When Liberals and Conservatives Came Together on the Environment

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap’s environmental revelation came on the top of a mountain. What was left of one anyway.
As an undergrad at Calvin College, a Christian liberal arts school in Grand Rapids, Mich., Meyaard-Schaap began learning about mountaintop-removal mining. He took trips to West Virginia in 2010 and 2012, where for decades swaths of mountains in the mid-Appalachian region have had their peaks blasted off, allowing miners to bore out the coal within. Before then, Meyaard-Schaap, who grew up in a close-knit evangelical family in a small Michigan town, hadn’t given much thought to the environment. “Those issues weren’t even on my radar,” he says.
But in West Virginia he camped with nuns on top of denuded, geologic stumps. They had to shower with rainwater, because the groundwater had become so polluted. He met with families of children diagnosed with cancer attributed to the mining waste that had seeped into the region’s aquifers.
“I started to connect environmental care with people care,” says Meyaard-Schaap, 29, who went on to found the activist group Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA). “It wasn’t much of a stretch to connect that to climate.”
Meyaard-Schaap is part of a new generation of activists who fight for tougher environmental laws — the sort usually associated with liberals — by asserting the values and policies more commonly embraced by conservatives. Framing issues of the left through the political lens of the right is a method that’s worked in the past, especially when it comes to climate change.

A member of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action participates in the People’s Climate March in April 2017.

A POLICY INNOVATION THAT ‘SKIPPED-A-BEAT’
Two decades before Meyaard-Schaap’s activism, a Republican lawyer and political advisor named C. Boyden Gray crafted a potential solution to the rising threat of climate change. Gray had been intrigued for decades by the possibility of using cap-and-trade to clean the atmosphere. The system works by setting aggregate limits on pollutants while allowing businesses to meet them by paying, trading or innovating to account for their share.
Gray had previously worked for Ronald Reagan, a president whose popularity with evangelicals helped catapult him to the White House, and watched as Reagan’s tenure ended with an environmental crisis. So much sulfur had been belched by Rust Belt coal plants into the wind currents that blew across the Great Lakes and into Canada that fragile ecosystems, along with many thousands of people, had become sick. The prime minister of Canada quipped grimly about declaring war.
In 1988 — the first presidential election to feature staunch environmentalist Al Gore as a candidate — Republican nominee George H. W. Bush pledged to be an “environmental president.” Gray saw his opportunity. With little fanfare he helped write cap-and-trade legislation targeting sulfur; it became law under the Clean Air Act of 1990. Within a few years, the amount of acid rain (which occurs when sulfur rises in the atmosphere and mixes with water, oxygen and other pollutants) decreased by half — at a cost of around one-eighth what critics had feared. The success was resounding.
“You let the market take over, and government doesn’t get in the way,” Gray tells NationSwell. “It’s the most efficient, frictionless way to reduce pollutants.”
Gray and others believed this tool, cap-and-trade, could be expanded and modified to squelch climate change too. But then government — or, rather, politics — did get in the way.
Far-left environmentalists and far-right Republicans both soured on cap-and-trade. Meanwhile, the common ground stood on by centrist members of both parties was splitting apart. Environmentalism was ceded to the left, and then weaponized against them by the right. By 2009, Democratic representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts had written cap-and-trade legislation for carbon that passed the Democratic-controlled House. But Senate Republicans wouldn’t even consider it.
Cap-and-trade, Gray says, “skipped a beat.”

TAKING IT TO THE STATES

Three years earlier, the acrid political climate had made state lawmakers in California give up on the federal government. Assembly speaker Fabian Nunez, a Democrat from Los Angeles, co-authored the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. In sweeping fashion, it reshaped the state’s electric, construction and automotive industries. Inspired by the success against acid rain, parts of this act included cap-and-trade. But Nunez insisted, against the wishes of then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, that it also include mandates limiting carbon emissions.
“My idea was, we’ve got do a mandate; necessity is the mother of invention,” says Nunez today. “I’m a Mexican-American from Los Angeles. I grew up in a polluted neighborhood in San Diego underneath the smokestacks of a shipbuilding company, surrounded by junkyards and stray dogs. I care about the environment; I just came about it a little bit differently.”

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (C) signs the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 to reduce greenhouse emissions.

That landmark California law inspired others. Hawaii, for example, made a bold commitment to get its energy completely from clean renewables by midcentury. Dozens of U.S. cities also did the same. Some states, including Illinois and New York, have made more gradual commitments.
Utilities are responding to this pressure. Duke Energy, a large utility provider in the Southeast and former scourge of environmentalists, has set a “new goal to reduce C02 emissions 40 percent from 2005 levels by 2030,” says spokeswoman Dawn Santoianni.
This dogpile against carbon pollution by states, cities, shareholders, customers and citizens could be the best strategy in an era of federal abdication to fight climate change. The common denominator uniting these various tools — cap-and-trade, mandates, shareholder demands and citizen protests — is the assignation of a negative financial, legal or social value on excess carbon.
“If the true cost of production is taken into account, cleaner sources of fuel, such as solar and wind, will be more competitive,” says Tom Erb, national field organizer for the pro-carbon tax campaign Put a Price on It.

