The coronavirus pandemic could take away the momentum that has built in the past few years for new federal policies to counter climate change.
“What I fear is everyone is so focused on the problem at hand that I don’t think climate issues are on the front burner again,” said Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida, a Republican who supports a carbon tax.
“All the eggs are scrambled until these things are solved and steady. I hope we don’t lose the momentum we’ve gained among Republicans,” Rooney said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
Polls over recent years have shown voters of both parties are more concerned about climate change as they recognize extreme weather events. But voters are less willing to support policies such as carbon taxes or mandates that are perceived as requiring economic trade-offs. The expected sharp economic recession could heighten the sense that the trade-offs are too much.
Historically, there has typically been less support for environmental regulation during recessions, and more support during periods of economic growth.
“If the issue is framed in terms of, ‘everyone has to sacrifice for the climate,’ I don’t think that’s going anywhere. We think we are sacrificing right now,” said Travis Ridout, professor of government and public policy at Washington State University. “Something that ostensibly addresses climate is going to be seen as frivolous and out-of-touch unless the proponents can somehow effectively frame that as helping the economy.”
Republicans in Congress have criticized Democrats for trying to attach climate policy to early coronavirus response legislation, attacking relatively modest ideas like carbon emissions standards for airlines and renewable tax credits as being equivalent to the “Green New Deal.”
Indeed, most GOP lawmakers, many representing fossil fuel states and districts, appear more worried about an oil price crash caused partially by the coronavirus, and its harm to the U.S. shale industry.
“It misses reality to think oil and fossil fuel state members are just going to walk away from their states’ economies and constituents. That’s just not going to happen,” said Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
That has caused concern among climate hawks that Republicans who’ve recently begun to recognize climate change as a problem could lose interest.
“Busting back into climate denial would look as bad as busting back in denying the pandemic,” said Bob Inglis, founder of republicEn and a former six-term congressman from South Carolina.
Republicans have been here before. In 2007, before the global economic crisis, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions. Gingrich even partnered with then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a commercial encouraging action to combat climate change that featured them sitting together on a couch.
Gingrich changed his tune, however, two years later, railing against the “cap-and-trade energy tax.”
In the meantime, the financial crisis struck and led to a deep recession, creating an emergency for millions of people who lost jobs or suddenly had trouble making ends meet. The economy, for years after, rated as the top issue on voters’ minds.
Republicans strongly opposed President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill, the $800 billion Recovery Act, that provided $90 billion for clean energy, helping to bring down the cost of wind and solar.
By 2010, the tea party revolution swept Republicans into control of Congress, where they sought to reduce spending and regulation.
Democrats say the situation is different than during the financial crisis, with climate change becoming more urgent as the science has become finer and the effects of extreme weather becoming more apparent.
Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida, the Democratic chairwoman of the House’s select climate committee, says the idea that addressing climate change is unduly costly has become outdated. As global warming worsens, people face the prospect of paying more for flood insurance because of sea-level rise and for healthcare from increased pollution, she said. The economy could also suffer labor-related losses from extreme heat.
“There are enormous costs of climate inaction,” Castor told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “It’s an unprecedented threat to public health just like a pandemic. It’s slower rolling but just as deadly. People don’t buy anymore that acting on climate is going to cost them.”
Climate hawks say policymakers could frame climate change mitigation and adaptation policies as necessary to make the economy more sustainable.
“The fight will be how do you balance the two considerations of not getting in the way of economic recovery, but having a type of economic recovery that is climate-aware and will be lasting,” said Joseph Majkut, a climate scientist at the free-market Niskanen Center.
Wind and solar jobs are two of the fastest growing in the economy, with many concentrated in rural Republican states.
“One thing that is changing somewhat is the classic dividing lines of fossil versus renewable or fossil versus clean is fragmenting,” said Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “A shift you are seeing are pump jacks and wind turbines on the same property.”
Democrats and Republicans are both expressing interest in the idea of addressing issues like infrastructure investment and grid modernization in future stimulus bills.
“There are a number of things we can find common ground on now that not only would have a positive effect on the nation’s economy but on emissions reduction,” Walden said.
The coronavirus epidemic is also changing human behavior and way of life, with social isolation policies forcing people to drive and consume less, causing emissions to decline. That could create a sense of complacency among policymakers and even businesses that have been acting on their own to reduce their carbon footprint.
Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, told reporters during a remote briefing this month that global carbon emissions could decline this year for the first time since the recession of 2008.
“They are declining because of an economic meltdown, not because of the right policies,” Birol said.
Analysts at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center, consider that trend to be short-lived, reminding that emissions rebounded sharply post-recovery from the recession.
Indeed, it’s uncertain whether behavioral changes stick and compensate for the lack of policy action to address climate change.
“Has this moved us into a new paradigm of communications through online and remote work that we might have gotten to anyway over a number of years, but because of the coronavirus, we got to literally in a number of days?” Walden said.
Regardless, some forces appear immovable.
“The pressures certain sectors of the energy system are experiencing are very much global and macro in their pressures, and that will continue regardless of what happens,” said Ryan Costello, a former centrist Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who supports a carbon tax.
