Domestic Politics and Greenhouse Gas Emission Control

Abstract

Did the politics of greenhouse gas emissions play any role in the historic elections of 2008? And, most importantly, will the election of the Democrat Barack Obama to the White House make any difference for the US policy on climate change? Although environmental issues were not central in the voting calculations of the average American last November, there are fundamental differences between Democrats and Republicans on the environment - particularly on climate change - and it does matter at this crucial juncture that Democrats will be in control at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.We start with a few observations that highlight the differences between the two parties in this policy area. Then we move on to a brief assessment of the Bush record, followed by a discussion of the place of the climate change issue in the 2008 presidential election. We conclude that, after several years during which most of the initiatives in this area came from state and provincial governments in the United States and Canada, the election of a Democratic administration that is seriously committed to greenhouse gas emission control represents a unique opportunity to make concrete progress in this area.A PARTISAN ENVIRONMENTDespite a general rise in the awareness of climate change, a number of indicators reveal deep partisan and geographical cleavages on the issue in the American public, both in terms of perceptions of the problem and of policy preferences. For example, a March 2008 Gallup poll showed a 31 percentage point gap in the proportion of Republicans (42 percent) and Democrats (73 percent) who believe that human activities have had a more important impact than natural changes on the earth's temperature over the last century.1 Policy preferences also differ widely. If 68 percent of Democrats think not enough regulation is in place to protect the environment, only 36 percent of Republicans are ofthat opinion (10 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of Republicans think there is too much regulation).2 Of course, these differences reflect the general attitudes of the two parties' supporters on government intervention, but the sources ofthe differences may be deeper.A simple look at the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and partisan voting patterns yields interesting insights on the politics of climate change. Across states in the 2008 presidential election, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per capita were strongly correlated (r = 0.65) with the share ofthe popular vote for Republican candidate John McCain.3 This is not surprising, insofar as those most at risk of incurring high adjustment costs if stringent regulations were enacted (big emitters) tend to support candidates who favour less ambitious reduction targets and programs; the same would certainly be true in Canada. Still, the strength of association between the two variables is striking and suggests deep structural roots beneath the Republicans' reluctance to endorse policies to limit or roll back greenhouse gas emissions.The Clinton years saw relatively vigorous climate-change action at the federal level, but the senate's opposition to Kyoto, exemplified by the landmark 95-0 vote on the Byrd-Hagel resolution, ensured that even with Al Gore's signature, the treaty would never have been ratified or implemented by the United States.4 Two months after George W. Bush took the oath of office, he unequivocally rejected Kyoto as fatally flawed and unrealistic. 5 While the subsequent removal of the United States' signature from the accord did not, in itself, entail a substantive realignment of the country's environmental policies, it signalled a sea change in the White House's attitude toward the issue.THE BUSH YEARS: SKEPTICISM, TIMID ACTION, AND BUCK PASSINGDuring its two mandates, the Bush administration demonstrated skepticism toward the emerging consensus around the anthropologic origins of global warming, exhibited a marked reluctance to enact national policies aimed at curbing emissions, and adopted a confrontational stance vis-a-vis some of the states' efforts to enact greenhouse gas control policies at the subnational level. …