There were some elections last week in the United States.
The results were pretty good for the climate-concerned. Democrats swept into the House of Representatives, winning nearly 40 seats in the chamber. For the first time since 2010, the chair of the House Science Committee will affirm the reality of human-caused climate change.
It was a fine Tuesday, in other words, for the day-to-day climate advocacy of the Democratic Party. And since Democrats also won a majority of state attorney-general slots, it was an even better Tuesday for their power to fight Trump’s climate agenda in court. In fact, it’s entirely possible that, for Americans who care about climate change, it was the best Tuesday since November 8, 2016.
But it wasn’t perfect. Climate change needs more than day-to-day partisan advocacy. As I’ve written before, Democrats lack a climate strategy: While the party’s leaders preach about the problem’s urgency, it’s unclear what they actually want to do next time they control Congress and the White House. Democrats have also allowed nonpartisan economists to dominate climate-policy conversations, leading to proposals that inspire nobody but other nonpartisan economists. Democrats also lack an obvious path to near-term power in the Senate, making sweeping climate legislation unlikely.
Democrats have many problems, in other words. Meanwhile the Earth will keep warming.
But Democrats are not the only ones flailing. In the wake of President Trump’s victory, climate advocates across the political spectrum have cast about for paths forward—and they have assembled (loosely) into a few different teams. Each is built around what might be called a theory of change: If we only got everyone on board with this plan, then we could finally pass a big climate policy in the United States. These camps make up the climate battle that happens behind the scenes.
Last Tuesday was only one election, encompassing thousands of candidates who campaigned on issues that mostly weren’t climate change. It would be ludicrous to try to extract lasting takeaways for the climate movement from that range of specific, never-to-be-repeated contests. It would generate some flawed conclusions. It might even be a fundamentally silly exercise. But let’s try it anyway. I looked closely at climate advocates’ theories of change, to see which could claim vindication from the midterm results, and I’m not sure a single one emerged looking vastly stronger and more obviously correct than it did before.
Theory 1: TeamBipartisan
One popular argument holds that climate change will only be solved by working across the aisle. This camp has long rallied around the Climate Solutions Caucus, a group of House members that stayed perfectly bipartisan by design: A Democrat could only join the group if he or she convinced a Republican to join too (and vice versa). Though committed to no particular policy, the caucus was affiliated with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a similarly nonpartisan association that calls for a carbon fee. The caucus has never passed legislation, but it seemed popular, and by last month it could boast 90 members.
Yet in the election, it hemorrhaged members—and lost its cofounder. Carlos Curbelo, a moderate Republican from South Florida, helped establish the caucus two years ago; he also proposed a symbolic carbon-tax bill this summer that, while criticized by many environmentalists, would have allowed the United States to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement. Curbelo lost his election, and a Democrat will represent his district next year.
He isn’t the only climate moderate gone. Twenty-two of the Climate Solutions Caucus’s 43 voting GOP members will be out of the next Congress; at least 21 of their districts will be represented by Democrats. Caucus members who survived the election look a little less like Curbelo and a little more like Matt Gaetz: a Fox News regular who…
