The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

The Energy 202: Top green group aims record $100 million at defeating Trump and Republicans

Analysis by
Staff writer
September 10, 2020 at 8:23 a.m. EDT

with Alexandra Ellerbeck

To defeat President Trump, a big-spending green group is planning to drop more money than ever on the 2020 election.

A super PAC affiliated with the League of Conservation Voters and related groups is aiming to spend more than $100 million to elect Joe Biden and other Democrats in November, breaking the Washington-based organization’s previous record of $85 million in 2018.

The prospect of granting Trump four more years to unwind climate regulations is motivating deep-pocketed Democratic donors to give to Biden. In opening their wallets to green campaign groups, they are signaling their desire for legislation to address rising global temperatures. A similar surge in donations helped Democrats retake the House in 2018, say environmentalists.

“A lot of people realize how high the stakes are,” said Pete Maysmith, senior vice president of campaigns at the LCV Victory Fund, the super PAC affiliated with the LCV. “Whether it’s wildfires blanketing the West with smoke, whether it’s the hurricanes hitting the Gulf Coast, the flooding inundating the Midwest, the time is now to act on climate change.”

“This is the most ever,” he added of the group's spending.

That gush of money, in turn, has made the LCV Victory Fund a major campaign force, buffering the usual tide of fossil fuel money to Trump and other Republicans. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, it is the country's seventh-biggest super PAC in terms of fundraising.

The nine-figure sum will be invested in electing Democrats in the hopes of passing major climate legislation.

Over the summer, the super PAC spent $14 million on digital and mail ads targeting about 1.6 million voters in six swing states — Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

Down ballot, the LCV Victory Fund is focusing on helping first-term House Democrats keep their seats while ousting several incumbent Republicans in the Senate, including Sens. Martha McSally (Ariz.), Steve Daines (Mont.) and Thom Tillis (N.C.). The super PAC is also considering running ads in Iowa and Maine, Maysmith said. 

With the coronavirus pandemic still gripping the country, the super PAC is investing $10 million in both mail and in-person get-out-the-vote efforts.

About a third of the $100 million total comes via the GiveGreen initiative that directs donors’ money to the campaigns of environmentally friendly candidates. 

The LCV Victory Fund runs that donation program with both the NRDC Action Fund PAC, a political arm of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and NextGen America, an advocacy group run by billionaire financier and former presidential candidate Tom Steyer. 

A number of related pro-Biden groups are also raising donations on the climate issue.

One of them, Climate Leaders for Biden, has held four online fundraisers generating nearly $15 million in contributions via GiveGreen in support of Biden's candidacy as he updated his climate proposal this summer.

“The vice president is very passionate about this,” Steyer, a member of the group, said in a July interview. “He's taken climate and done exactly what we'd hoped he'd done.” 

Other high-dollar donors include Nat Simons, who created the investment firm Meritage Group, and Nicole Systrom, who founded the clean energy consultancy Sutro Energy Group.

Yet another group, Clean Energy for Biden, has held around 40 fundraising, phone-banking and other events for Biden, raising more than $2 million for him and other Democratic candidates. 

That group has given its 5,000 members the chance to interact virtually with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D), Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who also ran against Biden.

“Climate is finally being taken seriously as the existential crisis it is,” said Dan Reicher, a former Energy Department official under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who co-founded and co-chairs Clean Energy for Biden. “And there is a large and fast-growing industry to address it.”

The gush of spending is in line with Biden's effort to draw a sharp contrast with Trump on climate change. 

At the Democratic National Convention, the former vice president called climate change one of four “historic crises” facing the country, along with the pandemic, the economic recession and racial injustice.

To court younger climate-concerned voters once skeptical of his campaign, Biden released a $2 trillion clean-energy plan over the summer that is more aggressive and extensive than what he previously proposed, calling for the elimination of carbon pollution from the power sector by 2035.

While Trump has made recent environmental overturns by banning offshore drilling in Florida, his administration by contrast has weakened rules to make cars more fuel efficient and pushed power plants to cut the release of climate-warming emissions.

Amid other health and economic emergencies, climate change may end up taking a back seat.

During the presidential primary, climate change ranked as a top issue among Democratic voters. But recent polling shows concern about rising temperatures has ebbed amid shutdowns and protests. Nationwide in May, 33 percent of registered voters said climate change is “very important,” according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll — a 10 percentage point decline from February.

In response, Biden has emphasized early studies suggesting air pollution is making covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, more deadly. “Covid is shining a bright light on the structural racism that plagues our laws, our institutions and our culture,” Biden said at an Earth Day fundraiser organized by Clean Energy for Biden.

Similarly, a Michigan radio ad funded by the LCV Victory Fund in support of Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) is emphasizing how African Americans have higher rates of rates of asthma and other respiratory issues that exacerbate the illness.

“Gary Peters understands that systemic racism has led to huge disparities for Black Americans,” says the ad, done with another left-leaning spending group, BlackPAC. “He has worked to stop polluting industries in our cities.” 

Biden and his environmentalist allies have looked to link the pandemic and climate change as areas in which Trump has rejected the advice of experts. 

“He called both a hoax,” Maysmith said. “He ignored the scientists. He tore down the institutions designed to protect us.”  

Power plays

A new federal report warns climate change could threaten the U.S. financial system.

In a report released Wednesday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is urging financial institutions to disclose their risks to climate change and conduct climate stress tests. 

“Climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy,” said the report, which was written by an advisory committee. “Over time, if significant action is not taken to check rising global average temperatures, climate change impacts could impair the productive capacity of the economy and undermine its ability to generate employment, income, and opportunity.” 

The report — whose 34 authors included people from big banks, oil companies, pension funds, ratings agencies, agricultural giants and nongovernmental organizations concerned about climate change — said that the impact of climate change is already being felt. “Even under optimistic emissions-reduction scenarios, the United States, along with countries around the world, will have to continue to cope with some measure of climate change-related impacts,” it said.

While the five commissioners all supported the writing of the climate change report, they have yet to endorse it.

Climate change could also complicate other economic upheavals, including strained government budgets and the coronavirus pandemic. “Climate impacts may also magnify or exacerbate existing, non-climate-related vulnerabilities in the financial system, with potentially serious consequences for market stability,” the report said.

The advisory report made more than 50 recommendations, including a steep carbon price that the report said was the only way to “channel resources efficiently” to activities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The report also said that the Treasury or Federal Reserve should be careful when buying assets to stabilize the economy that those assets have been vetted for climate risks. In the recent financial crisis, the Federal Reserve purchased some oil and gas company securities. 

—Steven Mufson

Democrats criticized coal and mining provisions in the Republican coronavirus relief bill.

The scaled-back coronavirus relief bill introduced by Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday includes provisions to speed up certification for mineral mining and would also fund research into extracting rare earth metals from coal. The language is based on a bipartisan bill introduced last year by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), the chair and the ranking Democrat of the Senate Energy and National Resources Committee, respectively.

Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) seized on the provisions to attack the bill during floor remarks on Tuesday. “God forbid our Republican friends miss an opportunity to reward corporate polluters in their coronavirus relief bill,” Schumer said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) denounced the coal program on Twitter.

In addition to the mineral program, the relief package also contemplates $20 billion for agriculture and $500 million for fisheries harmed by the coronavirus pandemic. 

The bill is the latest move by Republicans after negotiations over coronavirus relief broke down a month ago, but it is unlikely to advance in its current form given staunch opposition from Democrats, who have been seeking more money in the relief package. 

Democrats are probing the National Park Service over its involvement with the Republican National Convention.

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) sent a letter asking the Park Service to account for several campaign events hosted on federal property, including Trump’s speech at the White House, Vice President Pence’s speech at Fort McHenry and fireworks over the Washington Monument that spelled out “Trump” and “2020.”

The two lawmakers, who chair the Senate and House appropriation subcommittees overseeing the parks system, called the events “both outrageous and legally suspect,” alleging that they may have violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities on the job. Pence and Trump are exempt from the act, but Park Service workers and other federal employees could run afoul of it if they assisted in campaign events.

Charleston, S.C., is suing 24 fossil fuel companies over damages caused by flooding linked to climate change.

“Charleston is the first city in the American South to file a lawsuit against fossil fuel companies for their contributions to climate change. It joins several large cities such as Baltimore, New York City and San Francisco who have filed similar suits,” the State reports.

The lawsuit alleges that defendants — including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, as well as South Carolina-based Brabham Oil and Piedmont Petroleum — conducted a misinformation campaign about climate change even as they continued to ramp up extraction on greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels. The suit argues that Charleston is paying the price in terms of increased hurricanes and flooding along its low-lying coast.

“As this lawsuit shows, these companies have known for more than 50 years that their products were going to cause the worst flooding the world has seen since Noah built the Ark,” Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg said in a statement.

Fifteen states are suing the Trump administration over its plan to open up 1.6 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling

The lawsuit, co-led by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, argues that the administration failed to account for the impact of the drilling on greenhouse gas emissions, which will deepen the climate crisis, and on migratory birds that travel through all 50 states. 

“Climate change is already wreaking havoc on our economy and coastal communities. We are suing to stop this Administration from destroying our environment, our natural resources, precious wildlife, and thriving clean energy economies,” Healey said in a statement.

Attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont also joined the suit. 

Two other lawsuits from Indigenous groups and environmental organizations have also challenged the administrations plan to allow for oil and gas leases in the wildlife refuge.

Thermometer

Officials in Oregon said they expect fatalities from wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes.

“Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) said Wednesday that the ongoing wildfire disaster is “unprecedented” and may rank as the deadliest such event in state history. While not announcing any confirmed fatalities, she warned citizens to expect news of deaths and further destruction to come as officials take stock of the damage,” my colleague Andrew Freedman reports as part of The Post’s live updates on the fire.

As blazes continue to spread throughout the West, the region is experiencing record-breaking heat and strong dry offshore winds. As of Wednesday, the greatest risks were to communities in Medford, Ore., and Oroville, Calif., as large fires advanced in those areas.

In California, the Forest Service announced the closure of all 18 national forests.

Carbon emissions are almost back to pre-pandemic levels.

“Carbon emissions are on the rise again after a short blip when the pandemic brought entire industries and international travel to a halt,” Bloomberg News reports.

Fossil fuel emissions dropped an unprecedented 17 percent in April while shutdowns were in effect, but emissions now are only about 5 percent below 2019 levels, according to “United in Science 2020,” a report coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization.

Despite this year’s short-lived decline in emissions, 2016-2020 is set to be the warmest five-year period on record, according to the report.