A few weeks from now, Americans will be voting in the 2022 Congressional midterm elections. Predictably, inflation is dominating the news headlines, but other issues are also on voters’ minds.
Take climate change, for example. A recent poll by The Washington Post and his ABC shows that about half of voters are making climate change a priority in the midterm elections. This demonstrates the growing importance of the environment as an electoral issue, especially for young people across party lines. With Republicans likely to regain control of Congress, both parties will do well by responding to voters and pursuing common-sense environmental policies that can actually get things done.
President Biden has certainly made tackling climate change a defining feature of his presidency. His Build Back Better Agenda eventually collapsed, but he spent a lot of political capital to pass the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). He wants to be seen as a president who can actually get things done.
But let’s not forget that while the IRA was passed, it was only passed along strict party line. In contrast to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was signed last November with strong bipartisan support, Democrats failed to win a single Republican vote in the IRA. Ultimately, this partisan effort came to a halt as subsequent promotion of the permit reform bill failed dramatically. Reforming the arduous permitting process, as some have argued, is he one of the key jigsaw pieces to unlock the building of clean energy infrastructure.to 80 percent Potential emission reductions may be lost.
This is a wake-up call for environmental policy. Despite its clear necessity, due to the thinking of many activists and politicians in the Capitol, the reform was hampered by intra-party and interpartisan disputes. The climate debate tends to focus solely on overarching one-size-fits-all climate proposals that spend trillions of dollars. Proposals of this kind are often deployed along highly controversial partisan lines, leading to political inaction on other important issues (in this case, allowing reforms).
But more specific policy areas may actually provide a true blueprint for lasting, long-term action on the environment. By focusing solely on overarching climate action, we risk losing sight of the smaller issues that can actually move the ball forward in meaningful, bipartisan ways.
One such example is the new movement to solve the recycling problem in the United States. Recently, a group of consumer advocacy and environmental groups joined the Can Makers Association and the Aluminum Association to advocate for a bipartisan national deposit on cans, bottles and other types of beverage containers.
While environmental topics tend to focus solely on carbon emissions and energy use, issues such as recycling provide case studies of real policy opportunities. Consider the deposit programs offered by these organizations. The program establishes refunds for beverage container deposits to encourage consumers to return cans and bottles instead of throwing them in the trash. According to a recent poll, 81% of Americans support this type of recycling program, including 76% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats.
This program is not only popular, it works. In the 10 US states that have introduced so-called bottle bills, recycling reimbursement rates are nearly 70%, as opposed to 28% nationally. In his two US states with 10-cent deposits, Oregon and Massachusetts, recycling reimbursement rates reach 85%. Furthermore, it is estimated that the country’s deposit system could save up to 11.2 million tons of CO2, or 2.4 million cars, thanks to the recycling process.
The crux of this policy approach to recycling is the fact that it focuses on carrots, not sticks, and is overall a win-win. There is a temptation to view climate action as a necessary sacrifice, but some environmentalists even argue that we need to shrink our economy to minimize our ecological footprint. The recycling deposit program shows that environmental sustainability and economic success can go hand in hand. Providing consumers with incentives to recycle their containers, while making the program easy and transparent, not only benefits the environment but also makes economic sense. This is the secret to bipartisan support and popular support.
With the midterm elections looming and Republicans likely to take the majority in Congress, this sort of bipartisan solution will be more important than ever. After all, despite all the problems around inflation and the economy, Americans still express deep concern about climate change. Broad multitrillion-dollar proposals tend to dominate the Capitol, but there is a real opportunity to recalibrate our thinking. From recycling deposit programs to other types of policy instruments such as planting trees, we can build bipartisan bridges and rally around common sense solutions that make meaningful progress for the environment.
Chris Barnard is the Director of National Policy for the American Conservation Union (ACC). Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisBarnardDL
