Climate Action on a State Level and Ensuring Long-Term Action

As indicated on this blog, I’m working for the Climate Registry, a group that has sponsored the North American delegation of subnational leaders.  I spoke about some of the challenges states face in one of my daily updates, but I wanted to go into this topic in more depth.

Governors Jerry Brown, Jay Inslee and Kate Brown, among the 15 states that joined the US Climate Alliance, are working to show that states can have an impact on an international level, and that many Americans still care about climate change.  They’ve spoken about the actions they have taken, ranging from executive orders, to legislative bills in California requiring additional renewable energy in the grid.

During this COP however, I do not feel two issues have been adequately addressed as state leaders brainstorm ways to effectively address climate change: the long-term role of executive orders and how to engage other states.

I’ll address executive orders first. While it is important that these governors have used executive orders to enable the state address climate change, an executive order is a “directive handed down directly from a president or governor (the executive branch of government) without input from the legislative or judicial branches.”

The issue with this is that as soon as the governor leaves office, the executive order can easily be revoked by the next administration.  Thus, how do governors ensure that their work continues and can be institutionalized? Executive orders are a stop-gap, and do not solve the systemic issue, as has been evidenced by President Trump’s unraveling of President Obama’s executive orders the past year.

The second issue I found as I’ve been attending these events is determining the best way on getting other states engaged (think those that haven’t joined the US Climate Alliance, such as North Carolina).  One of the most interesting points I found was discussed by a senior policy advisor named Reed Schuler from Washington state.  He spoke about the issue of making climate change a micro-issue (such as discussing it in a national security or health framework, so that one avoids the politically hot topic in certain states) to ensure policy change still occurs.

He explained that while this might ensure state action now, it avoids talking about the larger issue: climate change and how it holistically affects the state.   He acknowledged that there is no easy answer to address this problem.  His point directly connects to how former Governor Schwarzenegger has engaged with the issue—which I wrote about in my last entry.  I appreciate Governor Schwarzenegger’s health approach to climate change, because it is a method to get states involved—but I also agree with Reed Schuler, that making climate change a micro-issue cannot be the end, but rather a beginning to the discussion.

Concluding, the Global Climate Action Summit that Governor Brown will be hosting in 2018 hopefully will explore these issues in more depth, as I’m sure state-level policy makers are struggling with these two points above as well.   I hope that this will become a larger part of the discussion moving forward, especially as the US Climate Alliance becomes more established and its members seek to grow their membership and ensure their policies remain part of future administrations.