CONNECTING ACROSS THE AISLE

How can more bodies be added to the weight of the masses trying to clamp shut the carbon vents cooking the world? Michael Livermore, the executive director of New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, says the answer for environmentalists lies across the partisan chasm.
“The most important actors out there,” he says, “are people who care about climate and are Republicans.”
Meyaard-Schaap, of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, had a revelation about that too.
He listened as language used by many on the left to convey the urgency of climate action turned to static on the social frequencies attuned to by his loved ones. So he looked to the American evangelical tradition for a solution: Stories of personal transformation can connect where scientific data does not.
He says his own family is an example. Not too long ago, Meyaard-Schaap’s parents and grandparents were “suspicious” about climate change, he says. Since he testified to them about his change of heart, they now donate regularly to his nonprofit. So far, YECA has engaged more than 10,000 people across the nation in the fight against the warming of the planet.
“When it comes to climate change, you’re not going to get anywhere unless you affirm the values of your audience,” he says. “What we’re trying to do is bear witness to the fact that this doesn’t have to be such a divisive issue.”

Tweets, but No Laws — Support for Transgender Service Members Comes From All Sides

President Trump tweeted in late July that the military would not “accept or allow” transgender service members. The news blindsided transgender members of the U.S. military deployed in hotspots and active war zones around the world.
“There’s a lot of anxiety and chaos that’s been injected into the system. It’s a national security issue, we need [our service members] focused and doing their jobs. Not afraid of losing them,” says Matt Thorn, executive director for Outserve-SLDN, the nation’s largest advocacy group for gay and transgender service members.
To be clear, nothing has been put into law yet. Politico obtained a message from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, that said there will be no changes in how the military deals with transgender service members, “until the President’s direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance.”
Until then, recent history, advocates and elected officials collectively offer precedent for protecting LGBTQ rights within the military.

Outserve’s fight for LGBTQ rights in the military

OutServe began as a secret Facebook group during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” days when gay men and women could be discharged from the military for their sexual orientation. Since connecting with more than 4,000 service members, the group merged with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network to form OutServe-SLDN, an influential lobbying force fighting for civil rights within the armed forces for LGBTQ service members.
The organization’s efforts have paid off. In 2011 the military (with the support of the U.S. Senate) repealed its historic anti-LGBT “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. And OutServe-SLDN’s founder, Josh Seefried, was contacted by Pentagon officials to help shape future policy.
In 2012, a report issued by the Palm Center, an independent research institute on public policy, found that a year after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” was repealed, there was no change in service members’ abilities to complete their missions or work — putting conservatives at ease on how the change in policy would affect day-to-day duties.
Then two years ago, the Senate nominated Eric Fanning, who is openly gay, to his former post as Army secretary under President Barack Obama.
The ban for transgender service members was lifted in June 2016, removing the last barrier of service for members of the LGBTQ community. The decision came after a study found that the cost to pay for transgender service members’ gender reassignment and medication would cost less than one percent of the entire military budget, according to a RAND Corporation report that was conducted while the ban was still in place.
In July 2017, OutServe-SLDN worked with the American Military Partner Association against the Hartzler Amendment, which cut government funding for transition surgeries and hormone therapy treatments for transgender service members. The amendment failed 214-209.
As a result of President Trump’s announcement, OutServe-SLDN is preparing for legal battles to help protect transgender military members currently serving and to fight any regulation that might come from the White House. “If it comes to it, we’re prepared to go to court if he puts anything on paper,” says Thorn.

Bipartisan support for LGBTQ service members

Working in tandem, policy makers from both sides of the aisle are also standing up for LGBTQ rights. Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who lifted the transgender ban last year, said Trump’s decision would, “send the wrong signal to a younger generation thinking about military service.”
Sen. John McCain, who has recently gained renewed fame (thanks to his speech on bipartisanship), said in a statement, “We should all be guided by the principle that any American who wants to serve our country and is able to meet the standards should have the opportunity to do so — and should be treated as the patriots they are.” Though, he reserved his opinion on whether transgender service members would serve until medical studies were done.
And other members of Congress have returned fire on Twitter. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah posted a statement on the social platform that said, “I don’t think we should be discriminating against anyone. Transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them.” Meanwhile, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio wrote, “All who serve in our military deserve our gratitude [and] respect. We should not turn away people who are willing [and] able to serve this country.”
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This One Bill Could Make Criminal Justice Reform a Reality

