• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

Democrats, Enviros Connect Climate Change to (Other) Key Issues in U.S. Midterms

October 30, 2018
Reading time: 3 minutes

Mark Dixon/Wikipedia Commons

Mark Dixon/Wikipedia Commons

12
SHARES
 

With U.S. midterm elections just five days away, Congressional Democrats are hoping the Trump administration’s relentless rollback of environmental regulations will become a focal point for voters—and quietly planning to target those policies if they gain a majority in the House of Representatives.

“Because they are less likely to capture the Senate, Democrats would have limited opportunities to enact laws,” Bloomberg Politics reports. “But they can assert themselves in the House—and complicate Donald Trump’s deregulatory efforts—by using time-honoured strategies of burying agencies in oversight requests and hauling federal officials to Capitol Hill for grillings.”

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
New!
Subscribe

“I want to change the narrative of this whole thing,” said Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. “Where the Resources Committee isn’t just a passive part of the Trump administration, that they’re independent and that they have responsibility as co-equals for oversight and accountability.”

To get to that point, the Democrats will need a net gain of about two dozen seats in the 438-member House. And while environment and climate won’t be the top vote-determining issue for most of the people going to the polls, “environmental groups and Democrats are hoping the recent string of natural disasters and the Trump administration’s efforts to rollback dozens of environmental laws will be key in November’s midterms,” National Public Radio states. “Particularly in disaster-struck states like California and Florida, where a number of House seats are closely contested.”

“People are seeing first-hand the devastating impacts that climate change is having,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, which is pouring US$60 million into the midterm campaign.

“And they’re going to be far more likely to support elected officials and candidates who are going to stand up for them, and not with the corporate polluters the way that Donald Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress does over and over again.”

NPR notes that Democrats are making frequent use of the word “oversight”, since a shift in House leadership won’t change Trump’s ability to kill off climate policies and other environmental protections via executive order. “But while Democrats could not force Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to restore Bears Ears National Monument, for example, or to crack down on methane emissions from natural gas operations, Grijalva says they could force Zinke to explain himself,” the publicly-funded broadcaster notes. “So expect hearings. Lots of them. And Trump backers agree they would have an impact.”

“They would be able to tie up [agencies] mercilessly, so that they would kind of be able to slow walk a lot of the good work that’s being done on these issues,” says Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a key backer of Trump’s environmental agenda. [Surely he’s not thinking of the way Congressional Republicans behaved through the eight years of the Obama administration? Nah, that’s just crazy talk.—Ed.]

The campaign also has U.S. environmental groups shifting their tactics and messaging to connect with voters who don’t usually base their ballot box decisions on climate. “To counter that dynamic, the political arms of groups including the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Fund are spending millions this fall to link climate change to the economy, corporatism and health care—the number one issue Democrats are running on this year,” The Hill reports.

Alongside the LCV’s campaign investment, the U.S. Sierra Club is planning to spend $6 million, far more than it has in the past. “I think very few voters vote on any single issue. They look at candidates and they compare their choices with their own values,” said Executive Director Michael Brune. “We don’t treat climate change as an outlier or special issue or something that is separate from the important things in people’s lives.”

Will Jordan, a senior research associate at the Global Strategy Group, said the recent run of major extreme weather disasters has made climate change a bigger campaign issue than it’s been in the past. “I think that, at the end of the day, it’s going to be fundamentally an election about the major issues: health care, Donald Trump, accountability themes of the election, but at the same time you see this [climate] argument get threaded into those,” he told The Hill.



in Energy Politics, Legal & Regulatory, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Mike Mozart/Flickr
Ending Emissions

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

February 4, 2023
331
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures
Canada

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
CONFENIAE
Ending Emissions

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

February 4, 2023
331
openthegovernment.org

BREAKING: U.S. Senate Passes Historic $369B Climate Package

August 8, 2022
541
Sam Balto/YouTube

Elementary School’s Bike Bus Brings ‘Sheer Joy’ to Portland Neighbourhood

February 5, 2023
262
Lucio Santos/flickr

Canadian Banks Increased Fossil Investment in 2021, Report Card Shows

November 27, 2022
116

Recent Posts

Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
125
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
94
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
42
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
132
Next Post
Pixabay

New Pipeline Wouldn’t Eliminate Price Discount on Lower-Quality Tar Sands/Oil Sands Crude

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}