Coalitions that Clash: California's Climate Leadership and the Perpetuation of Environmental Inequality

Abstract

Abstract At a time when the US federal government failed to act on climate change, California's success as a subnational climate policy leader has been widely celebrated. However, California's landmark climate law drove a wedge between two segments of the state's environmental community. On one side was a coalition of “market-oriented” environmental social movement organizations (SMOs), who allied with private corporations to advance market-friendly climate policy. On the other side was a coalition of “justice-oriented” environmental SMOs, who viewed capitalist markets as the problem and sought climate policy that would mitigate the uneven distribution of environmental harms within the state. The social movement literature is not well equipped to understand this case, in which coalitional politics helped one environmental social movement succeed in its policy objectives at the expense of another. In this chapter, we draw on legislative and regulatory texts, archival material, and interviews with relevant political actors to compare the policymaking influence of each of these coalitions, and we argue that the composition of the two coalitions is the key to understanding why one was more successful than the other. At the same time, we point out the justice-oriented coalition's growing power, as market-oriented SMOs seek to preserve their legitimacy. Keywords Environmental justice Climate change Public policymaking Social movements Interest groups Coalition politics Citation Basseches, J.A., Rubinstein, K. and Kulaga, S.M. (2021), "Coalitions that Clash: California's Climate Leadership and the Perpetuation of Environmental Inequality", Pettinicchio, D. (Ed.) The Politics of Inequality (Research in Political Sociology, Vol. 28), Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 23-44. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0895-993520210000028002 Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited Introduction In 2006, California adopted “The most ambitious climate change legislation enacted anywhere in North America” (Rabe, 2013, p. 67). Given the difficulties in adopting federal climate change policy in the United States, it would be reasonable to assume that California's bold law would have only been possible with, at a minimum, the help of a unified environmental movement to counter entrenched climate policy opposition. Instead, California's landmark climate law drove a wedge between two segments of the state's environmental community. Both segments sought to mitigate climate change, but they had very distinct – and indeed, incompatible – views about the best approach the state should take in doing so, as well as distinct movement identities manifesting as strategic and tactical divergences. These differences were reflected in the very different types of coalition partners with which each side was willing to ally in order to achieve its desired policy outcome. This in turn had implications for each side's success in achieving its policy objectives. On one side was a coalition of “market-oriented” social movement organizations (SMOs) whose primary objective was to achieve total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions through a policy mechanism that could gain the support of allies in the business community. They therefore advocated market-based policy options, such as California's often-celebrated cap-and-trade program, which regulates 1 more than 80% of statewide GHG emissions (Sutter et al., 2018). Given its market-friendly approach, this policy won the support of not only a number of market-oriented environmental SMOs but also “green business” (renewable energy companies, technology companies, venture capitalists, etc.) and the state's extremely powerful investor-owned utilities (IOUs) (Basseches, 2020). On the other side was a coalition of “justice-oriented” SMOs who shared the objective of reducing GHG emissions, but at the same time, also sought the mitigation of other, related environmental harms (e.g., air and water pollution). Importantly, this coalition of justice-oriented SMOs favored a mechanism that would promote greater equity or environmental justice, given the unequal distribution of these environmental harms across the state – disproportionately affecting low-income, predominantly Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities (Cole & Foster, 2001; Harrison, 2019; London et al., 2013; Pellow & Brulle, 2005). Therefore, justice-oriented SMOs' preferred approach to reducing GHG emissions involved what are known as “command-and-control” or “point source” regulations, whereby emissions are capped at their source. By contrast, the market-oriented coalition advocated cap-and-trade, which justice-oriented activists described as merely a “marketplace of polluters.” While the ultimate environmental objective of cap-and-trade was to make emissions costlier for corporations, it imposed flexible, rather than strict, controls on their polluting activities. Consequently, there was little interest on the part of these justice-oriented SMOs in entering into a coalition with private business interests (Author's Interviews 11/12/18, 7/23/19, 7/28/19; Jennings, 2017). Moreover, these justice-oriented SMOs' organizational identities and tactical repertoires promoted lay involvement, mobilizing and empowering at a grassroots level the individuals with the greatest personal stakes in terms of their disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards (London, Sze, & Liévanos, 2008; Perkins, 2015). Partnering with corporations would have been an affront to these justice-oriented SMOs' core values, and the risk of co-optation was deemed too great. The social movement literature lacks a clear theoretical framework for making sense of the case of California climate policymaking and the tension that characterizes it. In this case, two social movements are simultaneously targeting the state for a policy response to climate change; both are environmental movements, but they have opposing views about how the state should respond. Social movement scholars typically view movements as “challengers” (Amenta, Caren, Chiarello, & Su, 2010), vying for policy reform in a larger political arena, which includes “more powerful” non-movement actors (Amenta, 2006, p. 6), such as state actors and/or corporate actors (Amenta et al., 2010; King, 2008). These non-movement forces constitute the “political context” (Amenta et al., 2010) or the “political opportunity structure” (Meyer, 2004), which mediates policy responses to social movement mobilization, resulting in different degrees of movement success in influencing policy. However, in this case, the movement represented by market-oriented SMOs partnered with the state and with corporate actors. By contrast, justice-oriented SMOs pushed a wholly different, anti-neoliberal policy solution to the same underlying problem of climate change. Theories predicting the policy consequences of social movement mobilization, such as the political mediation model (Amenta, Caren, & Olasky, 2005), are not well equipped to make sense of multidimensional policy outcomes like the one observed in California. In this case, the state passed the strongest climate policy in the United States, but it relied on a particular policy approach that perpetuates environmental inequality. Thus, the state delivered a movement victory on strong climate policy, but the market-based mechanism for achieving the state's climate targets antagonized one environmental movement while rewarding the other. In this chapter, we synthesize theoretical tools from the social movement literature and insights from the coalitional and interest group politics literature in order to account for variation in the justice-oriented movement's policymaking influence over the design of California's climate policy. We argue that the justice-oriented movement's limited influence when it came to California's climate law, AB 32, and the cap-and-trade program that was used to implement it was not just the result of the political context, its less institutionalized tactics and its challenger status, as the social movement literature would theorize. It was also the result of the fact that the market-oriented movement offered state policymakers an alternative means of being responsive to climate movement pressures, but one that could simultaneously satisfy a broader coalition of interest groups that included non-movement actors, such as “green business” and the state's very powerful IOUs. However, we also show that none of these factors is static, as evinced by the justice-oriented movement's more recent rise in influence, resulting from its growing appeal as a coalition partner for a market-oriented movement seeking to unify the broader environmental community to further its agenda. Social Movement and Interest Group Theory The social movement literature, as it relates to public policymaking, lacks a complete framework for analyzing these two environmental movements in relation to one another, to corporate actors, and to the state. It might be tempting to think of these two environmental movements as variants of the same movement and to analyze their impacts using a “radical flank effects” framework (Haines, 1984, 2013). That is, a single social movement, with a common policy objective, becomes factionalized over tactics, with one faction adopting more moderate tactics and another adopting more radical tactics. A number of social movement scholars have used this framework to identify both “positive radical flank effects,” whereby the existence of a radical component normalizes the more moderate component, making the latter more likely to achieve its goals, and “negative radical flank effects,” whereby the radical flank undermines the moderate flank by inciting backlash toward the movement as a whole (Haines, 1984). This framework has been effectively used across a variety of empirical cases ranging from the women's movement (McCammon, Bergner, & Arch, 2015) to the climate movement (Schifeling & Hoffman, 2017). However, the division between market-oriented SMOs and justice-oriented SMOs goes far beyond tactics; it is, at its core, ideological in nature. As Yang (2002) argues, the justice-oriented movement's claims are rooted in civil rights doctrine, which is intended to protect minority victims from majority oppressors. By contrast, the market-oriented climate movement is rooted in an ideological framework that seeks to protect the “commons” (i.e., the public at large and the natural environment) from environmental degradation (Yang, 2002). Consequently, market-oriented SMOs were most concerned with reducing climate change on a global scale and saw cooperation with corporate interests as a necessary means to that end. These are more like two separate movements, with fundamentally different ideological underpinnings rather than a moderate and radical flank of a single movement. Another framework commonly employed in the social movement literature is the dynamic between movements and “countermovements” (e.g., Andrews, 2002; Dixon, 2008; Laschever & Meyer, Forthcoming; Meyer & Staggenborg, 1996). Countermovements emerge in direct opposition to movements, positioning themselves on opposing sides of a single issue. Examples include pro-choice versus anti-abortion movements (Staggenborg, 1991), gun control versus gun rights movements (Laschever & Meyer, Forthcoming, 2021), and pro- verus anti-marijuana legalization movements (Meyer & Staggenborg, 1996). But the case of the market-oriented versus justice-oriented climate movements in California is different. It is a multidimensional policy conflict in which the two sides are aligned on the need for the state to pass policies to mitigate climate change, but opposed when it comes to whether the state should do so by relying on capitalist markets or by protecting those most vulnerable to climate change's most immediate effects (and the effects of other environmental hazards), by directly restricting emissions at their source. Sometimes, countermovements mobilize in direct response to policy gains made by the opposing movement, as in the example of segregationist backlash to school desegregation policies in civil rights era Mississippi (Andrews, 2001). However, the California case follows a very different narrative. The mobilization of the environmental justice movement in California long predates even the emergence of the market-oriented coalition, much less its success in securing its desired climate policy outcome from the state. California's justice-oriented movement's decades-old fights focused on the dumping of toxic waste, the use of toxic pesticides, and air pollution and smog, separate and apart from its associated climate change–inducing GHG emissions (Cole & Foster, 2001; Harrison, 2011; Perkins, 2015). In contrast, the market-oriented coalition did not coalesce until the early 2000s. Here, national, market-oriented SMOs such as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) partnered with forward-looking business interests around a proposed climate policy regime in California they hoped would later become a model for national policy (Author's Interviews 11/5/18, 11/8/18, 11/13/18; Lyon, 2010). Still, the social movement literature is in other ways quite helpful for analyzing conflict between the market-oriented and justice-oriented climate movements in California. Pettinicchio's (2012, 2017, 2019) institutional activism in part posits that political elites, including state policymakers, further social movement goals within political institutions. For example, on US disability policy, Pettinicchio argues: Elected officials, government bureaucrats, and incumbent interest, disability, and professional groups formed a symbiotic relationship serving their political needs while also doing good. (Pettinicchio, 2019, p. 32) In the case of California climate policymaking, we observed a parallel symbiotic relationship between market-oriented climate SMOs, their institutional allies in state government, and even certain business groups that stood to profit from climate policy (Basseches, 2020). A top staffer in the California Statehouse explained how Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger became an “institutional activist,” working to advance market-oriented climate policy on behalf of the market-oriented SMOs; Schwarzenegger stood to simultaneously increase his own political fortunes by advancing the market-oriented movement's climate policy goals: What was really going on was Arnold Schwarzenegger … was running for reelection, and he was losing. California was moving to a blue state. He had done a lot of things at the behest of …. the more conservative elements of California that had ticked off labor unions, environmentalists, other people. So he was in trouble and … it seemed pretty clear what was really going on was they [his advisors] told him [to sign AB 32]. (Author's Interview, 11/13/18) Political elites can, if they choose, confer a degree of legitimacy on social movement groups while simultaneously excluding other actors from the formal policymaking process altogether. This complicates the previously understood relationship between elites and social movement actors, whereby elites are typically assumed to be movement opponents unless movements hold direct (typically electoral) leverage over them (Amenta et al., 2010). As Pettinicchio (2017, p. 170) writes: Policy communities persist when incumbents institutionalize a field by creating norms and assigning values to the efforts of its actors. This means that elites confer legitimacy to certain kinds of organizations, structures, and policy frames, and delegitimize others. In the case of California climate policymaking, we observed quite clearly how political elites within the state, and also certain elements of the business community, conferred legitimacy on market-oriented SMOs like EDF and NRDC while at the same time devaluing the input of the justice-oriented SMOs (Jennings, 2017; London et al., 2013; Sze et al., 2009). However, the marginalization of justice-oriented SMOs within the policymaking process was not just the result of a conscious effort on the part of some political elites but also a result of the very different framing the market-oriented and justice-oriented SMOs each relied upon in order to attempt to influence policymaking. Specifically, the former was able to take advantage of what McCammon, Muse, Newman, and Terrell (2007, p. 733) refer to as a “legal discursive opportunity structure.” The latter's emphasis on activist and citizen participation to also combat structural racism and capitalism meant that their requests were more likely to fall upon the deaf ears of legislators and technocrats who were more focused on crafting statutory and regulatory language rather than on systemic change. As Basseches and King (2020) argue, the complexity of legislative language poses an obstacle to less institutionalized social movements, like the justice-oriented movement in California. In sum, the social movement literature is in some ways helpful but in other ways limited in its utility for understanding the case of California climate policymaking and the divergent policy agendas of the market-oriented and justice-oriented SMOs. The more consequential limitations of this literature become more salient when evaluating the influence of either of these movements on policy. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of research examining the policy consequences of social movements (e.g., Amenta, 2006; Amenta et al., 2010; Basseches, 2019; Burstein & Linton, 2002; Soule & King, 2006; Soule & Olzak, 2004). Some of this research has even specifically examined the influence of the environmental movement on public policy (Johnson, Agnone, & McCarthy, 2010; Olzak & Soule, 2009). However, this research is often guided by theoretical frameworks like political mediation, which largely ignore broader fields of interest group actors and the influence of coalitions that include both movement and non-movement actors, as exemplified by the market-oriented coalition in California. This coalition included not only SMOs but also “green business” interests and IOUs (Basseches, 2020). To be sure, there has been plenty of work examining coalitions within broader social movements (e.g., Van Dyke & McCammon, 2010), but less so when it comes to coalitions also consisting of non-movement actors, and even less so examining how the presence of non-movement actors affects the policymaking influence of the coalition as a whole. For instance, the political mediation model makes little mention of interest group coalitions, focusing instead on five conditions that characterize the relationship between political elites and social movement challengers (Amenta et al., 2010). Missing is an understanding of how partnerships between SMOs and non-movement actors might impact the theorized mechanisms mediating between movement mobilization, on the one hand, and policy outcomes, on the other (Amenta et al., 2005, 2010). Empirical studies based on this theoretical framework often focus on the effect of tactics in shaping the policy agenda and less so on policy itself. They do not model the impact of non-movement coalition partners in potentially augmenting a movement's policymaking power (Johnson et al., 2010; Olzak & Soule, 2009). However, Basseches (2019) does find that an interest group coalition comprising both movement and non-movement actors was at least in part the reason that environmental SMOs in Massachusetts were more successful when it came to influencing the content of one law than another. Parallel political science research on interest groups, coalitions, and lobbying suggests that coalition size and diversity can be important factors when it comes to influencing public policy. Bawn et al., (2012) theorize that interest group coalition strength is the single most important factor in determining the policymaking behavior of political parties. Hula (1999) argues that lobbying coalitions lower the costs of policymaking for legislators and are therefore highly efficient ways to influence policy outcomes. Finally, Phinney (2017) argues that it is the diversity of types of interest groups that are members of a single lobbying coalition that increases the appeal of its policy agenda to policymakers. In her analysis of why advocates for the poor occasionally succeeded in making gains in social policy in a political context thought to favor moneyed interests, Phinney concludes that the “strange bedfellows” that comprised the winning coalition help explain its success. We might expect, then, that the fact that the market-oriented climate policy coalition in California included both environmental SMOs and business interests would lead policymakers to be more responsive to it than to the justice-oriented coalition. We show that, indeed, coalition power – exerted by a coalition that included both movement and non-movement actors – is the missing link that sheds light on why the market-oriented coalition was more successful than the justice-oriented coalition in shaping California's climate policy regime. Other factors, better accounted for in the social movement scholarship, mattered, too. These include things like tactics (Johnson et al., 2010), resources (McCarthy & Zald, 1977), and legal discursive opportunity structure (McCammon et al., 2007). However, ultimately, the fact that the market-oriented coalition offered policymakers a way to take action on climate change while simultaneously pleasing many powerful elements of the business community was critical to explaining why the justice-oriented coalition's proposed path was the road not taken. To frame our analysis, we first provide additional empirical background on our case and then outline the data and methodology upon which our analysis is based. Climate Policymaking in California California has a long and well-documented history of environmental policy leadership (Vogel, 2018). Because of the size of California's population and economy, it has been a strategic focus of large, foundation-funded, national environmental organizations, such as the EDF and the NRDC. These organizations have a reputation for compromising with major corporations and for preferring market-oriented solutions to major environmental problems (Lyon, 2010). A well-known example of this approach is when these organizations joined together with petroleum companies, such as British Petroleum (BP) and Shell, in a coalition to support what was ultimately an unsuccessful effort to pass cap-and-trade at the federal level (Bartosiewicz & Miley, 2013; Grumbach, 2017; Pooley, 2010). In 2006, when AB 32 was signed into law, the top leaders of these same market-oriented environmental SMOs viewed California as the ultimate proving ground, to demonstrate to national policymakers that market-oriented climate policies were a politically feasible way to reduce GHG emissions (Author's Interviews, 11/5/18, 11/8/18, 1/7/19). By contrast, the justice-oriented environmental movement in California – which consists of hundreds of community-based SMOs throughout the state – preferred command-and-control regulations, which business interests are predisposed to oppose. These limit pollution at the source and constrain, rather than promote, free market forces. The justice-oriented movement was concerned not only about GHG emissions but also “co-pollutants,” such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx). These co-pollutants do not directly cause climate change, but they are emitted at the same time, and often from the same sources, as GHGs (Author's Interviews, 11/12/18, 7/23/19, 7/28/19; Jennings, 2017). The justice-oriented movement problematized the fact that low-income populations