“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” President Barack Obama declared during his Second Inaugural Address on January 21, 2013. At the time unemployment lingered around eight percent, the nation was still in shock from the events at Sandy Hook Elementary and a sense of pessimism hung heavily in the air. Long gone was the hope-filled atmosphere of the 2008 election — one only needed to look as far as the president’s rapidly graying hair to track the decline in sentiment.
Thus, with his time in office waning, Obama has made addressing climate change a priority for the remainder of his term, using its urgency to combat this malaise and provide his presidency with a sorely needed boost. But the recent push has not come without a cost: In a tight year for midterm elections, vocal campaigns from the White House surrounding politically tabooed environmental issues have strained Democrats in conservative states and districts. Obama’s success in juggling the needs of his party, his Administration and the environment will be key to defining his legacy.
This delicate balancing act began in his first term with the Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed project, which would transport crude oil from Canadian oil sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, took over national news for months, pitting Republicans who craved the jobs it would bring against Democrats concerned about its environmental effects. Yet despite the fact that research on the pipeline’s impacts has been occurring for years, the controversy surrounding it has led the Obama Administration to postpone its final decision on the project until — conveniently — after the midterm elections.
The delay has been construed as a helpful nod toward red-state Democrats who do not want the burden of the pipeline hovering over their campaigns. Nevertheless, an administration eager for environmental action seems to have replaced one contentious issue with several more: Obama’s Climate Action Plan, released in June 2013, and Executive Order 13653 (“Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change”), signed the following November, counterbalanced the pipeline delay and provided a steady drumbeat to keep climate change on the agenda through the end of the year — supplying Obama with a renewed sense of purpose and giving Democrats in places like West Virginia another climate headache.
Recently, the president’s rhetoric on environmental issues has intensified even further. This past May, the latest National Climate Assessment, which outlines the present and future impacts of climate change on the United States, was published to great fanfare after an aggressive media push by the White House: Both President Obama and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy took part in Google Plus Hangouts later that month to promote the assessment, and links to its flashy website dominated the Administration’s social media accounts for days. In mid-June, Obama mocked Republican climate change deniers during his University of California commencement address, comparing them to people who think the moon is made of cheese.
But by far the most significant climate-related action by the Obama Administration to date is its landmark rule on power plant pollution. The cornerstone of the president’s climate campaign, the proposed EPA regulation announced earlier this summer, uses Obama’s executive authority to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Along with Executive Order 13653, the rule represents the lengths to which the president will go to bypass Congress to commence substantive preparations for — and measures against — climate change, and thus cement his environmental legacy.
As expected, environmentalists hailed the proposal as a positive step towards a more sustainable energy future, while the coal industry, which would be disproportionately affected by the rule, due to coal’s high carbon intensity, denounced the new regulation as another instance of government overreach. Republicans, who have been using Obama’s climate policies as ammunition for the midterms since last year, continue to criticize Obama for waging a ‘war on coal,’ and are seizing this as an opportunity to run attack ads against vulnerable Democrats in coal-producing states.
Such Democrats are therefore attempting to distance themselves from Obama and the wider party out of fear that failing to do so might cost them at the ballot box. Some have even aired attack ads of their own against the president, promising to oppose his climate policies upon election. Among the most prominent of these cases is that of Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky’s Democratic Senate nominee who faces a tight race against longtime incumbent and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; As of mid-August she polled just three percentage points behind him. In a sixty-second radio ad, Grimes takes the offensive, referring to Obama’s new carbon emissions rule as “pie in the sky” regulation and actually condemning Senator McConnell for insufficiently protecting coal industry jobs in the state. Indeed, Obama’s active climate policy push has created a unique scenario in which it is not enough for Democratic candidates simply to match their Republican opponents’ stance on energy. Rather, it seems that they must leap even further right in order to defy the stigma of their national party and appear genuinely pro-coal.
