Democrats are blowing the best shot they\u2019ve had to pass a climate bill in a decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That opportunity lies in the Build Back Better Act, or BBB, a sweeping \u201csoft infrastructure\u201d bill that contains about half a trillion dollars in climate funding. Democrats hoped they could pass the bill via the budget reconciliation process \u2014 a Senate procedure that allows the majority party to circumvent minority party opposition and pass legislation that pertains to the budget with 50 votes instead of 60 votes. The bill hit a wall when Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced that he opposes it<\/a>. With even one member of their caucus opposed, Senate Democrats can\u2019t move forward with Build Back Better or any other major agenda item on President Joe Biden\u2019s long list of presidential priorities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But Manchin isn\u2019t against all of BBB, only certain parts of it. He hasn\u2019t taken issue with the climate parts of the bill, which Democrats already watered down to appeal to his fossil fuel\u2013friendly tastes<\/a>. This week, Democratic leadership started thinking seriously about moving forward with BBB by breaking it up into pieces. \u201cI\u2019ve been talking to a number of my colleagues on the Hill,\u201d Biden said at a press conference on Wednesday<\/a>. \u201cI think it\u2019s clear that we would be able to get support for the $500 billion plus for energy and the environment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n A funny thing happens when you separate out the $500 billion climate portion of the Build Back Better Act from the rest of the package: It starts to look a lot like the kind of climate plan Republicans say they support. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even a few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine Republicans supporting a federal climate plan. The Republican party has eschewed climate action since the 1980s, when oil companies started lobbying Republican lawmakers to vote against climate legislation and making hefty financial contributions to the campaigns of politicians who ran on anti-environmental regulation platforms. But recently, some Republican politicians have realized that their hard line on climate change is alienating portions of their voter base, especially younger Republicans who are beginning to sound a lot like Democrats when it comes to this issue specifically<\/a>. The physical impacts of climate change have become harder to ignore, and Republicans fear being left behind. \u201cWe should be a little nervous,\u201d House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said at a political conference in 2019<\/a>. Progressive Democrats in Congress whipped up a media and activist frenzy when they started touting the benefits of an economy-wide climate and justice plan called the Green New Deal earlier that year. What did Republicans have to tout? Nothing \u2014 lawmakers from their party were busy holding press conferences about why the existence of photosynthesis discredits climate change<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So some Republicans have been trying to show voters that they\u2019ve turned a new leaf on climate change. They\u2019ve stopped denying the reality of the issue and started to drum up conservative solutions to it instead, ones that they say focus exclusively on emissions \u2014 not the \u201claundry list\u201d<\/a> of progressive objectives Democrats want to accomplish. Republican Senator Mike Braun of Indiana serves as the co-chair of the Senate Conservative Climate Caucus, which was formed in 2019, and championed a green agriculture bill<\/a> that passed the Senate last year<\/a>. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska introduced climate legislation focused on sequestering carbon dioxide in oceans<\/a> and has been reaching across the aisle to fund clean energy research and development<\/a>. A cadre of House Republicans unveiled a swath of climate-related bills in 2020<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is clearly an appetite for modest climate action on the right that didn\u2019t exist just a few years ago. What\u2019s more, there\u2019s actually quite a bit of overlap between Democrats\u2019 climate plan in the BBB and Republicans\u2019 preferred ways of fighting climate change. Democrats have been finessing the contours of their climate agenda for months, converting a transformative plan to decarbonize the nation\u2019s power sector into a middle-of-the-road, don\u2019t-rock-the-boat suite of incremental actions<\/a> that jibe with Manchin\u2019s centrist sensibilities. The bill contains $300 billion in clean energy tax credits, but those credits are technology neutral, so they can be applied toward nuclear energy, hydropower, and geothermal energy, all of which Republicans like because they say they\u2019re more established than solar and wind power and have a proven track record of reliability. The bill also contains funding for capping abandoned oil wells, a method of cutting down on methane emissions that has been embraced in several Republican-led states<\/a>, and money for advanced battery technology that looks similar to bills House Republicans recently introduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCertainly on the policy, there\u2019s nothing in the bill that is inherently partisan, and Republicans have supported some similar things at the state level,\u201d said Matt Grossmann, professor of political science and public policy at Michigan State University, referring to the climate portion of the Build Back Better act. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Quillan Robinson, a conservative and director of government affairs at the free-market environmental group the American Conservation Coalition, agreed that there are areas of overlap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRepublicans have pushed very hard against Build Back Better,\u201d he said. \u201cBut in terms of some of the specific things in there, there are things Republicans and Democrats can agree on, absolutely,\u201d Robinson added. \u201cThere\u2019s probably a whole host of things from potentially clean energy tax credits to investment in things like geothermal that Republicans have and probably will continue to support.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n But even though Republicans might theoretically get behind the contents <\/em>of the climate portion of the Build Back Better Act, that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019ll be voting for a new version of the package anytime soon. Indeed, this week the New York Times asked all 50 Republican members of the Senate if they would support just the climate portions of the bill, and none of them said yes<\/a>. That\u2019s in part because the Build Back Better Act was never meant to be a bipartisan piece of legislation \u2014 Democrats aimed to pass it without Republicans via the budget reconciliation process. So Republicans, who were locked out of negotiations on this bill, aren\u2019t going to be particularly keen to jump on board now and salvage what\u2019s left of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bob Inglis, a former Republican representative from South Carolina who lost his seat after he came out in support of a tax on carbon emissions, said some Republicans might be able to support \u201ca free-standing bill that expands tax credits for wind, solar, batteries, geothermal and electric cars, that aids nuclear power plants at risk of premature closure and that incentivizes carbon capture and storage.\u201d If Republicans and Democrats are able to come together on climate change, it will be for a separate, fully rebranded bill that includes Republicans from the beginning. \u201cIt would need to be billed as a new effort to do something rather than \u2018we\u2019re trying to do the climate parts of Build Back Better,\u201d Grossmann said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A spokesperson for Representative John Curtis, Republican from Utah, emphasized the nonviability of any legislation that resembles the Build Back Better Act in a comment to Grist. \u201cWe have had no input in BBB,\u201d the spokesperson said, \u201cbut Congressman Curtis is working with his colleagues on bipartisan climate legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Republicans do come to the table on climate change, it likely won\u2019t be this Congress, because there\u2019s little political incentive for the party to work with Democrats now. The 2022 midterm elections are rapidly approaching, and Republicans are favored to take back the House<\/a> and possibly the Senate<\/a>, too. \u201cIf you\u2019re the party that stands the chance of gaining the majority, it doesn\u2019t make sense to help the majority party do something when you can do it next Congress your way,\u201d Grossmann said. In other words: Republicans\u2019 hostility to the Democratic agenda is clearly stronger than their desire to take action to slow down climate change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But Grossmann thinks it\u2019s possible that some Republicans could be willing to work with Democrats in the next Congress. It\u2019s happened before \u2014 Republicans and Democrats worked together in a divided Congress to pass the American Energy Innovation Act in 2020, a comprehensive energy bill<\/a>. And 19 Republicans voted with Democrats to pass Biden\u2019s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill<\/a> last fall. \u201cIt\u2019s not like it\u2019s some yesteryear period in which we\u2019ve had bipartisan legislation; we had it quite recently,\u201d Grossmann said. \u201cNext year at this time, it could be the case that a gang of senators could move forward with a set of bipartisan energy proposals that would look not that much different from the ones in Build Back Better.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the interim, Grossmann hasn\u2019t given up on the possibility of a smaller, Manchin-approved climate bill hitting the Senate floor. Such a bill would still bypass Republicans and get passed via a simple Democratic majority. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of agreement on the table and it would be sort of crazy for that agreement to not result in something,\u201d he said. \u201cUsually, when there\u2019s enough agreement to pass something that\u2019s better than the status quo, eventually you get to that agreement.\u201d Whether Democrats are able to create and pass such a bill before the 2022 midterms remains to be seen. If they can\u2019t, the success of a federal climate policy may depend on Republican lawmakers putting their votes where their mouths are.<\/p>\n This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline If Build Back Better fails, federal climate policy may depend on Republican cooperation<\/a> on Jan 21, 2022.<\/p>\n