Abundance politics and climate politics

Recent issue polling shows the similar challenges facing both climate and abundance politics

This week a study of the popularity of a wide range of issues among the American public came out – and created quite a stir. Most of the attention focused on the unpopularity of various Democratic positions on race and gender identity issues. But here I want to highlight the results in two areas I’ve written about: climate and “abundance.”

Many of the policy goals climate advocates have been pushing for years – banning fossil fuel production on federal lands, or electric vehicle subsidies – are quite unpopular. The survey also found – as I’ve noted earlier – that climate change is a very low salience issue among Americans, even if they generally trust Democrats to do a better job on the topic. These results highlight a point I made in a recent post – climate policy likely has to use quiet politics. Instead of mass mobilization, climate policy will require building up interest group support, and technological innovation, in order to achieve its goals. Sweeping legislation that dramatically phases out fossil fuels is not likely on the table in the near future.

But as I’ve noted elsewhere, abundance policy has a lot of parallels with climate policy. Abundance policy reforms will often require short-term sacrifices by specific constituencies in order to achieve long-term benefits for the broader good. Just like climate policy. That’s a tough path to follow in politics.

And we see this in the polling data. Abolishing single-family only zoning polls worse than electric vehicle subsidies. Requiring local governments to upzoning to allow for more housing is only slightly more popular. Even just providing grants to local governments to encourage upzoning – part of the bipartisan ROAD Act being considered in the Senate right now – is deep underwater.

The picture is a little more complicated in the energy space. On the one hand, removing restrictions on fossil fuel leasing on public lands is somewhat popular (about 54% support). On the other hand, removing environmental restrictions to encourage renewable energy production is somewhat unpopular (about 46% support). (The questions are not symmetric, as the clean energy question focuses on environmental deregulation and the fossil fuel question more broadly calls for “Increase fossil fuel production and make it easier for oil companies to get drilling leases.” I do wonder how more symmetrically worded questions would poll.) Time clocks for environmental review for infrastructure projects are very popular, but repealing NEPA is quite unpopular.

I think some idea of the broader popularity of an abundance agenda can also be gleaned from another set of recent survey results from Heatmap News, which asked respondents about whether they viewed various energy infrastructure projects favorably or not. Solar and natural gas are popular. Coal is not. Nuclear and wind were somewhat popular. And around break-even? Data centers and transmission. It will be hard to mobilize public support for items that the public is lukewarm about. Particularly in a politically polarized federal government.

Again, there are still important policy changes abundance advocates could pursue – but advocates will need to use a low salience approach, think strategically about the interest group politics, and probably avoid public mobilization. Just like climate advocates.

One Reply to “Abundance politics and climate politics”

Political scientists have publicized the self-fulfilling conclusion that a universal, personal carbon dividend funded by a tax on fossil fuel companies won’t work. They point to Canada’s successful “axe the tax” movement as proof.

Selling the rebate by leading with the carbon tax is like selling Social Security by leading with the payroll tax.

The Canadian implementation was ham-handed at best. Rather than first issuing a payment to all individuals (to be later funded by the carbon tax), as FDR did with Social Security, the Canadians led with the tax, and made getting the rebate a bureaucratic nightmare.

To get the gradual, orderly phase-out of fossil fuels the article envisions, send out a monthly equal-share payment based on an initially low (e.g., $15/mt), annually escalating carbon tax on the fossil fuel companies. (The rebate would escalate in parallel.) The rebate should be in place for several months before the tax begins, and its funding connection to the tax should be visibly explicit with every payment, the way Trump “signed” every tax refund in his first term. (Tell me THAT didn’t involve an autopen equivalent.)

This rebate-and-fee structure would provide a 20-year runway for strategic planning at the corporate level. Meanwhile, anyone making less than the median income would be net positive financially, as would anyone above median who minimized the carbon in their lifestyle. Only big carbon users would be net payers, and then only to the extent the FF cos passed along the tax, some of which, like the Trump tariffs, would be absorbed.

Only rich countries can afford the subsidy approach of the IRA at anything approaching the required scale. But all countries can tax and rebate. And we’ve seen that industry-specific programs are prone to regime change. Taking away money from ALL the people, on the other hand, be it Social Security or a carbon rebate, is politically extremely difficult if not impossible.

As long as it’s free to pollute, the FF cos will devote all their assets and creativity to maintaining that implicit subsidy rather than to transitioning to lower carbon energy like geothermal, or even solar, wind, and batteries/storage, which they were doing for a brief moment years ago. They have the money, the engineers, and the expertise in all other aspects of energy to make the transition in that kind of time frame.

It’s analogous to the auto industry going electric. Auto electrification is hitting rough road because carbon reduction has taken a huge setback due to Trump quashing green development–which he wouldn’t have been able to do if a self-funding rebate were in place.