Who Really Cares About Climate Change?

Tuesday’s election shows that radical climate policy is a loser — even in Berkeley.

Even the most liberal Americans love that blue flame.

The results of yesterday’s election are nothing short of seismic. Polls and pundits uniformly predicted a too-close-to-call contest that would be decided by a handful of votes in a handful of states. Instead, Donald Trump whipped Kamala Harris. He won the popular contest by nearly 5 million votes and thumped her in the Electoral College. As I write this, according to the New York Times, the final EC margin will likely be 312 to 226. Republicans will now control the White House and the Senate, and perhaps the House of Representatives for the next two years.

While this race was about many things, one issue lurked throughout: climate policy. And the results clearly show that the Democratic Party is woefully out of step with mainstream voters on energy and climate policy.

But the national results are only one aspect of the voting public’s repudiation of the Left’s climate policies. On Tuesday, ballot initiatives on taxing or restricting natural gas use — one in Washington state and the other in Berkeley, California — lost decisively.

As I noted in these pages a few days ago, the Biden administration has been imposing restrictions on the use of natural gas in homes and buildings. They are marching to the tune of a phalanx of dark-money NGOs, including Rewiring America, Rocky Mountain Institute, Sierra Club, and others. The NGOs are pushing their agenda despite consumers across the country consistently showing their desire to continue using gas, which, as the Department of Energy’s own numbers have shown, is the cheapest form of residential energy.

In Berkeley, one of the most liberal cities in America, Initiative GG, which would have levied a massive tax on buildings that use natural gas, was rejected by a whopping margin of 69 to 31. Recall that in 2019, Berkeley became the first city in the US to ban new natural gas connections. Dozens of other cities in California and other states soon followed it. As I explained in February, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled twice that Berkeley’s ban and others like it, are illegal under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975. The vote against the gas tax in Berkeley is particularly notable because Harris beat Trump in California by a margin of 57 to 40.

Berkeley, of course, is part of Alameda County, where Harris thrashed Trump by a margin of 72 to 25. Thus, it’s clear that even the most-liberal voters in America want to be able to use the fuels that they like, and that includes seeing that familiar blue flame on their gas stovetop.

In Washington, Initiative 2066 also prevailed. The measure repeals provisions of a state law that was designed to force Puget Sound Energy to speed up its transition away from natural gas. The initiative, which was backed by a host of business groups, prohibits cities and counties from barring or penalizing the use of gas in homes and businesses. It passed by a margin of 51 to 49, or about 60,000 votes. Again, context is essential. A majority of voters in Washington said they want to keep using natural gas. At the same time, they voted for Harris over Trump by a margin of 58 to 39.

Harris tried to distance herself from the extremist climate policies enacted by the Biden Administration. She also backtracked on her statements about banning hydraulic fracturing. Why? She knew she had to carry Pennsylvania, America’s second-largest gas producer.

But she couldn’t distance herself from her history, or the Democratic Party’s platform, released over the summer, which declared “there is nothing more important than addressing the climate crisis.” (The phrase “climate change” appears 16 times in the party’s platform, and the modifier “existential” referencing climate change appears four times.)

Instead of winning Pennsylvania, Harris lost it by two points, and with it, any chance of winning the White House. Yes, Harris was a weak candidate. And other than talking about “joy,” her campaign was remarkably short on details. But this outcome makes sense when viewed through the energy policy lens. Polls have consistently shown that voters care about energy prices, and few are willing to spend more out of concern for climate change.

As noted by Grid Brief, exit polls in Pennsylvania found that “65% of voters supported expanding natural gas production, seeing it as vital to job security and energy independence.” In Michigan — another swing state that Harris had to win — 60% of voters “expressed support for increasing domestic oil drilling. Many saw the push for local energy production as essential to addressing economic stagnation, with high energy costs ranking among voters’ top concerns.” (Emphasis added.)

Last year, a survey by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago found that just 38% of Americans were willing to pay $1 per month to pay for climate change policies and only 21% were will to pay $100 per month. The key passage from the survey deserves to be quoted at length:

Americans are less willing to pay for a carbon fee than they were just a year ago. In fact, nearly two-thirds of Americans are unwilling to pay any amount of money to combat climate change. Those willing to pay a $1 carbon fee decreased by 14 percentage points in two years. Their support for the fee decreases as the impact on their energy bill grows. (Emphasis added.)

Last month, two of my favorite political writers, Roger Pielke Jr. and Ruy Teixeira, published the results of a YouGov survey that is remarkably similar to the University of Chicago’s results. Again, the key finding deserves to be quoted at length:

When asked if they would support just a $1 monthly fee on their electricity bill to fight climate change, only 47% say they would while almost as many (43%) are opposed...When the proposed fee is increased to $20, overall voter support plummets to 26% with 60% opposed. At $40, it is 19% support to 69% opposition; at $75 it is 15% vs. 72%; and at $100 it is 7:1 against (77% to 11%) paying such a fee to combat climate change. (Emphasis added.)

A year ago, Teixeira and John Judis explained in an essay (and a book titled, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?)  that the Democrats “have steadily lost the allegiance of ‘everyday Americans’— the working- and middle-class voters that were at the core of the older New Deal coalition.” And a key reason  for that, they concluded, is the “Democrats’ insistence on eliminating fossil fuels.”

Pundits and political scientists will scrutinize Trump’s victory for years to come as they try to explain why he won so decisively. There are, of course, many reasons. But a key one is that the Democrats lost the allegiance of millions of everyday Americans because they were too willing to prostrate themselves in front of the climate activists who dominate their party and who have promoted ruinously regressive energy policies.

Over the next few months, the Democratic Party will have to come to grips with a bitter loss to a candidate they loathe. Eventually, the party will have to correct course if it wants the support of working-class voters. And that will require correcting course on energy policy.

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