Devin Powell/NOAA via AP
The U.S. Coast Guard Icebreaker Healy on a research cruise in the Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean. President Trump announced recently that he had finalized plans to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.
Just days after the Democratic National Committee dropped its call to eliminate $20 billion in fossil fuel subsidies from its platform, the Prospect spoke with climate activist RL Miller about how to fight back. Miller founded the environmental group Climate Hawks Vote, chairs the California Democratic Party’s environmental caucus, and is a DNC delegate. She was heavily involved in the push last year for a climate debate for Democratic presidential candidates—something House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, California DNC member Christine Pelosi, has also pushed for since 2012. Miller discussed the priorities of climate activists and what the symbolism of dropping an end to fossil fuel subsidies really means.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Marcia Brown: On Tuesday, HuffPost’s Alexander Kaufman reported that the DNC dropped its call to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies from its platform and said the language was initially an “error.” This is something both Biden and Harris ran on during the primaries. Why did the DNC drop this now?
RL Miller: I don’t have this completely in hand yet, but the only thing that makes sense to me is carbon capture and storage, which is a fossil fuel subsidy. I read one piece in the Washington Examiner, which is a right-wing publication, and [the authors have] a pretty good handle on what Republicans think on energy. He had the idea that there would be a grand bargain between Republicans and moderate Democrats for a big carbon capture and storage deal in the next Congress and the only obstacle in its way was a bunch of left-wing climate people who instead want to see a shift to renewables.
My position is that carbon capture and storage is a magic pill that makes me thin, rich, and able to eat three bowls of chocolate ice cream a day and not gain a pound, which is a polite way of saying that it’s snake oil. As I understand it from experts, the technology will never pan out, it will always be too expensive to implement, and it’s potentially dangerous. If they want to throw a small amount of research money at it, if that’s what it takes to move us to renewables, fine, but if it’s not a small piece of a lot of movement on renewables then it’s not fine. I believe that the DNC is acting on behalf of people invested in the idea of a big carbon capture storage bill, whether that’s members of Congress—moderates, Democrats, and Republicans—whether it’s industry people, Biden advisers like Ernest Moniz, Jason Bordoff, and Heather Zichal, I can’t say.
Can you explain to me more about how dropping this commitment makes the platform weaker on climate than what Biden and Harris had initially campaigned on?
The platform adopted last night drops any mention of ending fossil fuel subsides. What’s in the platform is a good reflection of Democratic values, and this now says that the Democrats are OK with the idea of fossil fuel subsidies continuing. The Democratic Party platform is not just the president, but it also represents the national Democratic Party platform for all Democrats to be running on throughout the whole nation. If you’re a politician running for county supervisor in California or parish supervisor in Louisiana, you open the Democratic Party platform and you read it to get a good sense of where the party is, and if an end to fossil fuel subsidies is not in that platform that sends a signal to you.
To use another example of how the platform sends an important signal, I tried to get an amendment into the platform calling for a sunset date for internal combustion engine cars. The House Dems’ Select Committee on the Climate Crisis had released their bill that called for no new gasoline-powered cars after 2035 and I thought we should try to get that in the platform as well, and doing so would in fact send a very important signal to people throughout the United States that the era of gasoline-powered cars needs to come to an end. I was told by platform committee people that that one was shot down hard by the Biden people and they wanted to have UAW folks whip against it if they tried to put it up for a vote. That’s to give you an idea of how important the platform is as a symbol.
In August of 2019, when we spoke for another Prospect article, the DNC was voting on a resolution to hold a climate debate, despite the DNC chair’s opposition. To what extent do you think that early activism has helped shape Democratic climate priorities?
One of the things that happened was it galvanized me to run for DNC. I was so angry at the way that they treated the climate debate question that I decided to run for DNC and I came back from San Francisco to the California Democratic Party convention, which was meeting down the road in San Jose, and I announced it that night. I think that it’s really galvanized youth in particular. The climate strikes last September were big news. The platform debate—this new blowup is big news. People were pressing the Democratic candidates on where they would stand on climate, and people were very critical of this person’s plan and that person’s plan, and we even had both Jay Inslee and Tom Steyer run on climate. Overall, people have woken up much more to the idea that climate change is critical and that people do vote on climate. And now we’ve got this horrendous pandemic rampaging throughout our land, and the net effect of it is showing that we have to trust science. I hope that people will come out of this pandemic with a new respect for what the climate scientists and the epidemiologists have been saying.
Thus far, how do the goals of the DNC Climate Council differ from the party’s platform? Are you hopeful there’s still room for progress on climate in a Biden administration?
Michelle Deatrick, chair of the DNC’s Climate Council, is just doing an extraordinary job in representing climate voters at the DNC and conveying to the DNC that climate voters matter. I plan to be working with her, because climate voters also are the people who don’t vote very often; they’re generally poor, generally young, disproportionally people of color, they’re the people that we want to bring into the Democratic Party, and they’re the people who are most threatened by inaction by their elders. So what Michelle is going to be doing over the next few years, I think, is being a bridge between those climate voters who aren’t always convinced that they have to show up for Democrats and the conservative wing of the Democratic National Committee.
As compared to the 2016 platform, what are the biggest steps forward?
The one that I’m proudest of that we got an amendment into the platform recognizing that the Earth needs and the United States needs to commit to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The reason why that’s important is simply that Joe Biden is going to be running on a pro-science, pro–Paris Agreement platform. The Paris Agreement was about 1.5 degrees and so we want to hold him and Democrats nationwide accountable by putting that in the platform. I’m optimistic that he knows that that’s important, and I’m optimistic that we now have a platform that reflects that.
Recently, Trump announced that he had finalized the plan for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas drilling. Is this something a Biden administration can immediately halt in January? Furthermore, what steps can be taken to make sure this—and other actions like it—don’t seesaw from administration to administration?
I think that Biden is not going to get any sleep on that first day. He’s not going to be able to put down his signing pen. Where do we start with undoing the horrors of the Trump administration? I want Biden to go down to the southwest border and tear down that wall. I want him to start physically at the border and make this like the Berlin Wall coming down. I want him to undo everything Trump is doing on methane regulations rollbacks. I want him to immediately take full and complete action to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I want him to stop the assault on California’s clean-cars standard.
How comprehensive and effective do you think the platform’s commitment to a just transition is?
It’s very important that we do it. I believe that there’s some skepticism in the labor movement because they’re not yet seeing much more than words. One of the recommendations that I’ve not created—this one came from the Labor Network for Sustainability—one thing that I’ve heard is that when we talk about transitioning workers away from the widget industry, we should start funding their pensions now rather than later. What has happened to the United Mine Workers of America has been a tragedy, for which Mitch McConnell owes quite a bit of blame, and Republicans in the Senate, in that their pensions have not been properly funded, and so one of the ways that Democrats can show their commitment to a just transition is by beginning to fund their pensions of the workers who would be retiring now rather than later.
What can progressives and climate advocates do if they want to move the party to a stronger position on climate change?
Get involved. Show up in November and let people know that you’re a climate voter. Do everything you have time to do between now and November, whether that’s make the phone calls or text banks or write postcards to voters or anything else, get involved in the election in some fashion. Remember we’re not just voting on Biden versus Trump, but there’s also dozens of races on every ballot, from Senate to Congress, to county supervisor, city council. Get involved, find out who the candidates are. And then don’t go to sleep in November. If the election were held tomorrow, there would be a Biden landslide, which would be totally awesome, but don’t assume that just because Biden wins that the world will automatically become a better place. It’s gonna get better if we fight for it. So stay involved, hold Biden to his commitments, hold him to his campaign promises. Get involved and stay involved.
