extreme weather compounds the crisis.
In the last year of the US President’s first term, half the battle to forge a coherent plan on both climate and energy policy is cutting through the gridlock and hyper-partisanship. The other essential half, is engaging the vast super-majority, perhaps embodied in spirit of The Global Protester, and the ignored constituencies, who are on the proverbial climate and energy frontlines fighting to Rio and beyond.
Courtesy of the stakeholder forum
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