48 United States The EconomistSeptember 21st 2019
2 ports that 57% of Americans view climate
change as a “major threat”, up from 40% in- Among Democrats, the share is 84%.
The contenders for the Democratic
presidential nomination are also respond-
ing to the Green New Deal, a proposal un-
veiled in February by Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez, a new congresswoman, and Mr
Markey, now a senator. The resolution calls
for an economy with net-zero emissions
(that is, sucking as much carbon dioxide
out of the atmosphere as it puts in) and a
broader social transformation, with uni-
versal health care and guaranteed jobs.
The plans proposed by the top candi-
dates for the Democratic nomination are
more detailed than this. Mr Sanders’s plan
is the most costly, but Elizabeth Warren, Mr
Biden’s closest competitor, would spend
$3trn. The leading contenders aspire to net
zero emissions by 2050, if not before. They
would phase out subsidies for fossil fuels
and increase spending on research into
technologies such as energy storage (to-
day’s batteries cannot balance the variable
power from the sun and wind over long pe-
riods). Most candidates propose ways to
support cleaner power abroad. These in-
clude sticks—taxes on goods from coun-
tries without robust climate policies, for
example—as well as carrots, such as aid for
zero-emissions electricity in poor coun-
tries, to counter China’s support for coal.
Three candidates—Kamala Harris, Pete
Buttigieg and Julian Castro—support a car-
bon tax or fee, which economists like for its
ability to spur lower emissions across the
economy, without trying to anticipate the
success of any given technology. Four for-
mer Federal Reserve chairmen and 27 No-
bel-prize-winning economists advocate a
carbon tax whose proceeds are distributed
to Americans in equal lump sums. This
also has the backing of ExxonMobil, Total
and other oil giants. Mr Biden and Mr Sand-
ers seem to favour a carbon tax, too, though
their plans are less explicit. Ms Warren
would consider a tax but has proposed a
clean energy standard requiring electricity
generators, buildings and cars to bring
emissions to zero. This would not span the
economy as a carbon price would, but it
caps emissions for certain sectors and has
the political benefit of obscuring costs.
Democrats’ broader goals sometimes
clash with their environmental ones. Top
candidates espouse plans to support Amer-
ican manufacturing of clean technology,
even though the deployment of renewable
energy has benefited so much from cheap
batteries and solar panels made in Asia. Ms
Warren would require products with tech-
nology from federally funded research to
be made in America with union labour,
probably increasing its cost. The main fea-
ture of her “Green Marshall Plan” is $100bn
of federal spending to help other countries
buy such American tech. This emphasis on
jobs would risk making zero-carbon power
more expensive, slowing its take-up. Mr
Sanders and Ms Warren would also ban nu-
clear power, which produces no green-house gases. Michael Bloomberg, a former
mayor of New York who has spent a fortune
campaigning for the closure of American
coal plants, finds most Democrats’ propos-
als maddening. “What on earth have any of
these people done to have a cogent plan
that is doable?” he asks.
Climate policy should be made palat-
able, especially to those most affected by a
fast shift to clean power. In Los Angeles this
year, dismayed workers at gas plants al-
most scuttled the mayor’s plan to expand
solar power. But the biggest risk to a better
policy comes from lack of support partly
from Democrats in coal- and gas-produc-
ing states, like West Virginia’s Joe Man-
chin, and mainly from Republicans. Pew’s
polling shows that just 27% of Republicans
consider climate change a major threat.
There are some signs of a generational
conflict within the Republican Party that
could eventually lead to change. Among
millennial conservatives, 59% say that cli-
mate change is having at least some effect
on America. More than 80% support ex-
panding the use of wind and solar power.
Alex Flint, a longtime Senate staffer, con-
ducts polls and focus groups to help advise
Republicans on climate change. In one
swing district, he found that half of all con-
servatives were more likely to support a Re-
publican incumbent working to limit cli-
mate change. The trend was particularly
pronounced among conservative women.
The rhetoric of some Republicans has
started to change, too. “I didn’t come to
Congress to argue with a thermometer,”
Congressman Matt Gaetz declared earlier
this year. Lindsey Graham, a senator from
South Carolina, insists Republicans “owe it
to the country to have an alternative to the
Green New Deal”. But partisanship is work-
ing against this shift—the Green New Deal
has prompted some Republicans to portray
climate policies as socialist schemes to ban
hamburgers. For now, those Republicans
who worry about the climate venture no
further than advocating for more r&d
spending, as Lamar Alexander, Mr Graham
and Lisa Murkowski do in the Senate.
Democrats view these proposals warily.
Republican support for long-term research
can give the impression of action, but can
sap efforts to deploy the technologies avail-
able now. Only two of the 252 Republicans
in Congress favour a carbon tax. One of
them, Francis Rooney, has held town-hall
meetings and lunches in his district to ex-
plain himself to conservative constituents,
but he says it is tough going. Climate scep-
ticism, he says, “is identified as conserva-
tive Republican doctrine”. That is despite
Republican-leaning bits of the country be-
ing at greatest risk (see chart). Eventually
more Republicans may support action as
the effects of climate change become clear.
By then, however, the damage would be
even harder to reverse. 7Red hot
Estimatedeconomic damage from climate change by 2080-99*,%of 2012 incomeSource: Brookings InstitutionBy county Worst-affectedstates
By 2016 presidentialvote*Basedonmedianlikelihood temperature predictionsRepublican Democrat-15-10 -5 0 5 10 15+04812
Florida
Mississippi
Louisiana
Arkansas
Alabama
Georgia
Te x a s
South Carolina
Hawaii
Oklahoma