A year after President Donald Trump was elected, Robinson Meyer, a staff writer for the Atlantic, observed that, although Democrats had become the party of climate action, they didn’t seem to have a clear plan for what to actually do about the problem. “This is true at almost every level of the policymaking process,” Meyer wrote. The party “does not have a consensus bill on the issue waiting in the wings; it does not have a shared vision for what that bill could look like; and it does not have a guiding slogan—like ‘Medicare for all’—to express how it wants to stop global warming.”
Three years later, Democrats have a slogan. And they have a plan. Or, more accurately, they have many plans, all organized around similar themes. The party’s rhetoric about climate change remains apocalyptic and its solutions are sweeping. But in important ways—from a shift away from carbon pricing toward public investment, to a new openness to nuclear energy and carbon capture—the evolving Democratic climate agenda represents a significant break from the past, one that is more pragmatic than the rhetoric often suggests.