In 1988, a powerful 30-second TV spot scuttled a presidential campaign and altered American politics for the next three decades. The no-frills ad claimed Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who that summer led George H.W. Bush by 17 points in the polls, offered “weekend prison passes” to first-degree murders like Willie Horton, who while on one of these furloughs, stabbed a man and raped his girlfriend during a brutal home invasion. “The ghost of Willie Horton has loomed over any conversation about sentencing reform for over 30 years,” Sen. Dick Durbin, tells The Marshall Project, revving up incarceration rates and making criminal justice reform seemingly impossible.
But as the consequences of our nation’s tough-on-crime policies have become increasingly clear — in cost and governmental overreach, to Republicans, and for Democrats, in preventing rehabilitation and furthering the racial divide— progress is happening. Last Thursday, a bipartisan group of senators, including Durbin, introduced a bill to accompany the House’s SAFE Justice Act. As we’ve written before, Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presented the largest obstacle to criminal justice reform. But after three years of lobbying and political maneuvering (Sen. Chuck Schumer compared it to putting together “a Rubik’s cube,”) The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 has Grassley’s support and now looks like the best chance of getting a bill to President Barack Obama’s desk.
“The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country on earth. Mandatory minimum sentences were once seen as a strong deterrent. In reality they have too often been unfair, fiscally irresponsible and a threat to public safety,” Durbin said at the bill’s announcement. “Given tight budgets and overcrowded prison cells, our country must reform these outdated and ineffective laws that have cost American taxpayers billions of dollars. This bipartisan group is committed to getting this done.”
The bill is modeled on reforms in Texas that significantly decreased the number of incarcerated in the Lone Star State. If passed, it would reduce mandatory minimum prison sentences for those with drug and firearm offenses. It would also limit the application of Three Strikes, which mandates a life sentence after three felonies, to serious violent and serious drug felonies. Perhaps most notably, these reforms would apply retroactively. Other provisions include rehabilitation behind bars and a ban on the use of solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prison.
Already, the legislation has amassed a powerful set of co-sponsors. On the Republican side, there’s John Cornyn (Texas), Mike Lee (Utah) and presidential candidate Lindsey Graham (South Carolina). On the left, there’s Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island), Patrick Leahy (Vermont), Cory Booker (New Jersey) and Schumer (New York).
These two pieces of legislation aren’t perfect. “Our broken criminal justice system can’t be fixed in one year, with one bill,” says Van Jones, co-founder of #Cut50, a group lobbying to cut the prison population in half within the next decade. And as a staunch defender of ensuring “access to justice for both the victims and the accused,” Grassley won’t let Democrats totally undo mandatory minimum sentences.
“But it is cause for celebration that there are bipartisan bills to discuss at all. And in a town as broken and dysfunctional as Washington D.C.,” Jones says, “we now have actual legislation on the table.” These pieces of “concrete legislation” in both houses should “give Congress the opportunity to go on record and debate these issues. It’s time to schedule hearings, markups and floor votes,” Jones adds. “Let’s not let politics get in the way of progress.”

These Billionaire GOP Donors Support the Idea of a $12 Minimum Wage. Will the Party Follow?

Could common political ground between Democrats and Republicans be on the horizon? It looks like some influential conservative donors are shifting their ideology ever so slightly to increasing the minimum wage — a legislative issue that Democrats are pushing for as we near the midterm elections. In January, wealthy Silicon Valley executive and conservative donor Ron Unz put forth a California ballot measure that would raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour in 2015 and $12 in 2016. His perspective was this: raising the minimum wage would put more money in the average Americans’ pockets, which in turn would make them less reliant on government aid. Now Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and GOP donor, is weighing in on Unz’s plan, saying, “I actually think that it’s a very out of the box idea — but it’s something one should consider seriously.” Thiel, who has donated millions of dollars to GOP causes over the year, including $1 million to the anti-tax group Club for Growth and nearly $4 million to the Endorse Liberty PAC in support of presidential candidate Ron Paul in 2012, agrees with Unz’s assumptions that a higher minimum wage could reduce people’s dependency on welfare. “Given how low the minimum wage is — and how generous the welfare benefits are — you have a marginal tax rate that’s on the order of 100 percent, and people are actually trapped in this sort of welfare state,” he said.
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The idea of a minimum wage increase has been a hot topic of late. President Barack Obama called on Congress to work together to increase the minimum wage to $9 an hour by 2015 in his State of the Union address, saying that the move would raise the income of millions of working families. “It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank; rent or eviction; scraping by or finally getting ahead. For businesses across the country, it would mean customers with more money in their pockets,” he said. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 — which is used in about 30 states that don’t mandate their own — translates to a $15,000 annual salary, which the President noted is well below a living wage in many areas of the country.
Recently, House Democrats filed a “discharge petition” in an attempt to dislodge their bill that increases the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which would move the vote to the floor. While it seems unlikely that the petition will get the required votes, some Republican lawmakers have said that they are open to discussion on the issue. Others stick to their opposition, citing a bipartisan Congressional Budget Office report that says that raising the minimum wage would cost the economy 500,000 jobs. Democrats, on the other hand, cite another aspect of the same report — that raising the minimum wage would lift 900,000 people out of poverty. OK, so maybe legislators aren’t finding their common ground quite yet. But if there’s one certainty in politics it’s that politicians follow the money. If major conservative donors continue to push for a minimum wage increase, we might hear some GOP lawmakers singing a different tune.
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