As Republicans prepare to debate in Milwaukee, matters of the environment are top of mind for many young voters, including conservatives watching the field shape up. Stephen Perkins of the American Conservation Coalition joins Jim to explain how the group is working on the ground in Milwaukee to engage the candidates as they work to win over a new generation of voters.
Growing up in the Texas suburbs, almost every errand was at least a 30-minute commitment.
You’d have to get in your car, drive down a six-lane road, park in a lot double the size of the business, and then repeat the process to drive home. America’s bias toward car-dependent communities has made our people – and our climate – worse off.
I recently had the opportunity to tour Culdesac, a new development outside of Phoenix hoping to change this dynamic. The group is turning a 17-acre plot of land in Tempe into a dense, walkable, mixed-use community. When completed, it will be the first car-free community built from scratch in the United States.
The concept of a walkable city isn’t new. All cities built before the invention of the car were walkable by design. When you visit historic cities in the U.S., you find narrower roads and dense neighborhoods that encourage maximum convenience. But as our dependence on personal vehicles increased, roads got wider, cities started to spread out, and the concept of walking a few blocks to run an errand died for the majority of Americans.
Car-dependence is a systemic issue across the country. A clear example of this are the mandatory minimum parking requirements many local governments impose. In some cities, like my hometown of Houston, it means requiring a bar to build one parking space for every 71 square feet of bar space. These arbitrary requirements have also led to eyesores in our downtowns: dozens of parking surfaces that are rarely used to capacity, valuable space that could otherwise be used for housing or commercial use.
The demand for walkable communities among Americans is high, but supply remains low. According to a study by the National Association of Realtors, 52% of people want to live in more convenient, walkable neighborhoods, and those who do report an overall higher satisfaction with their quality of life. Yet, only about 8% of Americans live in neighborhoods with a walk score higher than 70%.
This discrepancy between high demand but low supply is due, in large part, to the regulatory and legal barriers that bar these communities from being built across the country.
The big question for me while touring the Culdesac development was, why Phoenix? It’s a metropolitan area infamous for its sprawl, so it would seem to be an unlikely place for a dense community like this.
But as the Culdesac team told us, their concept was exactly what the nearby city of Tempe wanted, so they were permitted in under a year. If they were to try this type of development in California, they said, it could take up to a decade just for the permit.
As America’s housing crisis grows, it is unconscionable that cities – especially those governed by progressives supposedly keen on affordable housing – are allowing NIMBY pressures to effectively outlaw these types of communities.
People clearly benefit when they live in walkable neighborhoods, but the environment stands to benefit as well. The most significant impact is a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions due to fewer personal vehicle trips and increased energy efficiency. Everything from the density and special building materials to the shaded plazas and landscaped pathways help reduce overall temperatures and, as a result, air conditioning usage.
Compared to the urban heat island effect cities like Phoenix experience, you end up with a more enjoyable place to live. There is also a litany of economic and other long-term benefits of denser communities: maintenance costs are lower, public health is higher, child development is better supported, and social well-being increases. Building dense neighborhoods won’t result in a utopia, but they do stand to make our communities stronger.
Walkable cities are not for everyone. As people age and start families, they often want their own, larger spaces. But for many Americans who want to be close to urban amenities and connected to a community, this concept deserves a chance. As with any new concept, there will be kinks to work out like security, long-term affordability, and neighborhood politics, but the fact we are starting to see a rise in people-centered urbanism provides a great opportunity for the United States and our climate goals.
Building better cities improves the quality of life for our people, as well as the quality of our local environments. The cross-partisan appeal of these values has great potential to bridge divides and help Americans work together on common goals.
America has always been a nation of builders. From our great global cities to ambitious feats of engineering, our history is deeply rooted in pushing the envelope and blazing a trail into the future. We have a real opportunity to once again lead the world by building better communities that inspire, enrich, and support people. It’s time to legalize walkable cities.
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The Biden administration last month paused all new liquefied natural gas export projects. This move was hailed as a win for environmentalists; not only is that a lie, but it’s also the latest example of the Biden administration attempting to pull a fast one on voters.
When you dig into the details, you’ll find that President Joe Biden’s LNG pause is only in effect until Nov. 5, which happens to be Election Day. After the election, operations will likely resume as usual. The move is purely political, ensuring that his campaign is in the good graces of voters — specifically young ones who care about climate change.
For nearly four years, progressive climate groups have demanded the Biden administration end American dependence on fossil fuels. Now, with 10 months until the presidential election, his administration has shamelessly attempted to pacify these groups through a temporary pause.
The Biden administration isn’t acting in good faith; instead, it is pulling the wool over young voters’ eyes. The reality is that exporting American natural gas has a number of environmental and national security benefits. Not only does America produce natural gas more cleanly than many other countries, but when the alternative for European countries is to rely on an aggressor such as Russia, the choice is clear. Environmentalists who want to feel good without doing good are shortsighted.
Biden’s move on LNG exports follows the same plotline as his empty promises on student debt. What was a key component of his 2020 campaign ended up resulting in no tangible action for countless young people who voted for him because of that promise. These diversions only serve to appease young voters long enough for electoral — not policy — results.
