Just How Green is the Blue Vote?
With the recent announcement that Kamala Harris has officially joined the ticket as Joe Biden’s running mate, an onslaught of criticism, questioning and discussion have surrounded Harris’ (and Biden’s) records on a number of key issues such as policing.
In response to this criticism, others within the party have rushed to say that a vote for the Biden/Harris administration is about “far more than” any one particular issue, and that voting blue in any form protects key advancements in areas like climate change and environmental degradation.
This argument, on its most basic surface, is undoubtedly true. It seems relatively obvious at this point that few options could be worse for the planet than the current Trump administration, which has gutted EPA mandates, overturned dozens of regulations and routinely debates whether man-made climate change even exists, to name a few problems.
So, yes, removing Trump from office would certainly stop the bleeding. But that begs the question, how much would the Biden/Harris ticket actually help the planet?
Biden’s official climate plan, titled the “The Biden Plan To Secure Environmental Justice and Equitable Economic Opportunity in a Clean Energy Future,” states the former VP will ensure the United States runs on clean energy and has net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It also promises to dedicate time and resources to building “resilient” infrastructure and taking on corporations who pollute, with a note that those companies often affect low-income and non-white communities at disproportionate rates.
Biden and Harris have both also pledged to make environmental justice a keystone to their climate action. Harris introduced the Climate Equity Act alongside New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019 along with a recent push to reverse a Supreme Court decision from 2001 that complicates the ability of Americans to sue polluters under the Civil Rights Act.
The Biden climate plan and Harris’ commitment to racial equality within the environmental movement are signs of a forward-thinking push towards reforms the scientific community has warned will be needed as global average temperatures continue to rise. If the promises made by the newly-made-official partnership do come to fruition, the country (and possibly much of the world) will be better off because of it.
That said, though, the Democratic party writ large has been slow to push for much progressive action concerning the climate problem. Ocasio-Cortez’s now infamous Green New Deal proposal brought blowback from conservative voices, of course, but also from moderate and center Democrats who saw the idea as several steps too far. This Politico piece from 2019 does not discuss the Green New Deal policies pushed by Ocasio-Cortex but does offer a look into Obama-era legislation that offers some insight into the push and pull of politics concerning climate change.
Clearly, things have started to shift within the leadership of the party, as the presidential ticket now loudly calls for Green New Deal-esque reforms and even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has released a much more ambitious climate plan than the Democratic party has ever seemed to endorse.
But what leadership in Washington want, and what voters view as essential and important are often not the same. Does the average Democratic voter view climate with the same importance?
Yes and no, it seems. The Pew Research Center (PRC) released findings from a new study in June that show two-thirds of Americans think the government should “do more” about the climate crisis. The following graphic, from the PRC website, gives more insight into how respondents want to see the government act.
The PRC also published a study reporting Democratic voters tend to view climate change as something affecting their local communities far more than Republican voters, suggesting that this is a party of individuals who want to see action taken on a larger scale.
Even still, the Green New Deal legislation does not have wide support, and progressive candidates who are often the ones championing such reforms do not always attract a majority of the party support nationwide.
Biden, even with a strong environmental platform, was not the first choice among young and progressive voters and the same can be said about Harris. This, of course, does not mean that those voters won’t support the ticket come November, especially given the alternative- four more years of a Trump administration.
It is worth questioning whether climate alone will be enough to convince wary voters to back Biden at the polls. As noted above, many young voters did not back Biden during the primaries, and while research done by NextGen America shows many of those voters coming around to the promise to vote blue, they aren’t enthusiastic about him, either.
Obviously, 2020 has been an onslaught of crises and cries for change, from a global health crisis to a continued, if not louder, demand for significant policing reform and racial reckoning across the country.
And, yes, climate change has also reared its ugly head, as hurricanes and other disasters continue to wreak havoc on communities. Pollution and single-use plastics still dominate our air and water, and we still live in a country with more than a few individuals who refuse to listen to the science and see the problem others find glaringly obvious.
It is also (very obviously) true that Biden cannot win the presidency without people coming out (or mailing in) to vote for him in November. With the general apathy among some sections of voters referenced above, there is still a lingering doubt surrounding the success of the campaign, even as nearly ever poll shows Biden winning the election.
Only time (and lots of polling and researching) will tell if voters do form a blue wave of support around Biden and Harris. And only more time will tell if those voters, and the administration they hypothetically placed into office, will work to implement green reforms that go beyond just stopping the bleeding caused by Trump and his team.
