Last week, somewhat overshadowed by the events in Washington, the Democrats took control of the Senate when they won both runoff elections in Georgia. Vice President Harris will now have the deciding vote in a Senate that is an effective 50-50 tie between Republicans and Democrats.
With Democrats holding a small majority in both the House and the Senate until 2022, incoming President Joe Biden has a clearer Senate confirmation path for his nominees as well as a better chance of getting climate actions through Congress.
Biden’s key climate nominees were announced just before Xmas. As a group they are both well-qualified and set several new and significant diversity landmarks. Congressional representative Deb Haaland will become the first Native American to serve as Secretary of the Interior while Michael S Regan, currently the head of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, will be the first African American to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
Biden also tapped several Obama alumni for key climate roles. The most notable is perhaps former EPA head Gina McCarthy, who will fill a newly created role as White House National Climate advisor.
Rounding out the nominees are ex Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm who has been nominated as Secretary of Energy, former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg who will lead the Department of Transport and former Secretary of State John Kerry whose appointment as US Presidential Special Envoy on Climate was announced in late November.
The initial response to the team has been positive from both the climate activist community as well as more mainstream Democrats. Biden and his climate team appear to have passed their first hurdle in good shape but what are their deliverables in the next few years and what are implications for Australia?
Well publicised elements of the Biden climate platform include re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement, pushing for a zero emission electricity sector by 2035 and national net zero emissions by 2050. Beyond simply re-joining Paris one suspects Biden will want Kerry to push for the US to reclaim a leadership role in the global quest for zero carbon. Most observers believe this will create a challenge for Australia whose modest Paris targets have been partially shielded from criticism by the antagonistic US position under Trump. While Prime Minister Morrison was probably happy for the US to absorb the bulk of global climate rapprochement, it will be interesting to see how a climate engaged Biden administration will impact Australian climate politics.
One suspects Morrison and other Liberal leaders understand that key parts of their base, including voters in Warringah, object to Australia being viewed as a climate laggard. If so, they must privately recognise their decarbonisation timetable needs greater precision than “sometime in the second half of the century”. Not all their colleagues, especially in the National Party, share this view and will point to electorates where the economic impact of reduced fossil fuel extraction, the need to reform land use practices and efforts to reduce agricultural emissions will be most strongly felt. Successful politicians need to be adaptable and for Morrison to be successful in a post Trump world he will need to shift his policies in a way that satisfies wealthy liberals without driving regional voters to One Nation.
The ALP will no doubt welcome seeing LNP climate discomfort, but they will face broadly similar issues should they regain power at the next election. The Greens will push them for aggressive targets that will be hard to sell in key regional electorates.
An aggressive US climate rollout could actually provide a much needed dose of reality to the climate discourse in Canberra given our decarbonisation challenges and opportunities have more in common with the US than most other OECD nations. In addition to needing to deal with land use and agriculture emissions we share a historic reliance on coal and coal mining, domestic natural gas extraction, high quality wind and solar resources (and hence possible future hydrogen production), carbon sequestration potential, pumped hydro options and disproportionate political power among regional populations. A credible Biden decarbonisation pathway for both carbon free electricity by 2035 and a carbon free society by 2050 will translate reasonably well into an Australian context and hopefully allow the major parties to admit the inevitability of phasing out domestic coal use, adopting US systems that incentivise storage and provision of backup power, plan for EV’s with greater urgency and invest in the development of new industries that arise from a new energy economy. More detail and less rhetoric would be a welcome change right across the political spectrum including specifics on how impacted communities will be helped.
Overall, this should be good news for climate advocates but it will bring into sharper focus the full breadth of change needed to achieve zero carbon. A more honest and open discussion about decarbonisation will have some inconvenient truths for all players. This of course presupposes Biden delivers a credible and coherent plan – with Republicans in a weakened congressional position for the next two years the biggest obstacle to achieving this will be inter party fights between moderates and progressives. The obvious forum for inter party dissent will be in the Senate where support from moderates Joe Machin (West Virginia) and Krysten Sinema (Arizona) will be needed to pass any legislation.
Leaders in Australia and elsewhere will be watching with interest to see how Biden’s team rises to the challenge and what their pathway to success looks like.
This piece is a first draft of an article that was recently published in The Conversation
(https://theconversation.com/bidens-senate-majority-doesnt-just-super-charge-us-climate-action-it-blazes-a-trail-for-australia-153090)