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As the American Conservation Coalition’s Vice President of Grassroots Strategy, Stephen Perkins manages the organization’s grassroots programming, strategy, and growth, while empowering the field team, staff, and local activists to grow as leaders in the environmental movement.
Following Winter Storm Uri, which left more than two out of three Texans without power at some point, the state’s leadership has been under pressure to strengthen the power grid. That pressure has grown with every subsequent winter freeze or summer heat wave as Texans are reminded of the fragility of our grid.
After two years of review from state officials and out-of-state consultants, the Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas now has a proposal before the state legislature to introduce a Performance Credit Mechanism (PCM), a system that would radically overhaul how our energy market functions, institute unprecedented government control, and leave consumers paying more to heat and cool their homes.
The PCM works by awarding credit to power plants that are available to produce power during strains on the grid, and then requiring electricity providers to buy those credits. The challenge, however, is there’s no guarantee the electricity that was paid for in advance will actually be available when needed.
If this is supposed to be an energy insurance program, it’s a terrible one.
One thing is clear: the PCM will raise energy costs at a time when 45% of Texans are struggling to pay their energy bills. It’s estimated to cost consumers about $5.7 billion annually, and as ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said, “in an energy market, all costs flow down to consumers… Generators would pass that cost down to consumers who pay for the energy.”
The facts behind the February 2021 and December 2022 outages have been intentionally misrepresented by those seeking to discredit renewables. As Matt Welch and Josiah Neeley recently wrote, “every single credible after-action report… concluded that the freezing of mostly thermal power plants and the natural gas system were to blame for the vast majority of the power failures.” In other words, the favorite talking point of state leaders that renewables were to blame is false. As for the Christmas Eve 2022 outages, they were caused by damaged power lines – not a failure of the grid.
The discrepancy between fact and fiction is important because the PCM would strictly benefit traditional energy sources like gas and coal; renewable energy is not eligible for these credits. This isn’t a mistake. The supporters of this system are seeking to create a market that favors the very energy sources that caused our blackouts in the first place.
Texas doesn’t need a top-down, Soviet-style takeover of our energy market. That sort of control should be reserved for states like California, which also picks winners and losers in favor of renewables by mandating 100 percent renewables by 2045. The legislature should instead spend their time and funding on strengthening and weatherizing our energy infrastructure. Our grid needs repair, but the PCM proposal is like buying a brand new car because your current car needs new tires.
As a conservative, I believe in economic freedom, competition, and American innovation. Despite what some Republican leaders are saying, the reforms before the Texas Legislature stand directly against those values. It would mean top-down control, with the government picking winners (power plant operators and traditional energy producers) and losers (renewable energy). Such an overhaul would ultimately undermine the competitive environment and the all-of-the-above energy approach that makes Texas so unique and attractive to millions.
The debate over how to fix Texas’ energy issues has been far from sober. Misinformation has dominated the discussion, renewable energy sources have been unfairly demonized, and the effect on consumers has been ignored. Supporters of the PCM seem to be intoxicated on the idea of government control.
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After a week of limbo and 14 failed ballots, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was finally elected Speaker of the House last week. The chaotic start to the 118th Congress was the opposite of what most House Republicans were hoping for. Instead of showing up united and ready to work on the priorities they won a majority with, their dirty laundry was aired before the nation on C-SPAN.
Midterm polling showed that voters wanted solutions, not grandstanding, from political leaders on the issues that mattered most. Among those issues were affordability and climate, which poll respondents said were the two most urgent issues facing our nation. Last week’s rocky start did not inspire confidence in voters about the GOP’s capabilities — 20 members allowed infighting over internal rules to overshadow the issues their constituents expressly said they cared about.
Now that the intra-party dispute has been resolved, it’s time for House Republicans to deliver what the American people want: lower energy costs — and lower emissions.
The 117th Congress, despite the media narrative of partisanship and gridlock, was incredibly productive when it came to bipartisan solutions for issues like climate change. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for instance, was the result of months of negotiations in the Senate and included significant measures for climate resilience and clean energy. The Growing Climate Solutions Act, which was ultimately included in the end-of-year omnibus bill, garnered the support of 92 senators to empower farmers and ranchers to utilize sustainable practices on their lands. The Senate even ratified the Kigali Amendment, an amendment to the Montreal Protocol to limit the use of pollution-driving hydrofluorocarbons, on a bipartisan basis.
This approach to legislating is what we need in the 118th Congress. House Republicans have many leaders on environmental issues, from House Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman’s (R-Ark.) forestry expertise to energy innovation advocate House Energy and Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) to Conservative Climate Caucus Chairman John Curtis’s (R-Utah) thought leadership.
In his Commitment to America, McCarthy lays out a path forward on climate and energy issues. This approach may look different from that of the Democrats, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for bipartisan consensus and real legislative work.
There are a plethora of issues that could garner significant bipartisan support. The 2023 Farm Bill provides a significant opportunity for natural climate solutions and climate resilience. Members of both parties have signaled openness to permitting reform to unleash allAmerican energy production. Nuclear energy and critical mineral production, too, are areas where legislators can work together toward robust, bipartisan solutions. Both parties are all too familiar with detractor firebrands who prevent the body from legislating, but the American people have had enough.
The bottom line is: The American people saw dysfunction from the House when they should have seen legislating. Luckily, the 118th Congress has just begun, and there’s time for Congress to get to work.
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