within the state, and particularly communities of color (Downey & Hawkins, 2008), suffer disproportionately from environmental harms (Capek, 1993; Ciplet, Roberts, & Khan, 2015; Park & Pellow, 2013). Justice-oriented environmental SMOs in California identify as part of a larger movement, throughout the United States and globally, that seeks to combat structural, cultural, and institutional sources of environmental inequality, such as racism and capitalism (Carter, 2016; Harrison, 2019). This often puts them at odds with market-oriented environmental SMOs, which advocate more finite policy goals, taking the macrostructure of the American political and economic systems as a given rather than something that can be reformed through state policies. Moreover, some environmental justice activists would argue that, because EDF and NRDC depend on the capitalist structure for resources (e.g., corporate foundation funding), they are unwilling to challenge it. Market-oriented advocates at EDF or NRDC might counter by arguing that the urgency of reducing GHG emissions precludes pursuing the sorts of structural change envisioned by the justice-oriented groups and requires a more pragmatic approach. For justice-oriented SMOs, the trouble with AB 32 was its basic architecture. The justice-oriented movement would have preferred the legislation to be more prescriptive, spelling out exactly what was mandated to achieve the overall GHG emissions reduction target it sets forth. This would have minimized the ambiguity (later exploited by the justice-oriented movement's opponents) as to whether or not the mechanisms that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) 2 would ultimately select to implement the law would exacerbate local pollution issues. As one justice-oriented SMO advocate put it, “What community [justice-oriented] groups were saying is, we want very stringent language [in the AB 32 legislation]” (Author's Interview, 11/12/18). Regarding the cap-and-trade program, which the CARB ultimately chose as its signature policy mechanism to implement AB 32, the problem the justice-oriented movement had with it was the “trade” part, not the “cap” part. A cap on GHG emissions amounts to command-and-control regulation, which the justice-oriented movement supports. However, the ability to trade emissions credits provides private polluters the flexibility to potentially increase local emissions so long as they pay for the allowances to do so, trade them with another firm in possession of excess allowances, or – most egregiously to justice-oriented advocates – simply reduce their net emissions outside of California through a mechanism known as “offsets” (Author's Interview, 7/23/19). On the other side, market-oriented SMOs like EDF and NRDC wanted a policy that they believed would simultaneously reduce GHG emissions and promote economic growth. They were especially interested in a proposal that would be palatable to potential coalition partners in the business community. As one of NRDC's legislative advocates described his organization's approach, “We … talk to business and industry and utilities” (Author's Interview, 11/8/18). From the beginning, even as AB 32 was traveling through the early stages of the legislative process, these groups envisioned a market-based, cap-and-trade program as the key vehicle for meeting the law's 2020 target. The primary objective of EDF and NRDC with respect to AB 32 was global GHG emissions reduction, not necessarily mitigating local pollution and not necessarily reducing the health-harming “co-pollutants” that justice-oriented groups were highly concerned about. With regard to the cap-and-trade program, EDF and NRDC had certain key principles regarding its design. They wanted to reduce loopholes that might weaken its impact, but ultimately, they were willing to compromise on many of these principles in order to move forward without antagonizing business allies. For example, when asked about why so many cap-and-trade allowances were given away to polluting firms for free, a representative of one of these market-oriented SMOs explained: I didn't think it was realistic, especially from the start [to auction all allowances as opposed to giving them away for free] … I think all of the factors that the [C]ARB took into account … are real issues for a single state trying to take this on, and it was right for them to address that [by allocating allowances to certain firms free of charge]. (Author's Interview, 12/12/18) In sum, these market-oriented SMOs had very different goals for what these policies would and would not accomplish compared to the justice-oriented groups. A top legislative staffer who was charged with negotiating the final language of AB 32 articulated how he viewed the distinction between how each movement approached the policies: There's a tension in California … between … people who live in communities that are disadvantaged … These are the environmental justice groups. They're principally groups that represent people of color, poor communities. [By contrast] NRDC is a New York and Washington, D.C. corporate environmental group. It's got a Board of Directors, mostly bankers and wealthy people. It has a very different kind of orientation. So does EDF. … This tension exists, and has always existed throughout California law … Are we trying to save the planet in a way that's beneficial to Tesla drivers and to corporate environmental groups like NRDC and EDF? Or are we trying to save the planet for California, and Californians? (Author's Interview, 11/13/18) “Green Business” and Its Policy Preferences We argue that the presence of non-movement, business interests in the market-oriented coalition, alongside SMOs, was a crucial factor in the market-oriented coalition's superior policymaking influence (relative to the justice-oriented coalition, comprising exclusively SMOs). It is therefore useful to describe the policymaking preferences of these non-movement, business interests, sho