An All-of-the-Above Approach to Climate Policy

• Author: Kelly Sims Gallagher
• Position: Professor and director of the Climate Policy Lab at The Fletcher School, Tufts University
• Pages: 57-57

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 | 57

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, September/October 2021.

Copyright © 2021, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

THE DEBATE

An All-of-the-

Above Approach

to Climate Policy

By Kelly Sims Gallagher

Tempting as it is to seek a

“silver bullet” in climate

policy, it doesn’t exist.

Policymakers must utilize

a mix of regulatory, scal, market-

based, investment, information

and disclosure, education, and in-

novation policies to achieve a more

globally competitive, low-carbon,

resilient economy by mid-century.

Compared with other countries,

the United States has an incoher-

ent, often contradictory approach to

climate policy, and it shows. While

U.S. emissions peaked in 2007,

they remain 2 percent above 1990

levels. By comparison, the United

Kingdom plans to achieve a 78 per-

cent reduction below 1990 levels by

2035.

It’s important to set forth some

principles for American climate

policymaking. First, American poli-

cies must be predictable and durable

so that private rms and individuals

can make informed decisions about

their investments. is will require

bipartisanship so that policies don’t

sharply zigzag depending on which

political party is in oce. Ideally,

new climate legislation will be devel-

oped and passed with Republican,

independent, and Democratic sup-

port because we must stop vacillat-

ing if we are to take advantage of the

genuine economic opportunity in a

low-carbon transition. e United

States must be a real contender in

the race for low-carbon markets

around the world.

e economic transition must

also be taken seriously. For workers

who rely on carbon-intensive indus-

tries, vague assurances of clean en-

ergy jobs are hardly reassuring. It is

not so simple for a parent to pick up

and move to another town or state

because a new job happens to be

there. Moreover, many local towns,

counties, and even states rely heavily

on tax revenue from certain types of

industry. If the local school or hos-

pital depends on royalties to provide

its services, then new sources of rev-

enue must be found. Planning for

the transition must thus begin now,

town by town, city by city, county

by county, and state by state. A re-

cent National Academy of Sciences

study on accelerating decarboniza-

tion called for the establishment of

a new National Transition Corpora-

tion together with a National Transi-

tion Taskforce, regional planning

oces, and a net-zero transition of-

ce in every state capital.

is transition must be genu-

inely fair and requires a new social

compact. Fairness needs to be con-

sidered, among other dimensions, in

terms of race, income, age, gender,

and geography. Certain communi-

ties are much more vulnerable to

climate change itself and others are

vulnerable to the economic transi-

tion to a low-carbon economy. Oth-

ers are fortunate to live in less risky

places or to already be employed in

a clean, low-carbon industry. ose

more fortunate must recognize that

they have a responsibility to help

those at risk.

We need to be disciplined in our

approach to climate policy. We need

to set goals, performance metrics,

and budgets and stick to them. Net

zero by 2050 means we have 29

years to get from the 5,769 million

metric tons in 2019 to no net emis-

sions. We need a carbon budget and

we need to hold ourselves account-

able to it, just as most American

families live within their own house-

hold nancial budgets. An indepen-

dent body should be established to

track progress against our goals and

recommend revisions to policy as

needed. Congress needs to appropri-

ate sucient nancial resources to

achieve our goals.

Let’s invest wisely and eciently.

Every public dollar invested and

new policy announced should get

the most bang for the buck in terms

of economic gain, climate mitiga-

tion, and resiliency. Let’s stop siting

new infrastructure in ood-prone

areas. Let’s rebuild houses, schools,

and hospitals to be energy ecient

and low carbon. Integrating distrib-

uted renewables and battery storage

cannot only help reduce emissions

but can provide power after strong

hurricanes when the grid is down.

We need an American infrastructure

or development bank so that we can

ensure that nancing is available for

all communities to invest in low-

carbon, resilient infrastructure.

Finally, we must recognize that

climate policy is really economic,

labor, and social policy. e U.S.

competitive position in low-carbon

technologies and industries has

eroded, and American rms and

workers are not economically ben-

eting as they should from the

global energy transition. China is

doing a better job than the United

States in domestically deploying and

exporting renewable energy technol-

ogy, building new nuclear capacity,

and launching a thriving electric car

industry.

America must invest in innova-

tion and construct a market-based

industrial policy that supports U.S.

rms and labor while holding them

accountable for performance. Public

and private investments in research,

development, and demonstration

must be greatly increased, commen-

surate with the scale of the challenge

of climate mitigation and resilience.

Just as important is investment in

our human capital so that we have

the people to invent the new tech-

nologies, the entrepreneurs who can

bring the ideas to reality, the work-

force that can manufacture advanced

technologies, and the government

ocials who can devise and execute

smart policy.

Kelly Sims Gallagher is professor and direc-

tor of the Climate Policy Lab at The Fletcher

School, Tufts University.