A True Abundance Agenda for Democrats

Democrats today are doing all they can to identify a path back from the political wilderness in which they are floundering. Finding themselves out of power, they need a new narrative that will bring independents and even some moderate Republicans back into the fold, all while energizing their base.

A theme that is emerging among prominent influencers on the left is an “abundance” agenda, with the best example being the aptly titled Abundance by New York Times’ opinion columnist Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, a staff writer at The Atlantic. They argue that for the left to regain its footing and political saliency, it needs to adopt a platform around delivering abundance to the American people, by which they mean a vision for government that builds and timely delivers infrastructure that people crave such as more affordable housing, clean energy and mass transit.

This argument is savvy insofar as people across the political spectrum clearly want a government that provides material wellbeing in an efficient way.  But the concept of abundance being advanced is too constrained and is predicated on a weakening of bedrock environmental laws that voters on both sides of the aisle will vociferously reject.

At the core of the abundance argument is a focus on the built environment, with a key metric being construction projects.  For instance, Klein and Thompson wax poetic in their book about the need to facilitate a massive build-out of wind and solar energy projects to combat climate change which would cover an area roughly equal to the landmass of Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island and Tennessee. To achieve such results in the immediate term, the authors assert that Democrats must lead efforts to lessen the regulatory processes that lead to project delays and increased costs.

What’s missing entirely from this vision, however, is an acknowledgement of the nation’s natural abundance consisting of wildlife, forests, wetlands, farmlands and other open spaces, and how hundreds of thousands of square miles of these irreplaceable places will be lost to development if we are not thoughtful and deliberate about where and how we build. Likewise, as is so often the case among today’s thought-leaders on the left, there is no recognition of the species extinction crisis bearing down on the nation and the central role of rampant wildlife habitat loss in worsening that crisis. To the contrary, laws designed to protect wildlife and their habitat – such as the Endangered Species Act – are maligned and characterized as an impediment to solving the only real environmental crisis, i.e., climate change. Such arguments are particularly dangerous given “permitting reform” legislation and wholesale attacks on the ESA now moving through the Republican-led Congress, often under the guise of “modernizing” the law.

Given the deep support for the ESA among the electorate, Democrats act at their peril if they offer it as a sacrificial lamb. Bipartisan, nationwide research this year by an independent pollster commissioned by Defenders of Wildlife reveals that 95% of voters support the ESA and 62% strongly support it. Over half of voters think the law should be strengthened, and another quarter say the current protections are about right. Hardly any think the law should be weakened. While support is strongest among Democrats, Republicans do not want to see the law weakened either. In short, Americans of all political stripes understand that taking care of our wildlife is taking care of ourselves and that there is value in saving every species.

Importantly, voters oppose reducing the ESA’s review process for development projects, and they specifically oppose removing protections for wildlife to permit energy development. Democrats should celebrate this voter resolve given the Trump administration’s expressed determination to expedite fossil fuel projects by making a mockery of the environmental reviews required by federal statutes, including the ESA. And Democrats should be doubly reluctant to cut a deal to loosen permitting requirements in the name of facilitating renewable energy infrastructure.  After all, the Trump administration has made abundantly clear that it will create endless impediments to clean energy projects and stop them in their tracks for the next four years regardless of what Congress says.

Now is not the time for Democrats to join in weakening or eviscerating bedrock environmental laws in the name of delivering so-called abundance to Americans.  Instead, they need to make clear that they remain champions of the nation’s natural infrastructure and not only infrastructure made of concrete, steel and glass.  This requires that they continue to vigorously defend laws such as the ESA, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, which have balanced the needs of people and nature for more than 50 years. Anything less will only cause more confusion among voters about what Democrats stand for and send the party further into the political wilderness.