A Climate Answer to Project 2025

It has been a strange year for the climate left’s relationship with the word “if.” Over the past several months, some activists and advocates had begun to use the word with me in such a way that it started to sound an awful lot like “when.” If Donald Trump is reelected… If Republicans return to power…

The tone wasn’t hypothetical; it was resigned.

In the past week and a half, however, “if” has gotten its mojo back. Early this morning, the climate policy group Evergreen Action released what it’s calling the “Evergreen Action Plan 2.0” — essentially, a green wishlist for an incoming Democratic administration. Had the document been published a month earlier, after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance, it might have come across as vaguely farfetched; now, judging by the polls, there’s a real chance that some of its proposals could actually become law in 2025.

Started by former staffers of Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign, Evergreen Action has advised Kamala Harris on her climate policies before. The group also boasts that the Biden-Harris administration has made progress on 85% of the policy recommendations issued in its original 2020 Evergreen Action Plan. Although Evergreen Action doesn’t hold the same sway over a future Harris administration as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 does over Donald Trump (to his apparently increasing concern), it does seem pretty safe to say that Evergreen Action 2.0 has the potential to be an enormously influential document in a Harris White House.

So — what’s in it?

Unsurprisingly, the Evergreen Action Plan 2.0 aims to extend the gains made by Biden’s administration and the Inflation Reduction Act — the words “continue” or “continuing” are used 43 times in the document, “further” 38 times, and “expand” or “expanded” 28 times. The plan is broken into seven core strategies that are broadly framed around climate, jobs, and justice, including “Cementing a Clean and Effective National Grid,” “Promoting Healthy Communities With a Modern Transportation System,” “Achieving Healthy Neighborhoods With Zero-Emission Homes and Commercial Buildings,” and “Supporting All Communities to Build a Thriving Clean Energy Economy and Move Away From Fossil Fuels.”

Within these sections, stand-out proposals include:

• Setting a first-of-its-kind federal clean energy standard to fully decarbonize the grid by 2035.
• Passing a “national grid law creating an inter-regional transfer capacity and shared grid management entity” in order to “align federal authority to manage and site necessary transmission, and … ensure full uptake of valuable IRA incentives for clean energy.”
• Finalizing carbon limits for existing gas plants “no later than the end of 2025” and ideally by December 2024.
• Issuing an industrial decarbonization Day 1 Executive Order that commits the country to a “rapid decarbonization strategy for each industrial category.” Such an order could help “prioritize innovation projects … leading to the development of regional hubs for industrial decarbonization,” spur the EPA to begin a “standard-setting process to tackle industrial climate pollution,” and encourage the agency to further use grants, Superfund, and planning and permitting programs to “accelerate the deployment of clean industrial technologies and repurposing and clean up legacy industrial sites.”
• Joining an international “carbon club” via legislation that “adds duties or fees to imports of similar goods produced using high-carbon methods in other countries.”
• Focusing on building out a zero-emissions freight sector by issuing “clear standards to help decarbonize sources like trains, freight facilities and ports, off-road vehicles, ships, and planes.”
• Adopting a “climate test” to guide all federal energy extraction decisions; cutting subsidies and statutory loopholes for fossil fuel companies; ending exports of liquefied natural gas; withdrawing East Coast waters from oil drilling, and more.

The most radical section of the Evergreen Action Plan 2.0, however, comes at the end. Acknowledging both the volatility of our national politics and the reality that it will take longer than four more years to put the U.S. on the right course of decarbonization, the plan extends the definition of “climate policy” to include proposals intended to shore up public and democratic institutions. Some of those include:

• Abolishing the filibuster rule that “prevents the Senate from acting on climate and other policies the public overwhelmingly supports.”
• Repealing the “Congressional Review Act,” which has been used to “block needed climate standards and other common-sense public health and safety measures.”
• Ensuring the Supreme Court is “governed by a binding ethics code,” and potentially “adding justices to the Court, adding term limits, and exploring appropriate statutory guidance to limit or reverse the Court’s recent spate of radical attacks on environmental laws.”
• Working with Congress to restore the Chevron doctrine.
• Pursuing other democratic reforms “including restoration of the Voting Rights Act and federal legislative remedies for improper gerrymandering, along with long-term efforts to reform or abolish the Electoral College, would further shake loose fossil fuel control of Congress and enable equitable policymaking nationwide.”

Of course, the Evergreen Action Plan 2.0 is nothing more than a wishlist — it is far from a binding document — and there are still a whole lot of “ifs” standing between it and implementation.

But for the climate left, “if” is a start.