Biden assumed the presidency as a full devotee of the view that ongoing climate change is a major consequence of people’s long-escalating use of fossil fuels, and continuation of that change will have severe effects on the planet. The standard policy solution—according to the “climate science consensus”—is presumed to be straightforward: Return human greenhouse gas emissions close to zero (or some workable level)—and right soon—through federal regulatory, subsidy, and tax policies, and spread those policies globally to curb other nations’ emissions. This axiom validated Biden’s focused efforts to replace combustion with electric engines, promote wind and solar electricity generation over gas-fired generation, and uphold international agreements on emissions.
But at every turn in the policy debate, climate activists have either remained silent on the costs of their preferred policies or attested that those costs would be trivial compared to the horrors of “climate Armageddon.” If their proposed policy course is not achieved by the mid-2030s, they’ve said, humans will face “runaway greenhouse effects” under which global warming will dissolve the Earth’s ice cover, exposing more heat-absorbing water that will increase moisture in the global atmosphere. That, in turn, will restrict sun-generated surface heat from escaping into space, accelerating global warming and creating a self-perpetuating cycle.
According to many climate scientists, most abnormal climate events in recent years—from droughts to hurricanes—affirm the deadly link between human emissions and climate change. Their alarming scenario justifies the cost—indeed, any cost—of combating change, they say. Their main perceived policy obstacles are (mainly right-wing) “climate deniers” and uninformed Americans who do not share the alarm of—or outright reject—the scientists’ climate consensus.
The voters speak / After assuming office, Biden aggressively implemented an agenda that sought a sudden curb in fossil fuel use both in the world’s immediate and distant future. Then came a spike in gas prices and inflation that topped 9 percent in mid-2022.
As the 2024 presidential campaign got underway, Donald Trump made higher prices—including energy prices—a central issue. He gradually moved ahead of Biden in the polls. The move likely had many causes, but surely one was inflation. When Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, she didn’t reject the many Biden policies that voters associated with higher prices. Her subsequent defeat and the losses experienced by Capitol Hill Democrats should disabuse climate activists of the belief that the public is willing to bear heavy costs to combat climate change.
Understandably, climate activists, focused on atmospheric variables, overlooked (if not denied) the political effects of their policy preferences. In making their case for controls, they often intimated there would be zero cost. Many voters, however, were not persuaded.
Harris seemed to welcome the climate mantel partially on the grounds that development of wind and solar energy was an existential necessity for the planet. She failed to see the links between energy policy, the cost of living, and voter perceptions. Instead, she focused on Trump’s threat to democracy, even as he activated democratic forces against climate policy—and maybe pushed activists’ dreamed-for climate recovery far beyond the mid-2030s.
Road ahead / Climate activists should draw an important lesson from Trump’s 2024 triumph: The best of environmental and humanitarian policy intentions can be self-defeating if climate policies are pursued in short order and without regard to their economic consequences on voters. Cost and price effects shift political allegiances, resulting in the opposite policy and environmental outcomes than what these activists desire.
They should now understand something they have largely ignored: Incentives matter. Prices matter. Costs are ever present. Wind and solar energy are not, and cannot be, the proverbial “free (policy) lunch” that many activists and some policymakers claim. In essence, their policy efforts cause emissions when we factor in the off-putting political effects on price-burdened voters.
A policy goal of “zero emissions” makes no economic or climate science sense. It’s a delusion. Effective environmentalists first need to win elections, which they will never do by only citing climate science findings. Then they need to proffer policies that voters will accept. Real people the world over, with a preference for the “good life,” make policy and elect leaders. These people likely do not want an overheated planet, but they also want their standard of living to rise, not fall.
Given Trump’s reversal of Biden’s climate policies, climate activists’ ambitions are stymied for now. But that can change over the longer term if the activists realize their biggest obstacle is not Trump, but their own rigid policy ambitions.
