The only way they’ll hear is to yell louder
The issue on the table isn’t whether Connecticut can solve the world’s problems. It can’t. The issue is whether anyone is willing to make hard choices to take on a crisis everyone agrees is real. Again, the answer appears to be no.
There’s something about the topic of climate change that makes people tune out. And it’s understandable. It’s too big to get your arms around, there’s little on the table that would have real impact on reducing its harms, and let’s not discount the multidecade effort to pretend none of this is real, anyway. Every attempt to take action is presented as an attack on our way of life, and the result is a continuation of the status quo.
We know, then, why it’s so hard to do anything on the federal level. Republicans demonize anything climate related as an attempt to take away your cheeseburgers and SUVs, and Democrats are too scared of a potential backlash to push the issue. (“Scared of a potential backlash” might be the Democratic Party’s defining mantra of the past few decades.)
But what about when Republicans are sidelined, as in Connecticut? For all the noise the minority party makes, Democrats control all levers of government here. There’s no honest way to blame a policy failure on anyone but Democrats.
And there’s no way to describe the demise of the multistate Transportation Climate Initiative as anything but a failure. Designed as a partnership that would have made gasoline more expensive, it would have used the money it brought in to pay for alternatives to driving. It wouldn’t come close to solving climate change, but it could be a meaningful step. A few states had shown interest, but once Connecticut dropped out, Massachusetts and Rhode Island quickly followed suit and that was all for that.
Gov. Ned Lamont blamed legislators: If they couldn’t pass it last year with low gas prices, he said, there’s no way it would happen with gas prices up, as has been the case lately. He’s not wrong. The plan was seemingly on its way to approval when Democrats led by state Sen. Martin Looney raised objections, saying it could hurt low-income people.
This, too, was true, but also workable. The state could have devised a rebate program for anyone below a certain income. But Looney and other Democrats mostly seemed miffed at Lamont for his overall anti-taxincrease posture, and took the position that if we’re not going to ask more of Lamont’s friends in Greenwich then we shouldn’t ask more of those at the bottom. Again, by itself, a reasonable stance.
Now, though, the whole thing is dead, and Lamont’s don’tblame-me comments allow him to paint himself as some sort of bystander, as if he had no power to push hard for it if he thought it was necessary.
He’s not going to do that, because he’s running for reelection, and he’s already signaled this is going to be the most cautious year of his political career, which maybe should be expected. It’s doubtful the people mad about his climate about-face would outnumber everyone outraged about paying more to gas up.
All of which sums up the impossibility of doing most anything of substance about climate change. Politicians are constantly worried about short-term consequences, which doesn’t translate into fighting a multigenerational challenge. Voters who care about this issue are stuck in an impossible situation, because who thinks Gov. Stefanowski is going to be better on this?
And that leaves us … where, exactly? Climate change is real, and everyone who’s studied the issue says we need to cut emissions. That means, in part, that polluting activities, such as driving, need to be more expensive, which would have the effect of people doing less of it. That’s how it has always worked.
Except that every politician is scared to put those policies into effect. Even in blue-state Connecticut, all Republicans had to do was call it a gas tax and hold a few rallies to scare Democrats into inaction. Joe Biden supposedly understands the climate stakes, but he’s also beholden to a reality where his approval ratings run in direct contrast to the price of gas, as if any president can control a global market.
There’s no incentive to do big things. There’s not even an incentive to do a series of small things, like TCI, that could add up to something major. In a world where the 500-year storm is becoming an annual event, that’s not going to be good enough.
The politicians we have are as good as we’re going to get. They’re only as responsive as the next election. Until they’re convinced that these are issues that voters are willing to reject them over, they’ll keep responding to the price of gas. The challenge is to make them listen.