Democrats face fire over fossil-fuel subsidies
Day three of the Democratic National Convention last week featured delicate attempts by the Democratic National Committee and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to explain why it dropped language from its platform about eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels.
In the weeks before the convention, delegates approved a draft of the party platform that included an amendment stating that “Democrats support eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuels.” By the time the final draft was passed, that language had disappeared.
The removal, first reported by the Huffington Post, shocked environmental activists. The 2016 platform included similar language, making this a noticeable about-face. Both Biden and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris have made pledges to eliminate the subsidies, so the change also appears to put the party at odds with its nominees.
The DNC issued a statement saying the amendment wasn’t stripped out, but was “incorrectly included” in the first place. A spokesperson declined to give a reason for the change, but said Biden’s campaign, the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders and those who originally submitted the amendment agreed that it should be withdrawn.
Stef Feldman, policy director for the Biden campaign, in a statement said the former vice president remained “steadfast” in his commitment to eliminate subsidies for polluting fuels during his first year in office. The Biden campaign said the DNC’s version of events was accurate but otherwise didn’t address the question of why it agreed to remove an amendment that was in line with its own policy positions. The Sanders campaign didn’t respond immediately to requests for comment.
John Laesch, an environmental activist and platform committee member from Illinois, said on Twitter that he submitted the amendment. He disputed the DNC’s statement. “They deleted the amendment without my consent,” he wrote.
Activists mostly chose to castigate the DNC, which in 2018 reversed a policy that had previously prohibited it from accepting donations from fossil fuel companies, and largely spared the candidate himself. RL Miller, founder of grassroots advocacy group Climate Hawks Vote and a Democratic delegate, declared herself furious on Twitter and said “the corporate wing of the DNC is trying to undo Biden's campaign promise.”
Julian Brave NoiseCat, vice president of policy and strategy at the progressive advocacy group Data for Progress, released a statement excoriating the party for betraying grassroots activists.
Not everyone wanted to assign blame, however. Paul Bledsoe, a strategic adviser to the Progressive Policy Institute, saw the change as a move by the party to protect its candidate from political attacks. “Biden is proposing the most ambitious clean energy transition plan ever,” he said in an interview. “My guess is this is to preempt Republicans from spreading misinformation to scare people into thinking Democrats are going to take away the oil and gas they need today.”
Estimates on how much the United States spends per year in energy subsidies vary widely. At the high end, a 2019 study by the International Monetary Fund calculated that the U.S. devoted $649 billion of support to fossil fuels in 2015 alone, which would put the country behind only China in its fossil investment. A study published in 2017 by Oil
Change International priced direct federal support in the U.S. at about $15 billion annually.
Oil and gas producers see the issue differently. What climate advocates view as subsidies, they argue are tax loopholes and deductions available to all industries, not just the energy sector. Many of these predate the arrival of industrial-scale renewable energy by years, if not decades. Bethany Aronhalt, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, was unequivocal in her response to the language. “Perhaps it was removed from the party platform because you can’t eliminate subsidies that don’t exist,” she said.