A similar conflict has also unfolded in West Virginia. There, Democrat Natalie Tennant is running to fill the vacancy left by Senator Jay Rockefeller’s retirement at the end of this term. Tennant, who currently serves as West Virginia’s Secretary of State, affirmed early on in her campaign that she would “fight any Republican or any Democrat — including President Barack Obama — who tries to kill [West Virginia’s] energy jobs.” So it might have come as a surprise to some that leading progressive Elizabeth Warren joined Tennant on the campaign trail in July, attempting to build the liberal support needed for Tennant to win in the November election. Directly after their appearance together, however, Tennant took pains to emphasize that she and Warren do not agree on EPA regulation — she was quoted telling reporters, “I will stand up to Elizabeth Warren if I need to.”
This intraparty division exemplifies the influence of Obama’s climate push. Democrats in coal country midterm races now must both defend themselves from their Republican opponents, and distance themselves from the president. Fierce support for the coal industry appears to be a political necessity in these regions, and any association with Barack Obama harms a candidate’s ability to be perceived as sufficiently pro-coal. Since these kinds of seats can — and due to the mix of Senate seats in play, probably will — mean the difference between a Congress favorable to Democrats or Republicans, the outcome of these midterm elections could affect the prospects for environmental legislation for years to come. The high wire act facing the president is the extent to which he is willing to endanger his own party — and the future of his own agenda — by so ardently promoting his climate campaign now.
To some extent, national environmental measures will always provoke tensions with local races. Congressman Nick Rahall, a West Virginia Democrat running for re-election, co-sponsored a bill requiring congressional approval for any regulation of power plants by the EPA within the next five years. This action stems from the fact that any restriction in coal production is expected to bring some level of economic hardship to states like his. As such, Obama’s political calculus may rest on the inevitability of harming some of his colleagues’ campaigns — if these few Democrats will be negatively affected by any environmental action he takes, he may as well make these measures meaningful and hope that his fellow party members can weather the Republican attack ads.
That being said, a quieter approach towards combating climate change would certainly relieve some of the pressure on Democrats like Rahall. Obama himself seems to have acknowledged this in his decision to delay the outcome of the Keystone debate for several more months. But the president also appears to have realized that such political calculations may not be generally feasible in the realm of climate change: The issue’s timescale is long and its effects often obscure. In the world of conventional politics, on the other hand, short-term economic interests often dictate policy, and nuance is hard to interject. It’s very rare that some economic hardship or downturn doesn’t occupy the foreground of policy debate. At some level then, if work on climate change is ever to begin, these electoral difficulties may simply have to be endured.
And there’s justification for enduring them, even in coal country. Despite these states’ resistance toward carbon emissions regulation, the National Climate Assessment makes clear that all parts of the nation will be affected by the impacts of climate change, though it may take longer than a single election cycle to notice. “Risky Business,” a recent bipartisan report published by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, billionaire environmental activist Thomas Steyer and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, quantifies the economic consequences of climate inaction in the US, asserting: “If we continue on our current path, by 2050 between $66 billion and $106 billion worth of existing coastal property will likely be below sea level nationwide, with $238 billion to $507 billion worth of property below sea level by 2100.”
If Obama is serious about addressing climate change, it is no wonder that these figures and numerous other predictions have spurred him to action. Still, the president’s grandiose policy initiatives may offer little consolation to Democrats in states and districts where the main culprits of climate change are also those that employ the most people. Those few Democrats could end up being the difference between a Congress that upholds the Democratic Senate majority or weakens the Republican hold on the House, and one that features full Republican control. As such, if it is the latter, Obama’s climate campaign could ironically end up diminishing environmental progress in the long term.
The overwhelming scientific consensus, however, compels immediate action on climate change, and the president seems to have heeded the call. Measured steps like delaying the Keystone XL decision until after the midterms appear to represent his compromise with electoral politics. If Obama’s gambles pay off, a more favorable Congress might allow him to build a climate legacy worth noting. But as with climate change, the president’s political gamesmanship involves risks that some may not yet be ready, or willing, to confront.
Art by Katrina Machado.