Building a U.S. political consensus behind environmental sustainability
When environmental protection is hardly noticed on the political agenda, it can gain strong support from the American public. The air pollution, water pollution, solid and toxic waste programs of the 1970s and 1980s were not partisan issues. In 1972, the “Water Act” came into effect under the veto of the then President Nixon. The public support rate for these laws far exceeds 70%, and these laws are formulated by a bipartisan coalition of loyal legislators. what happened?
Part of the reason for this happened was the anti-regulatory ideology of the Reagan era and the “killing job regulations” rhetoric. But even President Reagan had to withdraw the EPA’s anti-regulatory measures. EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch-Buford (yes, the mother of Supreme Court Judge Gorsuch) and her deputy hazardous waste administrator Rita Lavelle were sent to pack, and the first EPA administrator Bill Ruckelshaus was brought back to guide the EPA Return to the original position. Politically moderate anchorage.
EPA’s supervision is serious and law enforcement is real, but it gives the industry enough time to comply with the rules. Generally speaking, only companies that are marginalized at the beginning will be harmed by environmental rules. However, the increasingly important role of money in politics and fierce lobbying by theorists and industry began to describe environmental rules as anti-liberal and anti-capitalism. In response to the climate issue, the fossil fuel industry has stepped up its lobbying and propaganda shocks in a ferocious way that has not been seen since the tobacco propaganda war in the late 20th century. In both cases, these industries understand the dangers posed by their products, and they are in a battle for survival. In the 21st century, environmental protection has become an ideological and political issue, especially after climate issues begin to dominate.
In the early days of climate politics, this question had little political significance because it was very different from traditional environmental politics. Despite the intrigues of Washington’s politicians, broad grassroots support for a clean environment still exists. This is because air and water pollution can be smelled, and the causes and effects are local and cannot be ignored. In addition, rural people who hunt and fish understand that the natural resources they love are in danger. In contrast, in the early days of climate politics, we did not see the local climate impact. Scientists tell us that climate change is everywhere and its impact is in the future. We must trust academic climate modelers and earth system scientists.
However, although climate policy has proven to be problematic, other trends have actually strengthened the importance of environmental policy. People began to pay attention to health, diet, exercise, and overall health, especially in children. Parenting has become a verb (contrary to the status of being a parent). Part of the development of Not My Backyard Syndrome (NIMBY) is to prevent further real estate development and maintain the quality of the local environment. Then, in the past decade, extreme weather events began to accelerate and intensify, and early climate models proved to be correct. All the effects predicted by early climate models are happening on our warming planet. In recent years, young conservatives have begun to accept climate change science while still rejecting solutions proposed by progressive climate activists.
We live on a much more crowded planet than we saw when the EPA was founded in 1970. At that time, the global population was about 4 billion; today it is about 8 billion. The political pressure to maintain wealth in developed countries and build wealth in developing countries is enormous. The best way to ensure this is to modernize our economies in developed countries and move to an economy based on circular, renewable resources. To this end, we need to develop and implement new renewable energy sources so that our grid can send and receive energy and operate with higher efficiency. We also need to develop a system to automatically separate garbage and mine resources that can be reprocessed. Sewage treatment must also be promoted so that sewage sludge can be recycled. These high-tech solutions require additional research and development, as well as substantial investment in public infrastructure.
But they are expected to achieve a more productive and lower cost economy. Energy is a growing household expenditure that can be reduced by cheaper and more efficient solar cells and batteries. Electric cars have already demonstrated their high-tech appeal. Cities like New York are spending billions of dollars to remove rubbish and send it away. What if our garbage can really generate revenue by providing remanufactured raw materials? What if the price of these resources is lower than the price of raw materials mined from the earth? We have seen this in an industry. Tesla co-founder JB Straubel recently founded Redwood, a company that partially uses recycled materials to make electric car batteries.According to Tom Randall, although his company needs to mine raw materials to meet his production goals Fortune Magazine:
“The company’s goal of 100 GWh in 2025 means that it can no longer rely solely on recycled materials. Unlike some consumer electronics, there is a long lag between the manufacture of electric vehicles and the battery is ready for recycling. Repeat in auxiliary applications There may be further delays in using the package. Today, electric vehicles only account for less than 10% of Redwood’s recycled inventory. “We will try to increase the recycling rate as much as possible, but it really depends on the availability of recycled materials,” Straubel said. “If we end up 50% or more of the original raw material is consumed, that’s good. In the next few decades, Straubel believes that recycled materials will be used in “close to 100%” of the world’s battery production. He said that recycling is already profitable, and ultimately companies that do not combine recycling with refining and production will not be able to Compete on cost.”
In other words, some raw materials are very precious, and recycling makes economic sense. What is needed to build a broad consensus behind the politics of environmental sustainability is the basic concept proposed by Mike Bloomberg during his tenure as mayor of New York City when he led the formulation of the city’s first sustainable development plan: PlaNYC2030. The plan links environmental sustainability with economic development. To some extent, we saw the same impulse in the environmental elements of Joe Biden’s infrastructure and rebuilt better plans. This is an effort to modernize the economy. The focus on building the economy, increasing employment, and developing cleaner, cheaper energy sources has broad, non-ideological appeal. The popularity of Biden’s plan elements is in stark contrast to the fierce partisanship in Washington, which is now reflected in many communities where all politics has become a zero-sum game. Political opponents are now seen as bad people and evil people. If Biden is approved, even if this is something everyone likes, it will be regarded as a political loss by his opponents.
Trump-style far-right political warfare legitimizes the political center and any form of political consensus. Any Republican in Congress who negotiates a compromise is likely to be supported by Trump’s extreme theorists. On the left, we believe that environmentalists call industrial brands evil, and believe that the only solution to climate change is to tax carbon and live without certain forms of consumption that the public values. Politics seems to be moving in the direction of polarization.
Politics may seem unreal, but reality is still reality. Forest fires in the west, droughts in the Midwest, tornadoes and floods, and extreme weather everywhere remind us that environmental sustainability issues are real. We all breathe the same air. We drink the same water. The food we eat comes from the same industrial and agricultural system. The facts of our environmental conditions are not based on beliefs or values, but objective conditions that we have all experienced. We also compete with organizations from many countries in the global economy. Based on the need to stay competitive, we need to ensure that our energy and transportation systems are up to date. This argument is a strong argument. Therefore, the seeds of consensus can be found in our objective environmental and economic conditions. If we can mine from garbage, we don’t need foreign raw materials. Renewable energy can prevent climate change, but it can also be cheaper than fossil fuel energy. Electric cars are quickly becoming fashionable. Economic modernization centered on the private sector but funded by government-funded infrastructure and scientific research is as American as Apple Pie. Economic modernization is the way we can and hope to build an American political consensus behind environmental sustainability.
