Ramanan Krishnamoorti, UH Chief Energy Officer and Aparajita Datta, UH Research Scholar
Conditions that may occur due to weather, investors, & emissions – the size of the word corresponds to the amount of … [+] events – comments submitted by members of Congress to the US Securities & The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Republican (high) & Democrats (below).
The progress made in the negotiations between the Democrats in the United States Senate on the climate bill has surprised many people and has recently brought to light the climate debate across the country. If the bill, also known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, passes through budget reconciliation, it could potentially reduce US emissions by 40% by 2030.
Despite the national security, economic and energy independence benefits the bill could bring, it has received no support from the Republican Party. Lawmakers from red states have remained unmoved on climate legislation for decades. Climate change is not new but the scale of legislative paralysis is. The right and the left are more diverse now than anywhere in the last 50 years. Consequently, climate change has become a prime example of “American exceptionalism”—the idea that the United States is different from other countries—in politics. Hyperpolarization threatens our way of life, our economy and our position as a global leader.
Several recurring questions arise from the current scenario. First, what are the limits of the powers of the executive, legislative and judicial branches? More recently, Republican arguments against executive action on climate change have been upheld by the conservative Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA, which limits the agency’s ability to control greenhouse gas emissions from energy plants. Interestingly, the view that it is Congress that should pass laws and allocate funding for climate action – not the president and federal agencies – appears to be shared by a majority of Americans (61% ). However, in Congress with a slim majority, what does this divide mean for policymaking, and is there a reasonable middle ground for climate change policy in the United States?
In March, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed new climate disclosure rules that would require publicly traded U.S. companies to quantify, record and disclose climate-related risks and financial impacts in statements and annual reports. The proposed duty aims to strengthen the confidence of investors by providing accurate information about the company’s financial health and risks in a transparent and continuous manner. Shortly thereafter, the SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, said in an interview that “climate disclosures are already happening, and investors are already using information about climate risk. But there is no uniform way of doing climate risk disclosure, that making it difficult for investors to make meaningful comparisons. Companies and investors alike would benefit from clear rules of the road. Our role is to bring consistency and comparability.”
But Gensler, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, faced immediate opposition from his Republican colleagues. SEC Chairman Hester Pierce objected to the proposed rules in a public statement titled “We are not the Securities and Exchange Commission – at least not yet.”
The SEC invited public comments on the proposed rules between March 21 and June 17, and more than 4,400 were submitted. We analyzed the comments using natural language processing (NLP) methods. Members of Congress submitted 14 comments, with 215 Republicans and 152 Democrats as signatories. We delve deeper into these comments using qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Analysis[1] made the most probable topics of the document as probability distributions. A brief look at the analysis seemed to show some overlap between Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Although, a closer look at words that are likely to appear together such as emissions, investors, climate, justice and the environment, revealed the different priorities of the parties. The words justice and the environment were not the most important topics in the submission of Republicans, while others show a special division on the issue.
The sentiment and tone of the Democrats’ submissions show they welcome and support the SEC’s efforts. However, they also proposed changes, citing that the rules are not enough to deal with the climate-related exhibition, especially the inclusion of climate advocacy and impactful activities. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, called the departure “dramatic” and a lost opportunity for the SEC.
In contrast, Republicans have argued that the SEC does not have the legal authority to issue the proposed regulations. The GOP argues that the new rules would violate the First Amendment, do not reflect rational decision-making and fail impartial review by the courts. . Both the U.S. House and Senate Republicans argued in their filings with the SEC that the SEC’s unelected regulators do not have policymaking power — elected members of Congress do.
Their views were reinforced by 24 Republican attorneys general in additional filings with the SEC, citing the final development of the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA and urged the SEC to waive the proposed regulations. Before the ruling, the SEC found a likely friend in the EPA. In a filing with the SEC, the EPA said it supports the proposed regulations and the use of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, and that the Commission has broad authority to issue disclosure requirements that are necessary or appropriate in the public interest or to protect investors.
One exception to this divisive policy was Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat serving in West Virginia. In a letter to Governor Gensler, Manchin followed the themes and sentiments expressed by congressional Republicans. Manchin stressed that he strongly believes that “the SEC has a duty and a responsibility to every American to protect their mission and prevent the opening of the American economy; however, that duty and That responsibility, unfortunately, becomes tainted when the Commission issues regulations that appear to politicize the process designed to assess the financial health and compliance of a public company.”
Looking at the same pollster, it’s surprising that the latest Pew Research Center analysis found that 82% of Republicans believe Biden’s climate policies are taking the country in the wrong direction, while 79% of Democrats do. they believe that the president is moving to the country. the right direction of climate change. The divide existed before Biden took office. A survey conducted by the University of Houston ahead of the 2020 presidential election found that most respondents are concerned about climate change and support emissions reductions, but the devil is in the details. While 96% of voters on the left are concerned about climate change, more than half of respondents (58%) on the right say the same. Although this gap may seem wide, the gap between voters on the right and the left has closed in recent years with increasing bipartisan support among voters for adopting carbon management to reduce climate change. What voters can’t agree on is how to classify carbs.
While Americans are often saddened by the loss of bipartisanship in Washington, D.C., most are willing [3] to condone democratic behavior in order to achieve their party’s political goals and reward the party over all else. . Political activism and the erosion of the democratic process come from this: Issues like climate change are framed as zero-sum games – what one gains, the other must lose. Therefore, we are left with problems that have never been solved. MPs and voters argue endlessly about the winners and losers of every proposed policy, with no room for neutrality.
On the other hand, the decision from the SEC’s reaction to the climate disclosure rules is clear. A new manifestation of a unique and irreconcilable partisan divide on key policy issues is evident in all branches of government. Voters and politicians have forgotten that when it comes to climate change, the collective goals of the electorate must be the same while the parties simultaneously move away from the ideological center. In the absence of bipartisan efforts to reach a reasonable middle ground, American isolation in addressing climate change is likely to continue and wild swings in the political pendulum are to be expected.
[1] Dirichlet’s Fuzzy Algorithm is an unsupervised learning algorithm that maps a number of user-specific topics shared by text documents into a probability distribution.
[2] The arbitrariness-or-restraint test outlined in the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA), which directs courts reviewing agency actions to strike down any rule they deem to be “arbitrary, capricious, in violation of common sense, or otherwise unlawful.”
[3] The study found that only 3.5% of American voters would vote for the candidate they prefer to punish democratic behavior.
Dr. Ramanan Krishnamoorti is the Dean of Energy at the University of Houston. Prior to his current position, Krishnamoorti served as interim vice president for research and technology transfer at UH and the UH System. During his tenure at the university, he served as chair of the UH Cullen College of Engineering’s chemical and biomolecular engineering department, research dean of engineering, professor of chemical and biological engineering with appointments as professor of petroleum engineering and professor of chemistry. . Dr. Krishnamoorti earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and a doctorate in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1994.
Aparajita Datta is a research scholar at UH Energy and a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science studying public policy and international relations. Her research focuses on policy extension and feedback analysis to improve energy equity and justice in low-income communities in the US Aparajita holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, India; and a master’s degree in energy management, and public policy from the University of Houston.
