You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
What parliamentary elections in France and the U.K. mean for everyone else.
While America has been distracted by its suddenly-very-real upcoming election, two other important political stories have been unfolding across the pond. The results of last week’s parliamentary votes in France and the United Kingdom have the power to sway global climate policy — and they might even contain lessons for the U.S. about the rise (or fall) of the far-right.
In June, French President Emmanuel Macron called snap elections, and the far-right National Rally party led by Marine Le Pen was widely expected to achieve a majority in the country’s 577-seat National Assembly. Instead, the New Popular Front, a hastily-formed alliance between the hard left, Greens, and Socialists, came out on top in a runoff, followed by the centrist Ensemble (which includes Macron’s Renaissance party) and the National Rally in a distant third. Because no party won the 289 seats needed to gain control of the chamber, the left and center now have to form a coalition government, which means ideological compromise — something that’s distinctly un-French. “We're not the Germans, we're not the Spanish, we're not the Italians — we don't do coalitions,” one French political commentator toldSky News.
Climate change wasn’t a big theme, but the National Rally’s proposals certainly had experts nervous. The party tapped into simmering discontent among some demographics — farmers, in particular — who feel unfairly burdened by new regulations in service of the European Union’s ambitious agenda, known as the Green Deal, including a goal to cut the bloc’s net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. If it had won, the party planned to dismantle France’s energy efficiency rules, roll back a 2035 ban on new gas-powered cars, block new wind farms, do away with low-emission zones, and transform electricity trade. France is already the EU’s third biggest emitter, and the EU as a whole is responsible for about 9% of global CO2 emissions, although emissions have been falling, especially in the energy sector.
As the dust settles in France, the biggest danger to climate policy now is stalemate. The lackluster results for the far right are no doubt a relief to the climate conscious. “We have avoided a catastrophe,” Alain Fischer, president of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, toldNature. The winning NFP, for its part, backs the Green Deal’s emissions targets and wants France to become “the European leader in renewable energies” through offshore wind power and the development of hydroelectric power. It also calls for the “creation of an international court for climate and environmental justice.” But the next several months are likely to be chaotic as the parties tussle over what the government should look like, and there is no deadline for these decisions to be made. The leadership limbo could bring political paralysis at a time when the EU is just getting its bearings following bloc-wide parliamentary elections — which, by the way, saw the Greens lose seats in lots of places. In response, the non-profit Climate Group put out a statement calling for the French government to “commit to safeguarding the EU Green Deal and ensuring a sustainable future for the continent.” The good news is that a large majority of EU voters want to see more climate action.
The Labour Party won the general election in a landslide, bringing an end to 14 years of Conservative Party rule. During his tenure, former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak watered down key net-zero strategies, delayed a ban on new combustion engine vehicles, scrapped energy efficiency standards, and approved a large new oil field in the North Sea. His party also pulled low-emission zones into the culture wars in a desperate attempt to win over voters. None of this played to his advantage. According to Desmog, two-thirds of the Conservative members of Parliament who were anti-net zero lost their seats, including the former energy secretary. “With a clear mandate for climate action,” wrote climate change think tank E3G, “all eyes are now on Labour to deliver.”
New Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to turn the U.K. into a “clean energy superpower” by doubling onshore wind, tripling solar power, and quadrupling offshore wind by 2030. He also plans to upgrade the grid to speed the rollout of clean energy projects, while at the same time denying new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. He wants to establish a publicly owned clean energy firm and decarbonize the power sector by 2030. And he plans to reinstate the 2030 ban on new gas cars. The goals are lofty, and meeting them will “extensive change across every sector of the economy,” wrote Carbon Brief. But Labour seems to be wasting little time. Days after taking power, the new government scrapped a ban on onshore wind farms that had been in place since 2015 and which the new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves called “absurd.”
The U.K. accounts for about 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That might be paltry compared to, say, the U.S. (13.5%) or China (32%), but it has a chance now to use its global influence and proximity to Europe to keep the needle moving in the right direction. That goes especially if it is nudged by the Green party, which surprised everyone by quadrupling its number of seats in Parliament (albeit to just four). As The New York Timesnoted, Britain is where the industrial revolution began, so “the speed and scale of Britain’s energy transition is likely to be closely watched by other industrialized countries and emerging economies alike.”
What’s clear from both of these cases is that people really care about climate policy and are willing to vote with that in mind. That can swing either way, though, depending on the particular set of policies and how they affect the electorate. As extreme weather intensifies, however, it may become more difficult for far-right parties to minimize the significance of climate change. “We need to recognize that extreme weather is politicizing people against this climate denial,” said Paul Dickinson, founder of CDP, an emissions disclosure platform, and co-host of the podcast Outrage + Optimism. “It is the Achilles heel of the extreme right that they’re opposed to the realities of extreme weather. That’s how I think if we’re organized and disciplined, we will defeat them.”
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Voters don’t hate clean energy, but they also don’t want to work for it.
