Creating a New Political Atmosphere in North Carolina and Beyond

 By Avram Friedman, Executive Director of the Canary Coalition

The environmental community in North Carolina has caged itself in, and, through its own current system of political strategies has limited its ability to effect meaningful progressive change. The flaw revolves around the emphasis on lobbying and the squandering of grassroots resources by attempting to influence legislators directly, purely through informational means and personal one-on-one contact, without engaging the public to any large degree.

Without public involvement, environmental lobbyists are viewed by most legislators as weak, inconsequential players. Legislators have bigger things to worry about than pleasing this thought-provoking but powerless small group.  Legislators have to think about meeting the needs of the interests who’s PACs donate large sums of money to their campaign funds. There will be real political consequences to pay if they don’t serve these interests. But, there won’t be any political consequences to pay if they ignore the proposals of environmental lobbyists. That is, unless the public gets involved.

Without public involvement, one progressive environmental proposal after the next goes through the process of achieving meaninglessness through compromise after compromise, until legislators sense the lack of confidence within the environmental lobby and the proposal is sent off to oblivion in a study committee or dropped completely. The environmental community is wasting valuable time and limited resources by operating under the notion that real reform can be achieved merely by paying lobbyists to act as political insiders, without real political clout to back them up. Compromised standards, timelines and principles have become the self-defeating hallmarks of “inside” environmental reformers, perceived as acts of weak desperation by those who are influenced only by money or raw political power.

This set of circumstances points clearly to a new direction for the environmental community. We have been playing to the wrong audience and this needs to change. Rather than attempting, uselessly, with no political backbone, to influence lawmakers and policy-makers, we need to be speaking directly to the public. We need to be pouring our resources into building public involvement. We need to excite the public with our proposals. And we have to learn to understand that the public is not only on our side, but, in many cases ahead of the environmental community in its feeling of urgency, particularly on air quality and climate change issues. The potential has never been greater for a powerful enviro-socio-political movement in a positive direction. It just needs to be galvanized and organized. The grassroots environmental community has the ability to make this happen, but the politics of weak compromise will have to be cast aside and replaced with the politics of dynamic, meaningful proposals that will inspire public involvement.

According to a growing consensus in the scientific community, we have perhaps a twenty-year window of opportunity to reverse the effect of human activity on the process that is causing climate change before reaching the “tipping point.”  If our proposals don’t reflect this urgency our work is meaningless.  We can no longer afford to cater to what some perceive as the current set of limiting politic realities.  Our ambitions have to reach beyond this box into the realm of creating a new political reality that will accommodate the measures that are needed if we intend to take the responsibility of leaving a livable world for our children and future generations. This can only be achieved through massive public involvement and it’s the responsibility of the environmental community to mobilize that politically dynamic force.

A strong energy program needs to be developed and proposed by the environmental community, one that meets the actual criteria dictated by scientifically derived information, including energy reduction goals that are meaningful and deep enough to have an effect of a sizable enough scale that it will dramatically reduce the production of greenhouse gases and polluting emissions.  We need to be thinking of sweeping changes on a scale similar to the adjustments people make when a nation goes to war or government bureaucracies adopt in making plans for a manned mission to the moon.  The message sent by this proposal will have to excite the public, as it broadcasts the health, economic and environmental benefits it promises: Lower energy bills, high-paying, permanent jobs created, reduction in air quality related illnesses and other environmental consequences.

Once a higher level of public involvement is achieved and demonstrated, our political leaders will be forced to enter into a new relationship with the environmental community, one in which favor of its lobbyists is sought after and politically essential.  But, the environmental lobby will have to learn to withhold that favor until definitive support for the proposal is received without compromise. Political favor will be withheld from those who refuse to sign-on as the issue is brought directly back to the public and the press. Tremendous interest in this proposal will be generated because it has profound implications for the economy, public health and the environment. There will be opposition, but this will only help in elevating the profile of the public debate, exposing more and more people to the facts and figures that so profoundly affect their lives and the lives of their children. In this way will the political atmosphere be transformed around energy issues and ultimately around all environmental issues.

The elements in the energy proposal should include among other things:

1) A reversal of electric utility rate-paying structures shall be implemented. 

Electricity cannot continue to be bought and sold, subject to the same market dynamics as common commodities, that is, the more purchased, the less expensive per unit. Instead, there will be an economic incentive promoting conservation built into the rate-paying structure. Likewise there will be an economic penalty for excessive energy use built into the rate-paying structure. More per capita energy use will result in a higher price per kilowatt.

2) An excise tax shall be levied against the purchase of non-efficient lightbulbs, appliances and industrial equipment 

Revenues collected from this tax will be used to help fund the State Energy Office, NC Green Power projects and pollution regulatory enforcement programs.

3) Net-metering will be facilitated, accompanied by a strong government promotional campaign encouraging residential energy production and interconnection with the existing electrical grid.

4) A state study commission will be established to determine the least-cost method of meeting future public utility-produced energy demand, including in the assessment the cost of health and environmental impact of all technologies and methods used. This commission will also include an assessment of full-fuel cycles and decommissioning costs. Costs of efficiency and conservation programs coupled with wind, solar and biomass electrical production will be weighed and compared to total costs of coal, nuclear and natural gas.  No licenses will be granted for new utility-owned electrical power production facilities except as consistent with the findings of this commission’s least-cost study.

These measures will result in real and dramatic energy reductions, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, reductions in air and water pollution.  This type of bold proposal will be recognized for its tangibility in confronting physical realities in a straightforward, non-euphemistic manner.  It will excite the dormant base rank and file within the environmental community.  It will inspire public involvement. It will force legislators to view energy issues through a different prism. It will transform the political atmosphere.