Op-Ed: Democrats’ Climate Realism Isn’t Realistic
By Joey Wolongevicz
It’s always the same old story with Democrats and climate change.
When killing climate policy, they usually invoke issues of high cost, deficit concerns, or economic viability. As a climate activist myself, we’re always presented with the same tight-lipped criticisms of our solutions, masked in a cloak of pragmatic “climate realism”.
“We just think that the 2050 target is more realistic,” chided Representative Frank Pallone, chairman of the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce. He made this statement in 2019, while decrying the Green New Deal’s 2030 emissions target.
A year later, in 2020, House Republicans released their version of “realistic” climate legislation. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy championed the bill as a realistic alternative to the Green New Deal, just like Pallone.
Regardless of their “realistic” claims, both plans fizzled out, never gaining a vote in the Senate or a signature from the President. While bolder plans attract public support, it seems quietly “realistic” plans die rather unceremoniously.
It’s endlessly frustrating. Time and time again, we see bold, transformative plans like the Green New Deal chained and weakened by nebulous definitions of realism.
But what does “realistic” even mean?
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) isn’t releasing their climate reports as mere suggestions for countries to weaken and mold to fit their economic preferences. They are mandates. They are calls to action. They are prophecies of a world under water, a world ravaged by fire and ice; an unlivable planet.
The truth is, “realistic” means nothing to the climate crisis.
What is realism in a world where we’ll have to rethink everything to survive? What is realism in a world where real isn’t working? To ask if something is “realistic” is to compare it to the status quo that is currently hurtling our world towards catastrophe.
For years, climate policy has stagnated or died in the halls of Congress, struggling under the weight of this imaginary realism. Politicians wage meaningless debates while their constituencies are increasingly incinerated by wildfires, inundated with floods, and destroyed by extreme storms.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to take the Green New Deal seriously in 2019 and last year in 2021 apocalyptic orange skies darkened her district in a summer razed by wildfires.
In 2022 we now have “Manchinema”, a two-Senator blockade consisting of infamous coal baron Joe Manchin and corporate darling Kyrsten Sinema. Not only are these two skilled in inflicting national headaches, but also in killing important policy like the climate provisions in President Biden’s Build Back Better Act.
Manchinema gleefully dashes some of our last chances at mitigating climate disaster while West Virginia stares down the barrel of a future underwater and Phoenix, Arizona racks up the death toll in a city where hundreds continue to die from extreme heat.
Each of these politicians, all Democrats, all supposed supporters of climate legislation, have time and time again refused to support meaningful climate policy because of their views that bold policy is somehow unrealistic.
“Realism” is nothing more than another climate denier talking point; a strategy to mire climate talks in useless discourse, to slow things down while fossil fuel cronies deconstruct the movement from the inside out.
So, what do we need instead of this restrictive, narrow realism?
We need radical imagination. We need people to think outside the box, and then think outside of that box.
What we need now isn’t to stifle bold thinking with calls for “realism”, but to encourage new ideas, creative strategies for tackling the world’s greatest existential threat.
We need leaders like Michelle Wu, Boston’s recently elected first female mayor who, as her first official act, divested $65 million in Boston city funds from fossil fuels.
We need policies like Senator Ed Markey’s and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Civilian Climate Corps, a transformative bill built in the image of the New Deal to transition our economy away from fossil fuels and employ millions of Americans.
Do you think Mayor Wu would have been able to divest Boston if she had Joe Manchin on her city council? Would Ed Markey have crafted the Civilian Climate Corps if Speaker Pelosi was his policy advisor?
Democrats continue to bunt with climate policy because they’ve been convinced by people like Manchin and Pelosi that they can’t hit a home run.
Democrats, leave your climate realism at home. Better yet, throw it in the trash. Because now isn’t the time to talk about what is or isn’t “realistic”.
Now is the time to move beyond a status quo established by those who profit off of our burning planet. Now is the time for Democrats to shrug off the restrictions of “realism”, legislate boldly, and get the job done while we still can.
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Joey Wolongevicz is a climate activist and college student from Salem, Massachusetts.
Edited by Delia Cullity