![A Nissan electric vehicle recharges at a Power Up fast charger station in Pasadena, California]()
A Nissan electric vehicle recharges at a Power Up fast charger station in Pasadena, California © Mario Tama/Getty Images The
holiday weekend in America got off to an unhappy bang late last week
with the Supreme Court putting forward yet another regressive ruling,
this time limiting what the White House can do on climate change via the
Environmental Protection Agency. Like the reversal of Roe, this is a
ruling where the Court is completely out of step with the general
public, which is increasingly worried about climate change. I
spoke last week to politicos Stan Greenberg (in Washington) and Nick
Butler (in the UK) about the topic. They have put together a polling project to
survey attitudes towards climate on both sides of the Atlantic in the
midst of a slowing economy and rising inflation. What’s interesting is
that in the four countries they surveyed (the US, France, Germany and
the UK), the population is becoming more concerned, rather than less, in
part because climate has now moved from the realm of environmentalism
into the realm of national security in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Climate
has now become the hottest political priority in Germany, and is among
the top three to four issues in the other three countries. Both sides of
the political spectrum now want action, with much more support in the
political centre, as well as among rightwing Republicans, Alternative
for Germany and Le Pen supporters. “There’s been a major shift,” notes
Butler, “particularly around the idea of industrial policy that supports
a transition to clean energy.” Indeed, the idea of government subsidies
for green now vies with agricultural subsidies in Europe and oil and
gas in the US as the industry that the population would most like to see
supported by the public sector. That,
of course, goes to the differences between each side of the Atlantic
when it comes to climate. For Europeans, it’s a more urgent short-term
matter to shift away from fossil fuels because of the threat of Vladimir
Putin and a long, cold winter. But Europeans also see the shift as part
of a larger, bigger push towards environmentalism, whereas Americans —
who are new to supporting the transition — seem more galvanised by
security and inflation (as Greenberg says “fossil fuels are now
perceived as a cost centre” and a contributor to dismal kitchen table
economics). The
obvious silver bullet here would be a shared transatlantic price on
carbon. But Greenberg insists this would be the quickest way to lose
American support for the transition to clean energy. We are simply too
accustomed to cheap, subsidised fossil fuels to want to pay for clean
energy with a carbon tax. Instead, Greenberg believes the public would
go for a windfall tax on oil and energy companies (which are perceived
as price gouging) to fund the transition. Europeans, on the other hand,
are already starting to price in the cost of carbon industry by
industry, little by little. Butler believes, for example, that the UK
may move to a bigger congestion tax from which electric vehicles would
be exempt. Greenberg,
who understands well how the left lost working class Americans over the
last two decades (in part to a perception that too many policy
decisions were being taken out of state control), believes that the
shift to clean energy has to be done on a country by country basis. But I
just can’t stop thinking about how a shared US-EU price on carbon would
be the best way to not only move quickly to combat global warming, but
also to immediately knock out Chinese mercantilism (which would be
unsustainable if you tally the real ESG cost of cheap goods). That would
be a big political win for working people in the US on both sides of
the aisle. |