At the second and final 2020 presidential debate on Thursday, when asked by President Donald Trump if he would \u201cclose down the oil industry,\u201d former Vice President Joe Biden said that he intends to \u201ctransition away from the oil industry, yes.\u201d Republicans are working furiously to make this supposed admission into a scandal, hoping it will get Biden in hot water with oil-state Dems and swing voters and sow division in the party. The right sees energy as a key wedge issue as the election approaches. <\/p>\n
Trump himself put it in the most dramatic terms:<\/p>\n
After the last debate, Republicans hoped Biden\u2019s refusal to ban fracking would get him in trouble with the climate left. That didn\u2019t go anywhere, and my guess is that this gambit won\u2019t either. So far, a few oil-state Dems have distanced themselves, oil companies have expressed \u201cconcern, not alarm,\u201d and most everyone else seems distracted by a virus that is setting new case records and infecting White House staff.<\/p>\n
However the politics play out in this instance, it\u2019s important to consider the underlying dynamic of these recent energy disputes. It\u2019s an extremely familiar dynamic that finally seems, in fits and starts, to be working in Democrats\u2019 favor.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s begin with a little armchair political science.<\/p>\n
Americans want reform as long as it doesn\u2019t negatively affect them<\/p>\n
Social science suggests that most people, even most politically active people, don\u2019t have particularly well-considered or coherent views on public policy issues. They vote based on identities and social affinities. Their opinions on issues are easily swayed by elite cues or the phrasing of poll questions. <\/p>\n
In my experience, the one rule that reliably governs public issue polling is that the public likes things that sound good and doesn\u2019t like things that sound bad. <\/p>\n
If you poll a health care system that covers everything, with no copays and free choice of doctors, it does well. If you poll tax increases to pay for other people\u2019s health care, it does poorly. <\/p>\n
If you poll cleaner energy or less pollution, it does well. If you poll gasoline prices rising and fossil fuel workers losing jobs, it does poorly. <\/p>\n
When polled on individual progressive policy goals, Americans tend to respond positively. Universal health care and clean energy sound good. When polled on ideological abstractions like \u201ctaxes\u201d and \u201cbig government,\u201d they tend to respond negatively. Giving up money to some distant bureaucracy sounds bad. <\/p>\n
This is why there\u2019s an unending argument over whether America is or isn\u2019t a \u201ccenter-right nation\u201d \u2014 it depends on how you ask America. More or less everyone wants to improve the collective welfare, but not at their own expense. Depending on how they are phrased, these kinds of questions don\u2019t so much uncover preexisting opinions as they guide and shape opinion formation. Trigger thoughts of things getting better, you\u2019ll get good poll results; trigger thoughts of sacrifice, privation, or unfair burdens, you\u2019ll get bad poll results. <\/p>\n
Democratic politics isn\u2019t much different. Reformers pushing for change guide attention to the collective good that will come of it. Reactionaries pushing against change guide attention to the risks and dangers.<\/p>\n
These are not, unfortunately, parallel endeavors. Asking people to imagine an alternative future calls upon their thinking and imagination \u2014 their frontal cortex. Asking people to fear change calls upon something much deeper and older, their brainstem sense that it\u2019s a dangerous world, they\u2019re lucky to have what they have, and any disruption threatens it. The latter, when invoked, tends to drown out the former. That\u2019s why progressive change is so difficult to muster and so easy to reverse.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s the game in a democracy: changes that can improve collective circumstances versus the fear of personal loss.<\/p>\n
Making the clean energy transition seem scary<\/p>\n
This brings us back to Biden and energy. The core Republican approach, which they understand at a gut level even if there is no particular strategic intelligence at work in the Trump era, is to make change seem scary. They need to make Biden\u2019s climate plan seem abrupt, alien, and threatening. That\u2019s why they have resolutely ignored all the actual policies involved in the Green New Deal and instead made it a boogeyman, a repository for every conservative fear. They\u2019re going to take your hamburgers and your SUV!<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Republicans are so delighted to make a fracking ban \u2014 a policy that no president can pass and no Congress would pass \u2014 the center of discussion. And that\u2019s why they are delighted when Biden says he will transition away from oil. These changes sound sudden and disruptive; they draw attention to what will be lost, not to what will take its place. They define a playing field favorable to Republicans. <\/p>\n<\/aside>\n
There\u2019s an element of play-acting to all this. For all the hue and cry about his gaffes, Biden\u2019s climate policies are articulated quite clearly on his website. (No manned outpost on the moon, sadly.) He plans to ramp up clean energy and electrification while ensuring that affected communities, including fossil fuel communities, are taken care of through investments in infrastructure, clean energy projects, education, job transition, and other kinds of assistance. <\/p>\n
Over time, clean energy will come to dominate the electricity sector (where Biden has targeted 100 percent net-zero by 2035) and from there it will expand to the rest of the economy (where Biden has targeted 100 percent net-zero by 2050). By 2035, coal will disappear, and by 2050, the US oil and gas sector will radically shrink. It\u2019s just carbon math.<\/p>\n
Some fossil fuels may survive at the margins to fill in the gaps in large electricity systems, attached to carbon capture and storage systems, or for some industrial applications or plastics. And it may be that some oil and gas companies are successful at pivoting away from their core products to clean energy (ahem, geothermal). <\/p>\n