The re-election of Donald Trump all but assures that the next four years of climate policy will have to unfold at the local level. With a climate change denier who previously wreaked havoc on longstanding environmental regulations, opened wildlife refuges to drilling, and put the U.S. at odds with its international partners now set to return to the White House in January, the country will almost certainly fall far short of its 2030 emission reduction targets. But state and local policies can still achieve meaningful progress on their own: On Wednesday morning, green organizers like Climate Cabinet were already stressing that “it will now be up to state leaders to hold the line against Trump and to ensure continued progress toward clean energy.”
Will Americans defend and advance that progress, though? The results of several climate-related ballot measures that were put to vote Tuesday night are giving mixed signals.
On the one hand, there were a number of victories worth celebrating. Most significantly, Washington voters confirmed their state’s cap-and-invest carbon trading program, which pumps millions of dollars into local transit, environmental, and decarbonization projects. Voters across the country also signed off on creating climate- and conservation-related bonds and funds, including in Honolulu, Louisiana, Jefferson County, Iowa, Minnesota, and (likely) the state of California. Local transit-related measures also, on the whole, had a good night.
But there were some concerning rejections, too. Two counties on the southern Oregon coast expressed overwhelming (though non-binding) opposition to offshore wind development in their region, with some 80% of voters in Curry County signaling their objection. Two-thirds of voters in Berkeley, California — one of the most liberal cities in the country — also rejected what would have been a first-in-the-nation tax on natural gas in large buildings. In Washington, early results on an initiative that is still too close to call show voters on track to approve a measure that would bar cities, towns, and the state from “prohibiting, penalizing, or discouraging” gas appliances in buildings — “discouraging” being the operative, ill-defined, and all-encompassing word — threatening Seattle’s 2050 net-zero emissions target.
South Dakotans also rejected a bill that would have smoothed the permitting process for a carbon dioxide pipeline that would carry CO2 from ethanol plants to an injection well in North Dakota as a means of dealing with planet-warming emissions. Though CO2 pipelines are controversial and have “strange politics,” as Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo has written, the citizen-led backlash was often couched in the language of opposing out-of-state interests who were “going to make a buck from the future energy transition.”
My read of the night’s referenda and ballot measures is that voters largely seem willing to do the passive work of supporting climate and environmental policy (for instance by directing the use of property taxes or reconfirming a law already in place) and less willing to voluntarily take on some of the burden themselves, in the form of hosting new development in their communities or opting into transitions away from climate-polluting fuels. This isn’t terribly surprising — local battles over the energy transition are common and frequent enough that we have a whole weekly newsletter here at Heatmap addressing them — but it also suggests that there isn’t nearly enough momentum to prevent potentially catastrophic backsliding under four more years of Trump.
There is good news, though. Local policy is often nimbler and more responsive than state- or federal-level policy. It’s also something anyone can get involved in, and there is presently a wide-open opportunity to convince Americans to embrace a clean energy economy and build things. The seemingly total failure of the current administration to capitalize on the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act, however, does mean that climate, transit, environmental justice, decarbonization, and conservation organizers and activists will have their work cut out for them in the next years to come.
But it isn’t impossible, even if it is uphill sledding. As Climate Cabinet’s Caroline Spears put it in her Wednesday morning note, “It’s time to go back to our roots, dig deep, and rebuild our democracy and climate progress from the local level up.”
South Dakotans successfully fought back against a law that would have made it easier to permit and build.
South Dakota voters have rejected a ballot measure that would have eased the permitting process for a highly contentious carbon dioxide pipeline. The planned $8 billion project, developed by Summit Carbon Solutions, would carry CO2 captured from ethanol plants to sequestration wells in neighboring North Dakota. But if the company had been banking on legislative relief for its siting challenges, it will have to figure out a new plan to move forward.
Referred Law 21, as the measure was called, was a citizen-led veto referendum on a bill that passed the South Dakota legislature and was signed by the governor in March. The bill would have preempted all local land use regulations and ordinances related to the siting of carbon dioxide pipelines and other transmission infrastructure, including power lines. Full authority to permit these projects would have been handed to the state’s utility commission, an elected three-member body that regulates utilities.
Summit Carbon Solutions is trying to build what would be the largest pipeline designed to carry carbon dioxide in the United States. From a climate perspective, putting debates on land use and local control aside, the calculus of the project is complicated.
Ethanol refineries are ripe for carbon capture — they emit a very pure stream of CO2 that is technologically easy to capture, and it’s better that it be buried underground than dumped in the atmosphere. But the long term prospects for ethanol in a low-carbon future are murky at best, and investing $8 billion in carbon capture and pipeline infrastructure could help justify its continued use over other, potentially better solutions. Though it’s clear electric cars will eventually crowd out ethanol from the passenger vehicle fuel market, some advocate for the industry to pivot to aviation fuel.
