McKibben opined in late 2020 that a broad coalition brought Joe Biden to victory. If activists want real progress on climate in a Biden administration, environmentalist Bill McKibben writes, they need to learn how to press their case aggressively without alienating those they must work with to get things done.
For four years the country has been governed by the GOP and only one guy has gotten to talk — disagree with him and you became a non-person. That’s not Joe Biden’s style, and it’s not in the Democratic Party’s cellular structure. Indeed, we’re only a few days in to the new world, and there’s already considerable talking underway. Shouting even. Figuring out how to handle it — how to make it constructive instead of destructive — is going to be a big part of making the next four years as productive as they can be. And since we desperately need them to be effective on climate — and on racial justice, on health care, on immigration — we better learn how to talk.
One meta-argument is underway: “left” versus “center,” personified as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez versus some Congress people you’ve vaguely heard of from purplish districts who don’t like anyone talking about socialism. But while that splashy fight is drawing the attention of pundits, there’s another subtler communications question that has to get worked out: How do different parts of the Democratic coalition get across the things that really matter to them, like climate change, in a way that makes the point crystal clear but doesn’t cut off the chance of future dialogue?
This is inherently hard, because activists are deeply invested in the issues they work on — often they’re volunteers, always they’re passionate. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor pointed out in a wise essay this week, the pent-up demand for change is almost beyond imagining. Therefore, the urge, when frustrated, to stalk away from your partner in a holy rage will always be there. But those of us who care deeply about climate are married to the Biden administration for at least the next four years — they know it, we know it. It’s not going to be a storybook relationship, but it can be more rather than less successful.
Any plan needs to focus on making sure that workers currently building oil pipelines have something else to build instead.
One useful lesson from marriage is that when there are things you really care about, you have to have a way of getting that across. Here’s the climate example of the week: the Biden transition team signaled in Politico last weekend that they were thinking of returning Ernest Moniz to his Obama-era position atop the Department of Energy (DOE). For most Americans watching from the sidelines, this won’t even rise to the level where they’d notice; Moniz seems notable only for a haircut that makes him look like an extra from “Hamilton.” But for those of us engaged every day in this work, it’s an ominous sign: Moniz represents an old approach to our energy dilemmas, one that’s rooted in the use of natural gas and resistant to the all-in approach on renewables that activists (and scientists) recommend.
That’s why Evan Weber, political director of the Sunrise Movement — the youth-led movement that brought us the Green New Deal — immediately tweeted out: “No one with fossil fuel ties belongs in Biden’s cabinet… Moniz’s archaic energy views would build us a bridge to climate catastrophe.” That’s a blunt but not overbearing warning — it’s different from saying, “So and So must be Energy Secretary.” There are, realistically, a couple of hundred people who could do the job, and so this preserves plenty of maneuvering room for the transition team.
Climate activists failed to make clear the problem with natural gas (here). This also hints at the main reasons why this kind of move would be a troubling one for Biden to make. First, it’s a bad idea on policy grounds. Moniz is indeed archaic — technology has changed incredibly fast since the start of his term at DOE in the second Obama administration. Solar and wind power have seen costs fall on the order of 90 percent, which means we don’t actually need the natural gas “bridge” he sold the Obama administration on; the carbon capture projects he subsidized at DOE were vastly uneconomic.
Second, it’s a bad idea optically — he’s taken lots of money to serve on the boards of various fossil fuel concerns, most notably the Southern Company. His friends will surely argue that all that cash has not affected his views, and perhaps they’re right — but it’s surely altered how the rest of us perceive him. At various points in the next four years, the Biden administration is going to have to give us bad news on the climate and energy front — the lack of a Senate majority almost guarantees that. It’s going to need a messenger who people have reason to trust, and Moniz isn’t it.
[See opposing views. Moniz would be great, but there are serious issues with wind and solar (here). Nuclear power is a nonpartisan matter with support now from both the Left and the Right].
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