As the planet bakes, political agendas stall progress on climate change

For most citizens and voters in, America I hope we are at a climate change opinion tipping point. These last few weeks have been a planetary alarm bell. We are endangering our very survival.

The shocking starling reality of the burning fires and choking smoke in Canada, the floods in Vermont and New York and the scorching record temperatures in Texas and Arizona, with heat warnings in place from a third of all Americans, would, you would think, shift those skeptical of the need to act and act fast.   

Unfortunately, ideological stances — pro-Biden or anti-Biden — are affecting climate action and inaction.  

Let me demonstrate what I mean. 

I have a cabin in Rappahannock County, Va., (a red-ish county with plenty of Trump supporters) in the Blue Ridge. As a climate crisis economist, I want solar cells and battery packs to ensure energy supply and minimize my carbon footprint. Now is the time to do it, given federal incentives and the shift in markets. 

Yet, my local utility, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, puts barriers in the way, insisting you restrict the number of panels to your historic usage rate, measured across a year, so your number of solar panels is restricted. This is a case where I am going from charging an electric vehicle two days a week to seven. Yet, the utility put the brakes on my ability to make the upfront investment. Why? Because the utility has a vested interest in keeping you hooked on their supply. 

Or consider if I am a farmer, and I want to sensibly take advantage of the huge incentives to generate renewable electricity on unused land unsuited for pasture or crops, collect and sell carbon credits, make a good living and do good for the planet. A no-brainer. It is my land. 

Should be a go, right? Wrong. 

An application to set up a 91-acre solar farm in Madison County, Va., (another deep red, majority “MAGA county”), under consideration for five long, long, years, has just been denied. The location was ideal, next to a substation and on land not suitable for farming. Local opponents won out over clean energy advocates, the positive tax and job impacts and the 35-45 years of zero-marginal cost renewable electricity. The economic case was overwhelming, the land use case was strong, the environmental case was compelling and the design was well-considered. But no. Enough locals opposed the project to kill it.   

We can also see this playing out over EV adoption and purchasing plans.

Fifty-three percent of car buyers see EVs are the future. But 60 percent of dealers do not stock EVs, and 45 percent of dealers say they have no plans to sell them. This seems crazy, a real disconnect. Why do we see this?

Because dealers see EVs as a threat. EVs require less maintenance — $0.31 per mile, versus $0.61 for petrol cars. EV sales may also remove the dealers’ position as the middleman because new EV manufacturers, like the leader Tesla, want to manage the sale with the customer and cut out the dealer network.

On climate change, action and inaction, Miles’ Law always applies — where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit. If I am a Biden voter and a supporter of the Inflation Reduction Act and action to mitigate climate change dangers, solar and wind projects — whether domestic or industrial — are obvious, economically competitive, environmentally essential and urgent.  

But if I am a MAGA Republican, fed by a Fox News diet of anti-science climate change faux facts and disinformation, economic data and job creation numbers, I am resistant to the case for action.  

Thus, politics is tainting reality-based, fact-grounded, science-informed decision-making. What this political split means for the speed of the green transition could be significant and negative for greenhouse gas emissions and planetary outcomes.  

Even though we struggle with heat warnings, with the certainty that next year will be hotter and more dangerous than this year, and that this year will not prove to be exceptional but the harbinger of more terrible times to come ahead, our bifurcated political discourse may stall the rapid necessary changes we all require. 

The Biden administration is focusing on permitting and minimizing the NIMBY reactions that can halt green projects — accelerating the speed of project OKs — a move that can possibly get bipartisan support. An essential corollary to the Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives and policy shifts must be changes to local permitting and regulation. Because we all know from personal experience that projects live or die driven by local decisions by planners and supervisors.  

In tandem, the administration and scientists need to launch fact-based community dialogues with all stakeholders to establish the reality and urgency of climate action. Solutions can then be debated and local actions and plans can be developed rather than denied, based on a common foundation of understanding.  

What we must do is get beyond opposition based on sloganeering, and political ideological knee-jerk judgments that slow and stymie action we all urgently require for our collective survival in the decades ahead.

Stuart P.M. Mackintosh is the author of “Climate Crisis Economics.”