First, the bipartisan dynamics of a carbon tax have frayed. Today, two members of Congress—Representative Ted Deutch and Representative Francis Rooney, a Democrat and Republican, both from Florida—relaunched the Climate Solutions Caucus with roughly 60 members.* The caucus, first founded in 2016 to support a revenue-neutral carbon tax, once required equal membership among Republicans and Democrats: No Democrat could join without bringing along a Republican. But that iteration of the caucus was creamed in the 2018 midterm elections, when it lost roughly 20 of its Republican members, stranding 20 Democrats. Now the caucus will retain those Democrats, putting its overall membership out of partisan balance, but it will insist that new Democrats find an accompanying Republican before they can join.

Read: The Republican carbon tax is Republican, say Republicans

Second, Republicans are fighting over whether they can support any kind of climate policy at all. Earlier this month, the Republican pollster Frank Luntz warned members of his party in a memo that younger voters were turned off by the GOP’s climate stance. He recommended that members support the revenue-neutral carbon-tax proposal published by the Climate Leadership Council, a nonpartisan advocacy group backed by hundreds of economists, some environmental nonprofits, and oil companies. He cited his own favorable polling of the proposal to make his case.

But the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist also sent a letter to congressional Republicans last week, joining his Americans for Tax Reform organization with 75 other conservative groups to argue against any carbon tax in any form. Norquist’s coalition includes both climate-change deniers and representatives of core Republican advocacy groups.

Meanwhile, Democratic interest in a carbon-tax scheme has also faded. The party’s young progressive leaders have become more interested in an investment-involved Green New Deal package. Only one Democratic presidential candidate, John Delaney, has included a carbon tax in his climate proposal, while others—including Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden—have endorsed investment plans.

And finally, a new poll finds that a massive investment plan may be more popular—and less controversial—than a carbon tax. About 59 percent of Americans support a Green New Deal–style package of climate investment and regulation, according to a June poll from YouGov and Data for Progress, a left-leaning think tank. About 22 percent of Americans oppose such a plan.

Only 50 percent of respondents supported a tax on carbon pollution, while 30 percent said they somewhat or strongly opposed it.

“I think the centrist establishment, the Chuck Schumers of the world, their concern is that the Green New Deal is unpopular,” Sean McElwee, the founder of Data for Progress, told me. “But actually, no, the strategy that centrist, Third Way–style think tanks want us to do is unpopular.”