By Neil Brown
Berkeley, California is arguably the most liberal city in the US Tourist shops sell t-shirts touting their identity as a leftist hub. The city is overwhelmingly white and affluent, with an Asian and small black minority population, a median household income of more than $100,000, and a median home value of nearly $1.3 million. When we think of the liberal elite, we think of Berkeley. So when citizens last week voted in favor of a new fossil fuel tax, it came as a surprise to green activists across the country.
In the Berkeley vote this November there is a local initiative that will impose a heavy tax on large buildings that use natural gas for heating, cooking, and other purposes. Supporters say the measure will help wean off fossil fuel use, following a nationwide trend where climate activists are looking for every opportunity to shut down natural gas.
In a resounding rebuke, Berkeley voters rejected the ballot measure 68% to 32%, sending the message that they are not interested in the sacrifice that uses natural gas to benefit the climate whether they think it will be net. To assuage climate conscience, donations to environmental activists will inevitably flow out of Berkeley. The ability to avoid making any sacrifices in the name of climate change only to demand those sacrifices from other, less affluent communities is an environmental privilege that working class Americans ignore.
Effective federally-focused environmental activism will diminish after Trump’s victory and the rise of an unfriendly bureaucracy. With hundreds of millions of dollars to spend, these groups will turn money and committees in state and local governments to try to get rid of natural gas infrastructure.
This strategy is wrong. Americans living in our largest cities are burdened with high energy costs, unreliable power grids, and often live in neighborhoods with inadequate infrastructure and inefficient aging homes. The worst problem in this part of the city with a history of segregation and redlining, and Black residents disproportionately struggle in this community that can not afford the additional energy burden brought by constricting energy supplies. While cities are the most efficient places to live in terms of carbon emissions, cities also have a crippling energy burden that is often imposed on communities that cannot cope with price volatility and reduced reliability by eliminating essential energy infrastructure. The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) will publish a report on the energy burden on cities this year.
In addition to the significant benefits, there are costs to modernizing our aging energy systems and moving toward a greener, lower-carbon future. PPI works to inform decision makers about these costs, who they are asked to bear, and how to reduce their impact. The U.S. needs climate policies that reduce carbon emissions, encourage innovation in clean energy generation and transmission, meet the energy demands of households and businesses, and, critically, do so without paying the costs of that transition to those who can least afford it. . Continuing down the path of left-wing environmentalism is a political dead end for these working-class communities. However, we need political impetus for effective and pragmatic state and local energy policies for deep blue states that show we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lower the household costs burdening disadvantaged communities.
City leaders should be wary of environmental activists dead set in their cities, fresh off a fundraiser in Berkeley, CA, demanding their own communities sacrifice costs, reliability, and convenience that Berkeley won’t do in the name of climate. justice. Watch carefully what environmental activist funders do in their own communities when they make demands on others.
In this recent election, the wealthy elite in Berkeley said to environmental activists, “We’re going to keep our natural gas. Here’s some money. Go to the poor to get rid of their stuff.”
Is that all?
Neel Brown is Managing Director at the Progressive Policy Institute. Fnd Neel bio here.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and is available via RealClearWire.
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