Paul Bubbosh & Joel Hicks
To make climate change a reality at the local level, George Mason University will introduce a Virginia-based climate action development and outreach program. This program is the Arlington Fellows Program on Energy and Climate Policy. The program takes a cohort of undergraduate students through three courses: (1) U.S. Energy and Climate Policy, (2) Energy and Climate Law, and (3) Energy Community Engagement. The program also places students in an internship with local governments to develop a climate action plan. The program offers students a full 15-credit semester for the three classes plus the internship.
Attending a climate rally is a good thing. Buying an electric vehicle, even better. But real climate action requires working to convince a key constituency–local governments in rural areas–to take climate action, such as mitigating and adapting to climate change. Without bringing this constituency into the fold of climate action, our country will likely face an uncertain future in addressing and reducing the impacts of climate change. Research shows that while urban emissions can be cut 90% by 2050 through existing technologies and policy options, local municipal governments can achieve only 28% of that potential without additional collaboration and assistance.
One possible reason rural governments are reluctant to engage in climate change action is the stigma of joining an effort perceived as a partisan issue. We need to better understand and address the reasons for this perception because the road to solving our climate crisis must include rural America for several reasons. One reason is that we need climate action and engagement on a national level, and not a blue state versus red state split. Another reason is that we want rural communities to benefit from climate action, and not just urban communities.
For many rural representatives there are several negative connotations associated with climate change. The purpose of this article is not to try to counter these perceptions, but to understand why we are in this situation and how we can best proceed forward. First, and most importantly, we need to insert into the conversation the following benefits of addressing climate change: reduced energy costs, more reliable electric and transmission grids, more resilient communities, improved health, reduced risk of death from heat and flooding, and energy security. Many of us will agree that these are real benefits that accrue to all Americans, yet the resistance from rural elected leaders to adopt climate action persists. Why?
One reason is that there may be some separation between the needs of constituents and the needs of special interest groups. Special interest groups drive ideology, across all political persuasions, towards a particular objective. We view this as a top-down model that may not consider the actual needs of constituents. To better represent constituents, we propose a bottom-up model that relies on a grassroots effort at engaging with and facilitating a conversation about the needs and values of rural Americans. Our hope is that once these benefits are demonstrated, local support for climate action will begin to flow upwards to elected leaders. The bogeyman of climate change is de-bogeyed.
Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil once said, “all politics is local.” We would modify that by saying all politics is eventually local. This is important because a grassroots effort takes time. This is not a quick fix policy. An instructive lesson is the 2008 presidential race between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Leading up to this election, major environmental groups hatched a plan to recruit conservatives to support climate change efforts and break the climate change label as a liberal-only cause. Environmentalists wanted to neutralize the politics of climate change by convincing evangelical groups to support the effort. With evangelicals on board, the environmentalists believed they could turn the tide towards broader conservative support.
There is a post-election autopsy of this approach, which was published by Lydia Bean and Steven Teles in 2015, as part of a New American series called “New Models of Policy Change.” In Bean and Teles’ reading, the environmental groups failed to ‘broaden the tent’ of climate change to include conservative voters because they focused narrowly on recruiting a small number of progressive religious influencers to support their plan. The environmentalists failed to realize that for topics with deep entanglement in conservative orthodoxy, such as climate change, any shift in policy risks the phenomena of “coalition etiquette,” whereby all conservative groups rally around their brethren to combat change. Thus, we witnessed conservative religious groups coming to the defense of Big Oil. The key lesson is that climate change advocates need to build a grassroots campaign of conservative followers to support the influencers, who were essentially ostracized without this lifeline.
A second reason is because smaller municipalities, of any ideological persuasion, often lack the human resources to manage even day-to-day operational challenges within their communities. Onboarding major planning efforts, such as an energy transition or climate resiliency, quickly get swept under the “not my priority today” rug of local municipal leaders’ task lists. Large urban areas can attract the most talented professionals, who excel at long range planning, by offering robust salaries. Most rural communities can only budget for the most essential governmental functions. Mason, through the Arlington Fellows Program program, looks to help close that resource gap within communities.
This brings us back to Virginia and climate action. At Mason, we will embark upon an effort to engage with rural communities in climate action. We will want to talk about energy savings, resiliency, and public health and safety. We will want to serve as an objective facilitator in a conversation about the needs of the community in terms of energy burden and extreme weather events. We will want to serve as an honest broker about the costs and benefits. Our role is to engage and assist. Eventually, we will want our efforts to make those in leadership positions aware of the benefits to their constituents. In a small, incremental way, we want to begin to change the conversation.
If this appeals to you, the Arlington Fellows—Energy and Climate Policy Fellowship is an excellent opportunity to learn the tools of working with rural communities. The program features three courses on policy, law, and community engagement. The tools you learn in the classroom will be translated into work with actual rural Virginia municipalities. We hope you will join us.
Paul Bubbosh and Joel Hicks are the Directors of the Local Climate Action Planning Initiative within Mason’s Schar School of Government and Policy and the Center for Energy Science and Policy.