The pipeline faces opposition throughout the Midwest from a diverse coalition of stakeholders, including landowners in the pipeline’s path, environmental groups like the Sierra Club that oppose carbon capture in general, and Republican legislators who question the project’s merits on the grounds that climate change is merely a “hypothesis.” Though CO2 pipelines generally have a good track record for safety, a high-profile rupture in Mississippi in 2020, which sent 45 people to the hospital, has also amplified concerns.
At least five municipalities in South Dakota have passed rules governing the siting of the pipeline, Chase Jensen, a senior organizer for the environmental nonprofit Dakota Rural Action told me on a call last week. For example, Minnehaha County, the home of Sioux Falls, adopted setback rules last year that require pipelines to be laid 330 feet away from residential areas, businesses, and churches. An ordinance in Lincoln County requires 1,855 feet, and prohibits construction on sites of historical or archeological significance.
“Everybody who's going to make a buck from the future energy transition is licking their chops at this,” Jensen said of Referred Law 21, which would have preempted these ordinances. “It's a lot easier to just make campaign donations to three public utility commissioners than the 300-plus county commissioners across the state.”
The bill signed into law in March was painted as a compromise. Though it weakened local control, it gave counties the ability to charge pipeline companies a tax of $1 per linear foot of pipe installed. It also included a so-called “Landowner Bill of Rights” that enshrined certain protections like ensuring the pipeline’s developer is liable for damages caused by the project, and designating a minimum depth at which the pipeline must be buried.
But Jensen and others who opposed argued it didn’t offer landowners anything new — some of its provisions are already afforded by South Dakota law, and others had already been negotiated with Summit Carbon Solutions. Jensen pointed out that the utility commission already has the ability to override local ordinances if it finds them to be overly restrictive.
Now, with control over pipeline siting back squarely in the hands of local authorities, the future of the Summit project in South Dakota is unclear. The utility commission already rejected the company’s initial application for construction permits last year; Summit has since altered its route and reapplied.
Martin Lockman, a climate law fellow at Columbia Law School, told me it was difficult to take away a clear message from the fight, in part because CO2 pipelines have strange politics. Coalitions for and against them don’t break down over party lines or traditional groups like environmentalists versus fossil fuel companies. Some climate advocates, as well as experts in the U.S. Department of Energy, say we’ll need to build many thousands of miles of new carbon pipelines in order to help us sequester carbon captured from industrial facilities and from the atmosphere.
The specific arguments over the Summit project may not apply to projects proposed elsewhere, Lockman told me, but its fate could still have ripple effects. “Any kind of high profile failure might make investors a little bit more leery to participate in this kind of project,” he said.
As the election odds swung sharply towards Republican Donald Trump as Tuesday evening slid into Wednesday morning, climate-conscious investors, academics, strategists, and other internet personalities were mostly mute. It was a night to stare blankly at the TV, watch the needle slowly tilt to the right, and vaguely wonder about the future of the climate.
That is, unless you were Elon Musk, Trump’s latest, closest campaign confidant, in which case fist-pumping posts abounded. Well before any polls had closed, Musk posted on X about supposedly “record numbers” of men turning out to vote for Trump. While we can’t confirm that’s true, it set a vibe for the evening to come.
For Musk, no display of patriotism is complete without a plug for one of his companies. Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
He spent the rest of the day casting doubt on election security in Pennsylvania and imploring his followers to vote because no less than “the future of the world” was at stake.
Of course, that’s similar to the rhetoric those in climate world use to describe the prospect of a second Trump presidency. As the final polls were closing, University of California, Santa Barbara climate historian Leah Stokes no doubt summed up the feelings of many when she tweeted,
But there was also room for humor. As the electoral map filled in, The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson had some theories on what caused the pro-MAGA, pro-Mars Tesla CEO to lean so hard into Trump’s campaign.
Duncan Campbell, the vice president of Scale Microgrid Solutions and host of the energy podcast DER Task Force, entered the chat with an even more niche joke.
But no one could beat Musk for sheer weirdness. With results beginning to stack up, he shared a tribute to the “Dark MAGA” facet of the Trump coalition set to that Europe classic, “The Final Countdown.”
And as the night’s endgame began to come into focus, he shared a snap from Trump’s watch party at Mar-a-Lago.
Around 2:30 a.m. ET, Trump took the stage at the convention in West Palm Beach where his supporters had gathered and declared victory in the race. By then some, though certainly not all networks had called the election in Trump’s favor. He devoted a verse of his rambling, genial speech to Musk. “A star is born: Elon,” Trump said in his victory speech, praising Musk’s efforts on the campaign trail, his “beautiful” rockets, and Starlink, which Trump apparently hadn’t heard of before Hurricane Helene.
Musk, for his part, seems psyched about the prospect of playing a role in the Trump administration. “The future is gonna be fantastic,” he said, as the electoral votes crept closer to 270. Though climate tech investor Kristin Ellis of Lowercarbon Capital did have one extra bit of perspective to add: