Youth climate strike: Can the climate movement shake US politics?

As dramatically illustrated Friday's climate strike, the climate change policy is evolving rapidly around the world and in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people traveled to American cities and millions of others on every continent, sending the political leaders the obvious message that the general public was willing to act.

This dynamic is reflected in US polls, which show that climate change is a major concern among primary Democratic voters and even among the electorate in general. The pressure has clearly pushed the Democratic candidates to the presidency, all of whom have issued ambitious climate plans.

And these polls, with a long series of surveys showing that young people, including young conservatives, are worried about climate change, have even pushed Congressional Republicans to pretend they want to emulate them. (No baby.)

Chicago Council

All of this is exciting for climate hawks, who have been beating their heads against this wall for years. The change that has erupted in recent months seems to be different from the previous ebb and flow of public opinion. He feels more durable, stronger, as if it could continue to grow – as if the cavalry could finally arrive.

Chicago Council

Even though the popular movement for climate action is gaining ground, US policy is more than ever opposed to change, more fixed than it has been for decades.

Frozen means fragile, and the more fragile a thing becomes, the more it will break; perhaps a radical and gradual change is on the horizon, for better or for worse. It's certainly not feel as if things could continue as they are.

Nevertheless, throughout American history, it has always been imprudent to bet against the forces of entrenched privilege. And it is not wise to underestimate today how polarization has raised barriers to action.

To illustrate this point, let's review the steps that will be needed to ensure sustainable and substantial climate action in 2020 or shortly thereafter – the kind of action that will be absolutely necessary if the United States wants to make something happen half decarbonized by 2030, much less decarbonized by the middle of the century, as the IPCC suggests, and as several presidential candidates have pledged to support them.

The narrow path to short-term climate action

For starters, let's recognize that the GOP is not going to help climate change, at least in the near future. If the party is able to block an action, it will do so. (For an extended argument to this effect, see here.)

With that in mind, here's what needs to happen before anything big – or even small – is possible on climate change in the United States.

1. Democrats win the house

The chances for that are pretty good, although it's not a sure thing.

2. Democrats win the Senate

Chances are still well below 50/50. It means running the table on a whole series of tight races.

3. Democrats win the presidency

It's probably less than 50/50 too. Trump's approval continues to revolve around 40 years – he is an extraordinarily unpopular president – but all the elements are in place to allow him to replicate his improbable victory at the 2016 constituency.

4. Trump leaves office without violence

Trump is breaking more and more the law, encouraged by the obvious dislike of House Democrats for dismissal. There is every reason to believe that he will continue to break the law in search of victory. And his efforts will come to the top of a GOP gerrymandering foundation and state-level voter suppression.

If the result is close, if Trump thinks he's lost because of the Democratic cheat – and every cheater thinks everyone cheats – will he go quietly? Will Republican members of Congress support an effort to force him out? Does the Kavanaugh Supreme Court? Does his devoted state media at Fox or his very strong military base?

It's hard to put all the odds on your side, but that alone should be disconcerting.

5. Democrats give up obstruction

If the Democrats need a qualified majority of 60 votes to pass a bill through the Senate, they will not do it. Period. If they want something that weighs heavily on the climate – anything that contains much needed changes in terms of agency and regulation – they will have to remove or substantially reform the filibuster. (An idea, supported by Senators such as Sanders and Merkley: to bring back the buccaneer into a "talking filibuster," forcing senators to stay on the floor as long as they delay the vote.)

Without obstruction reform, the only way to act is a budget reconciliation bill, which could be passed by an absolute majority, but would contain only a fraction of a policy global climate.

Frankly, a filibuster reform is unlikely. Many senators from both parties as the threshold of 60 votes of the obstruction. It protects them. They should not take any risky votes – they only move when the consensus is overwhelming. The problem is that the consensus is no longer overwhelming and they do not move at all. But many of them would prefer to hang on to fantasies about a return to courtesy and bipartisanship rather than "bringing the Senate into the House," as the sentence says.

A reform of the obstruction would require enormous and coordinated pressure from democratic leaders and democratic interest groups, who will have much to do in 2021.

6. Conservative Democrats Sign Ambitious Bill

If Dems accomplishes all of the above, he will finally be able to succeed … regardless of the contract signed by Joe Manchin.

A Democratic Senate will have 50, 51, 52 maaaybe on the outside. Without a Republican vote, this means that virtually every Democratic senator will have the right to veto legislation, including the Senate's most conservative senators, think of Manchin, Doug Jones in Alabama, Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, or John Hickenlooper in the United States. Colorado.

It is unclear what level of pressure could lead Manchin to sign, for example, a ban on fracking. Or a net electricity goal at zero by 2030, which would involve phasing out all coal plants and most natural gas plants. Or a massive multibillion-dollar investment program financed by carbon taxes and / or taxes on the rich. To date, its support for climate policy has been limited to subsidies for carbon capture.

7. Democrats survive anger and increase their majority in the Senate in 2022

In the highly divided American political system, wave elections are usually followed by backlash. And the electorate in the midterm elections tends to be older, whiter and more angry than the presidential year electorate. The mid-term elections of 2010 were one of the most important elections of my life: a liberal wave halted by the cold, a democratic administration frozen by the law for six years and a generation of partisan gerrymandering.

In the event of an electoral wave in 2020 – and that is what would be needed to endow the Senate with Dems – the risk of retaliation by voters is high in 2022, especially if they subscribe to several big and devastating bills such as than Medicare for All.

In contrast, the Senate card is much more user-friendly than Dems in 2022, with 22 Republicans and 12 Democrats re-electing.

If the Dems are displayed with a larger majority in the Senate, they will have a margin of error a little wider. Indeed, 2022 could prove decisive for a number of reasons, including leftist wins in several major EU countries. Roosevelt Institute researchers say 2022 is "a unique opportunity for progressives to make major changes to an international system that has often held back progress at the national level." But this is only possible if they keep control.

8. Democratic initiatives survive court challenge

Thanks to Mitch McConnell's procedural radicalism, the federal courts and the Supreme Court are now overflowing with conservatives. If the Democrats are lucky, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will survive until 2021 and win enough seats in the Senate to confirm – on an inevitable unified Republican opposition – a new justice. This will preserve the perilous conservative balance of the 5 or 4, in which each decision will return to John Roberts' rather modest vote "moderate". (Kavanaugh has certainly not been loved by the Liberals by recent events.)

Roberts' disposition to environmental law is not a big mystery. A new analysis conducted last week by Take Back the Court academics revealed that "the Roberts Court would probably abolish climate change legislation." The court is emboldened, more naked than ever, and hostile to the government's ambitions.

Unless the new Democratic government does something so procedurally radical, such as expanding the Supreme Court and stacking down the lower courts, the Conservative Supreme Court will be limited in the number of initiatives in the area of ​​justice. climate that it can only block by quantity, by number of business able to take.

Photos: Getty Images. Photoillustration: Javier Zarracina / Vox

(That said, environmental groups recorded an impressive legal record against Trump, with NRDC winning 49 decisions out of 54 decisions.)

9. Democrats keep control in 2024 so that everything is not reversed

As Trump has illustrated, and Obama before him, US policy is increasingly swinging between two radically different coalitions, resulting in legislative and legislative disruptions that prevent companies from doing long-term planning and trust other countries. kind of agreement with the United States.

Despite ongoing demographic changes, the prospects for Republican moderation still seem distant. There is every reason to believe that the control of the GOP in 2024 would lead to another Trumpian attempt to block or cancel everything the Dems did.

Another reversal of this kind of climate change in the United States could be detrimental to international cooperative efforts (at least with the United States).

Navigating this path will require significant, ruthless and pragmatic movement

Despite all the progress made over the last six months (building on decades of slow and painful efforts), it is safe to say that the climate movement is not yet powerful enough to to push American politics through the small opening described in the last section. . And he knows as much.

For any hope of success to succeed, the movement will have to do a lot of things and it will have to do them quickly:

First and perhaps most importantly, he has to prove that he is a electoral Obligate. He will have to make a difference in numbers and make a difference by electing the candidates who support him or by punishing those who do not. Nothing else (except perhaps money) will reach Congress.

It is necessary that to be right with the work – not service unions, many of which are already members, but industrial unions, which have more influence among conservative democrats. Some union leaders and their congressional allies have been extremely discouraged by the deployment of the Green New Deal resolution. Suspicion among workers is one of the main reasons why support for GND seems to have been overtaken by Congress.

While reassuring unions that the GND will be good jobs for its members, the movement must also engage in fairness to reassure environmental justice groups that their electors will not have their hands down. EJ groups are extremely wary of the many efforts the union movement sees as essential, including nuclear energy, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). These problems can be solved in good faith. There is a lot of confusion to be solved by all parties and conflicts to be resolved, but they should not be an obstacle to a broader effort. Given the low chances of victory and the desperate stakes, any sectarian disagreement that could possibly be put aside should be. This will involve gaining the confidence of the CY community by creating equity from the start.

He must rehabilitate the term "Green New Deal" which has been poisoned by Fox News for many members of Congress. Making it the rallying cry of a global movement does not hurt, but in the United States, it needs to build public alliances with unexpected partners in the coalition, like the recently announced Farmers and Ranchers for Green New Deal project. And he has to convince members of Congress that they can be part of the overall GND effort without buying the entire package (for example, the job guarantee). Ecumenism, within certain limits, must be preferred.

He has to work with Democratic leaders on a set of legislative priorities for the first 100 days centered primarily on the build a political dynamic. In concrete terms, this might not include everything cheats want or whatever the Socialist Democrats want, but priority must be given to simple and popular policies that produce visible benefits. Both the Congress and the public must be convinced that climate legislation is possible, if not pleasant. The game in 2022 should be avoided.

In case the Democrats do not show up in the Senate, the movement had to think about some final demands regarding the use by the president of the executive powers. Declare a national emergency and take money from other parts of the government, as did Trump? Prohibit fracking on public lands? Fuel economy standards that are phasing out gasoline and diesel vehicles? (I will do more in the future on the limits of executive power.)

Finally and more generally, any good movement organizer recognizes the need to an outdoor game and an indoor gamepeople outside organizing strikes and nonviolent civil protests in the streets, and inside people making agreements, fighting for thumbs and getting further progress in each appropriations and fight against the amendments.

The movement must find how to develop these two aspects and, most importantly, create a fundamental level of trust enter their. It is the culmination of many progressive efforts, including the 2008 climate bill: outsiders believe that those in the interior are selling them; those who are inside think that those who are outside will not show up to support progress when it is at stake.

A huge outdoor game will be needed. Strikes and demonstrations will have to become an important, disruptive and regular part of American political life to make lawmakers truly nervous. But a good game inside, people who know how to use the system for every additional benefit, is also absolutely necessary. Both parties must give the other support and workspace.

It's an incredibly steep hill to climb and many things to ask a group of young people who could reasonably ask where the heck were their elders for 30 years.

But we do not have time to get rid of all the old people or to put in place a whole new system. The movement must throw itself against this system, which is built not to move. It must become unstoppable.