Environmentalists plan an aggressive agenda for the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives in the 116th Congress, seeking both to push a comprehensive climate policy and target Trump’s regulatory rollback through oversight and investigations.
“We have some new legislative opportunities and some new opportunities to continue to hold the Trump administration accountable,” said Ana Unruh Cohen, government affairs director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Unruh Cohen’s group is just one of several that are already pushing Democrats on House committees to counter the Trump administration’s roll-back of environmental and climate regulations, while also pressing for probes into his Cabinet.
NRDC wants the Democratic leadership to “scrutinize” the actions of the Trump administration, both from a policy perspective, and in terms of the scandals that have characterized the administration’s environmental policy, said Unruh Cohen.
Some environmentalists, though, would also like to build support for a bipartisan climate policy with Republicans, thinking that the Democratic House could create an opening for narrowly targeted legislation to gain bipartisan support.
“We see this as a good opportunity for us because we’re less in the frame of mind where we’re playing 100 percent defense,” said Elizabeth Gore, vice president of political affairs for the Environment Defense Fund.
Gore advocates building support for a bipartisan climate policy through a discussion of what is being dubbed the “Green New Deal.”
The term, new to the Washington lexicon, has the GOP on the defensive. At the heart of their consternation is proponents’ goal of generating 100 percent of the nation’s energy from renewables by the end of the next decade.
A report published last week by the Republican Policy Committee warned that “producing 100 percent of electricity from renewable sources is a practical impossibility in the near future.”
But Gore is not giving up on the GOP. She believes there is a version of the “Green New Deal” that they could buy into.
“One of our bigger priorities, this idea of 100-percent clean economy, making dramatic reductions in carbon pollution and moving toward clean energy and more broadly across the whole economy — that has appeal not just to Democrats, but to Republicans as well,” Gore said. “We’d love to see a bipartisan solution.”
Her group has always viewed bipartisan solutions as more durable, Gore added.
She and other groups also believe they could attract more Republicans to embrace the “Green New Deal” by clarifying that it could include low-carbon or no-carbon energy sources other than solely renewable ones.
Furthermore, Gore believes that the next Congress should feature debates on the merits of a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program to curb emissions, given that those policies have not been adequately debated in a decade and thus need polishing if they are ever to be implemented.
Of course, from the vantage point of environmentalists, the Republican Senate and Trump’s veto pen limit the value of passing legislation in the Democratic House.
Accordingly, outside groups also hope to make progress toward environmentalist goals through House oversight.
The top oversight priority, said Unruh Cohen, is checking Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency agenda on the climate, air, and water.
NRDC, for one, wants the energy and environment committees to force the administration to define EPA’s true role in protecting public health, given that some of the arguments used to repeal Obama-era rules were based on the harm they pose to public health.
The Trump EPA argued, for example, that Obama-era fuel economy rules would increase the number of deaths on the road because they mandated lighter cars and trucks.
Second on the oversight list is outgoing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s regulatory actions. Zinke’s agency is in the process of rolling back key parts of the Endangered Species Act to allow for more drilling and mining on federal lands. NRDC, Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and many other prominent conservation and environmental groups say the changes would harm numerous species.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is also in the environmentalists’ crosshairs. NRDC started a campaign against Perry last month by releasing an analysis that showed the Energy Department is sitting on as much as $600 million in grant money for clean-energy research. The group wants Congress to investigate.
Congress can also exercise oversight through the appropriations process, Unruh Cohen noted.
“There’s just a lot of oversight that needs to take place,” said Erich Pica, the president of Friends of the Earth. “That oversight and those investigations will feed into the legislative process, and more likely will feed into the appropriations process in the House.”
Infrastructure will also be a big priority for environmentalists, who are on guard for attempts to roll back the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which requires environmental reviews for projects.
Pica warned that it’s not just Republicans who are under suspicion. “Democrats need to be put on notice too that rolling back NEPA is a no-go,” he said.
