Because America is entirely governed by two political parties, passage of legislation usually requires bipartisan support in US Congress. However, the Republican Party is the only major political party in the world that denies the need to tackle climate change. Therefore, for several years any hope of passing climate legislation hinged upon breaking through the near-universal opposition among Republican legislators. A number of groups have focused on doing just that.

In the wake of the 2016 US election results, I contacted these groups to assess their feelings about the prospects of US government action on climate change in the near future. The general sentiment was understandably one of discouraged pessimism, but each group identified glimmers of hope.

Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s success and growth

Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) is one of the leading grassroots climate organizations in America, and has also expanded rapidly internationally. The group has seen explosive growth in recent years, now hosting chapters in 356 of America’s 435 congressional districts (over 80%), with a membership approaching 50,000 strong.

Under the CCL proposal, carbon pollution is taxed at the source, and 100% of the revenue is returned to taxpayers via a regular rebate check. It’s a bipartisan solution – liberals get their desired carbon pollution tax, while conservatives get a free market policy that doesn’t grow the size of government. Moreover, modeling projects that the policy will have a net overall positive effect on the economy.

Citizens’ Climate Lobby has also achieved several significant successes. The group was involved in spearheading the Gibson Resolution, in which 15 Republican members of Congress called for action to tackle the risks posed by climate change. CCL was also the driving force behind the creation of the House Climate Solutions Caucus – a group currently comprised of 10 Republican and 10 Democratic members of Congress exploring bipartisan climate policy solutions. And CCL initiated the California state government’s Resolution urging the federal government to pass a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

According to CCL Executive Director Mark Reynolds, the 2016 election didn’t change group’s strategy. As Reynolds told me, because Democrats are already on board with climate policy:

Our path to legislation has always gone through the Republican Party.

As an organization with a long history of working with Republicans on climate policy, now that the Republican Party controls US government, CCL is now more relevant and important than ever. Reynolds told me that since the election results, traffic to CCL’s website has increased eightfold, and attendance of its weekly introductory calls has spiked from an average of about 20 to 200 last week. The majority of Americas who are unhappy with the election results have become galvanized, which bodes well for grassroots support of climate solutions.

Reynolds also sees an opportunity for Republicans to take control of the climate issue after many liberals rallied against a revenue-neutral carbon tax proposal in the state of Washington. This opens up a window for the Republican Party to take ownership of one of the best policies to tackle climate change. As Donald Trump might put it, a revenue-neutral carbon tax is “a great deal” because it efficiently addresses the problem while boosting the economy, and the rebate protects American wallets from rising energy prices.

Niskanen Center: GOP could replace regulations with carbon tax

The Republican Party has thus far opposed all climate policies in Congress, but the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA must regulate carbon pollution, and it began doing so under President Obama. Some have proposed that the easiest way for the GOP to eliminate those government climate regulations – which party leaders abhor, but most Republican voters support – would be to replace them with free market legislation.

For example the Niskanen Center is a free market think tank that supports this type of policy, and has proposed swapping EPA regulations for a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The group’s president Jerry Taylor wrote a detailed post about the prospects of a carbon tax under the incoming Republican leadership, which is well worth reading. Taylor thinks that Republican leaders are now less likely to propose a climate tax than prior to the election for several reasons.

First, they will likely devote the next several years to delaying, weakening, and/or eliminating the EPA regulations, rather than replacing them. Because of the Supreme Court decision, eliminating the regulations will be difficult, but since Trump will appoint at least one justice to the court, it may not fully survive legal challenges. However, if it does survive, the next president could fully restore the EPA regulations if Congress declines to replace them with legislation. While this offers a glimmer of hope that the GOP could pass a climate bill, it’s doubtful that party leaders will be so forward-thinking.

Second, the election results made it clear that climate denial will not hurt most Republican politicians in elections. Third, while many Republican members of Congress privately accept the reality of climate change and the need to address it, and Niskanen has identified several who would be willing to introduce climate legislation if the opportunity were to present itself, Taylor believes the election results make such a political opportunity less likely.

R Street Institute sees other opportunities

The R Street Institute is a free market think tank that has likewise made the conservative case for a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The group’s president Eli Lehrer believes the chances of carbon tax legislation would have been low regardless of the election outcome. As he told me:

A carbon tax would be a possibility in the context of broad tax reform and if such reform moves forward as it may, I suppose there is some chance it could be part of a package … A carbon tax per se is not highly likely and is not something we plan to push ourselves right now but it is not impossible either.

R Street Energy Policy Director Catrina Rorke elaborated where she sees opportunities in cutting carbon pollution under the incoming government:

We’re focused on streamlining regulatory barriers to entry to electricity markets, an obstacle that plagues emerging and advanced technologies with characteristics quite different from their predecessors. We also think we can make major strides in updating the way the federal regulatory machine works, given that the underlying legislation is outdated and insufficiently flexible ... If politics is the art of the possible, we’re really going to see some interesting things happen -- for governance and for the climate.

Climate future looks dim, but there are glimmers of hope

These groups were generally pessimistic about the prospects of a climate bill coming from the next Congress, but they did spot glimmers of hope, and the future isn’t set in stone. In its 2016 Congressional lobbying effort, CCL reported that Republican members of Congress were 10 times more likely to be receptive to the group’s message than to be hostile, up from a 3-to-1 ratio just two years ago. Many GOP policymakers recognize the threats posed by climate change, at least in private. As Jerry Taylor noted, they just need the political opportunity for climate legislation to present itself.

That political opportunity would require something to change – for Republican climate leadership to be rewarded rather than punished. It’s difficult to envision that change happening in the next few years, but not impossible. Groups like CCL will continue working behind the scenes to help make it happen. In the meantime, the R Street Institute foresees other opportunities to chip away at US carbon pollution levels.

It’s not an encouraging landscape for protecting future generations from a climate catastrophe, but at least there’s hope. And if the GOP crushes that hope over the next four years, it seems likely that the Democratic Party will have a good chance to restore it in 2020.

