Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., says that the oil and gas industry, spooked by shareholder advocacy, public pressure, and litigation, is nearing a breaking point that could lead to Congress passing major climate change policy.
“They are scared to death, and they see the day of reckoning happening a lot quicker than most people think,” Whitehouse said in an interview with the Washington Examiner in the Lyndon B. Johnson Room of the U.S. Capitol, occasionally sipping a cup of English breakfast tea as he assessed the industry he has made a political career out of attacking.
In Whitehouse’s telling, overcoming the oil and gas industry is key to passing a comprehensive policy such as a carbon tax, which he and most economists view as the most efficient way to curb climate change, because the industry has the Republican Party “pretty much by the throat.”
But Whitehouse, who has achieved small bipartisan victories on carbon emissions reduction bills, is realistic about the challenge ahead for climate hawks seeking a bigger legislative breakthrough.
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While most big oil and gas companies are moving to cleaner energy and rhetorically support some form of carbon pricing, the industry trade groups oppose taxes and regulations.
Whitehouse particularly blames what he considers “the most powerful enemies to climate action”: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Petroleum Institute.
“The real machinery of influence is completely unchanged [in] what its intentions are,” Whitehouse said. “There is a real prospect of that shifting as it becomes more apparent to the American people what a racket the fossil fuel industry is running, saying one thing and doing another.”
Whitehouse’s tempered optimism explains his influence among Senate Democrats eager to pass big legislation to combat climate change.
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Whitehouse, 63, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general, delivered a “Time To Wake Up” floor speech about the climate every week in the Senate since 2012. With his distinctive parted silver hair and cleft chin, Whitehouse delivers the equivalent of oral arguments in court, intended to underscore “the science of man-made climate change, its effects felt throughout the country and around the globe, and the political forces that impede climate action in Congress.”
Yet Whitehouse has not endorsed the Green New Deal, the liberal vision statement that he notes is not “real legislation” yet.
Instead, over the past few years, Whitehouse has played the deal-maker, working with Republicans to pass smaller bills into law to increase tax breaks for carbon capture and storage projects on coal plants and to promote advanced nuclear reactors.
“Though we come from different parties and very different states, Sheldon Whitehouse is always interested in working together to get results,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
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Whitehouse’s calculus is pragmatic and strategic.
“Every little bit matters,” Whitehouse said. “I want to establish I am a person who can be credibly dealt with so that when the big conversation happens, people don’t fear I am going to misbehave in some way or not be reliable. I am building legislative equity.”
Although they get along with Whitehouse, Barrasso and other Republican senators are not close to supporting a carbon tax. But Whitehouse notes recent signs of progress.
He credited oil and gas giant Shell for taking a “good step” last month by ending its membership in the lobbying group American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers because of the trade association’s opposition to carbon prices.
Whitehouse said that Shell and other oil companies should give the larger trade groups an “ultimatum”: “Stop opposing policies to reduce carbon pollution, or we walk.”
“When those things happen, I will begin to believe they are sincere,” he said.
Some large trade groups have recently begun to shift their messaging. The Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute launched the “American Energy: Cleaner, Stronger” campaign in April, aiming to persuade the public and Congress that federal spending on clean energy is better than regulation in addressing climate change.
“The U.S. Chamber is driven by our desire to see action to address the very real problem of climate change,” Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer, told the Washington Examiner. Bradley noted the Chamber supports a bill co-sponsored by Whitehouse that would invest in research for carbon capture technologies that trap emissions from industrial facilities and reuse it for commercial products.
In March, the National Association of Manufacturers published an op-ed declaring, “It’s time to act on climate,” while encouraging “innovation” from industry to combat climate change.
The language used by these groups is similar to a recent emphasis by the Republican leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Reps. Greg Walden of Oregon and John Shimkus of Illinois, who are promoting private sector innovation as an alternative to regulation and taxes.
Whitehouse said he welcomes spending on clean energy innovation, but he says that such measures fall short without more muscular policies, such as carbon pricing.
“The problem is, to ask for innovation without a carbon price is like saying you want to get to the other side of the river, but we are not going to build or use a bridge,” he said.
Individual energy companies do offer lip service to carbon pricing. Shell, along with others, such as ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips, has endorsed a carbon tax plan proposed by the Climate Leadership Council, a group led by two former Republican secretaries of state, James Baker III and George Shultz, that would also scrap carbon regulations.
Whitehouse, however, noted that when it has counted, the companies have tried to block carbon pricing bills, usually through trade groups.
A report in March produced by the Environmental Defense Fund reported that roughly half of Fortune 500 companies have set at least one climate or energy target for their own actions but do not support policies that would reduce emissions across the entire economy.
Whitehouse sees the tide changing, especially if lawsuits against oil and gas companies progress.
Since 2017, eight U.S. cities, six counties, and Whitehouse’s home state of Rhode Island have sued companies such as ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron, accusing them of selling products that cause climate change while misleading the public about the harms of their business activities.
“Litigation is the spur that might very well drive the fossil fuel industry sincerely into a conversation,” Whitehouse said.
Oil and gas groups and their members argue that litigation would hamper efforts to pass major legislation. Aric Newhouse, the National Association of Manufacturers’ senior vice president for policy and government relations, took exception to Whitehouse’s attacks on his group. In a statement to the Washington Examiner, he said the group is “actively working” with Whitehouse’s staff on “potential climate change legislation.”
“Collaboration and innovation — not politically motivated litigation — is the only way to tackle climate change,” Newhouse said.
Whitehouse demands more. “If the industry begins to make the shift I predict it will, then that shift among Republicans will happen rapidly,” he said. “Where they will move will be to a price on carbon, if all the signals they have given already are the right ones.”
