Evoking Biden, Sen. Tom Carper says bipartisanship isn't dead

Evoking Biden, Sen. Tom Carper says bipartisanship isn't dead

President Biden and Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) have a lot in common.

For one thing, they're both Democrats who split time between Washington and Delaware. But more fundamentally, they're both creatures of the Senate who have an unshakable faith in bipartisanship, even in a politically polarized era.

In 2020, Biden campaigned on a theme of “unity” and predicted that Republicans would have an “epiphany” about working with Democrats once Donald Trump left the White House. On Thursday, the president again appealed for unity and called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a “man of honor” during the National Prayer Breakfast.

Carper, who overlapped with Biden in the Senate, has similarly sought to involve Republicans when crafting major pieces of environmental legislation as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. He meets with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), the panel's ranking member, once a week and considers her a close friend. 

To some critics, Biden's enduring belief in bipartisanship seems naïve and divorced from political realities. But Carper's record atop the powerful environmental panel, which has unanimously passed a major bipartisan highway bill and water bill, suggests that the approach can pay off.

The Climate 202 sat down with Carper on the one-year anniversary of his time leading the committee in a 50-50 Senate to discuss his philosophy on compromise, what's next for Democrats' stalled climate package, and why Biden calls him “Tommy.”

‘All politics is personal’

Shortly after taking office, Biden asked Carper to jumpstart work on infrastructure legislation in the Environment and Public Works Committee that could ultimately pass the Senate, despite Democrats' razor-thin majority. 

When crafting the highway bill, Carper and Capito reached out to members of both parties on the committee "to try to really understand their priorities,” Carper recalled. “We asked them, ‘What do you support? What do you oppose?’”

Led by Capito, Republicans secured provisions aimed at streamlining the permitting process for large infrastructure projects. And led by Carper, Democrats secured the first-ever climate title in a highway bill, which allocated $7.5 billion to build a national network of electric vehicle charging stations.

The highway bill ended up forming the centerpiece of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure measure that Biden signed into law in November, delivering the president a crucial bipartisan win on an issue that had eluded Trump. (Remember all of those “Infrastructure Weeks”?)

Carper credited the achievement in part to the personal outreach: “Joe Biden likes to say all politics is personal. I agree.”

The Baucus-Grassley model

Carper said he has long admired the alliance that endured for more than a decade between former Democratic senator Max Baucus (Mont.) and Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) on the Senate Finance Committee. They reportedly met once a week to hash out disagreements.

“I always thought that if I got to be chairman of a committee, I would steal that idea,” Carper said. “So when Shelley and I became co-leads of the EPW Committee a year ago, I told her I wanted to take the Baucus-Grassley model."

(Carper calls Capito “Shelley,” just as Biden has called him “Tommy" since his time in the Delaware governor's mansion. Carper said the nickname used to drive his staff crazy, to which he would reply, "Look, [Biden] has two brothers, Frankie and Jimmy. It’s okay for him to call me Tommy.")

HFCs

Besides Capito, Carper has also teamed up with Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) to introduce legislation aimed at phasing out a class of potent planet-warming chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.

The legislation, which Congress approved last year, lays the groundwork for the United States to sign on to the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty to replace the chemicals with safer alternatives. It was backed by an unusual coalition of business and environmental groups.

On HFCs, “there's a great bond we have cutting through Democrats, Republicans, business interests and environmentalists,” said Carper, who is still pushing for the Senate to ratify the Kigali Amendment.

Manchin and the methane fee

In addition to negotiating with Republicans, Carper has worked to address concerns from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W-Va.) about a central climate provision in Democrats' Build Back Better bill: a fee on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can leak from oil and gas wells. 

Even though Build Back Better is now stalled in the Senate, Carper said that forging a compromise on the methane fee with Manchin was “a really positive, productive process.”

“As somebody who spent a lot of formative early years in West Virginia, I have great affection for the place,” he said. “And I think Joe and his staff understand that at the end of the day, we want to do the right thing for West Virginia. We also want to do the right thing for Delaware, which is the lowest-lying state in America.”

On the Hill

Sarah Bloom Raskin navigated climate questions at her confirmation hearing

Sarah Bloom Raskin, Biden’s pick to be the Federal Reserve’s top banking cop, faced tough questions from Republicans wary of her longtime focus on climate when she appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, The Washington Post’s Rachel Siegel reports. 

The top Republican on the Banking Committee, Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.), asserted that “Ms. Raskin’s proposals would have devastating consequences not just for energy workers, but also consumers, who’d pay much more for energy."

In an exchange with Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), Raskin was asked about a New York Times opinion column from May 2020, in which she criticized the Fed for providing federal pandemic aid to oil and gas companies. Raskin defended the column, saying it was important to differentiate the central bank's emergency lending program from its oversight of Wall Street banks.

“This was a special program, set up by the Cares Act by the Congress, that appropriated taxpayer money. This was an issue quite unlike the issue of supervision,” Raskin said. “That article did not have to do with supervision and regulation.”

Corporate commitments

Shell sees huge rebound in full-year profit, but pressure to take climate action could halt growth

The oil company Shell on Thursday posted adjusted earnings of $19.29 billion for 2021, a stark contrast to its profit of $4.85 billion in 2020, CNBC’s Sam Meredith reports. Global demand in the oil and gas industry is only now beginning to recover amid the pandemic, but with pressure mounting for large companies to take more climate action, the ground could shake again. 

Shell, which has outlined steps to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, is facing pressure from activists and shareholders who say the oil giant’s plans are not aligned with the Paris agreement. Last year, a Dutch court ruled that Shell needed to take a more hard-line approach to driving down its carbon emissions to instead reach a 45 percent reduction by 2030. Shell has since appealed the ruling. 

In an effort to reassure investors that it can remain on stable footing, the company announced it will implement an $8.5 billion share buyback program in the first half of 2022 and said it expects to increase dividends by 4 percent in the first quarter.

Extreme events

Major winter storm moves east while over 250,000 remain without power

Tens of thousands of customers remained without power Thursday night as freezing rain, snow and sleet fell in Midwestern and Southern states, The Post’s Matthew Capucci, Paulina Firozi, Annabelle Timsit and Jason Samenow report. The outages were mostly because of ice accumulation and strong winds. 

The National Weather Service warned of hazardous road conditions throughout the affected areas, which it said would probably remain well below freezing for at least the next couple of days. In Kentucky, some of the areas hit hardest by ice and power outages Thursday were among the same devastated by a series of tornadoes in December. 

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) backtracked on a previous statement last fall that the “lights will stay on,” and Wednesday said that “no one can guarantee” there would not be power outages during the first major test of the state's power grid a year after a historic freeze killed hundreds and left millions without power. Last year, some Republican lawmakers falsely blamed the blackouts on frozen wind turbines, rather than on the failure of Texas’s power plant and grid operators. 

Pressure points

Tackling methane 'ultra emitters' could be a quick climate solution

A study published in the journal Science on Thursday used methane-detecting satellites to target unidentified “super emitters” around the globe and concluded that eliminating those sources could be a low-cost, high-impact step toward preventing the worst effects of climate change, our colleague Brady Dennis reports. 

Researchers involved in the study determined that super-emitting events make up 8 to 12 percent of global methane emissions from oil and gas operations, which are not typically included in greenhouse gas inventories. Quelling such colossal events, the study said, could be as simple and cost-effective as replacing damaged pipelines or tightening up shoddy maintenance practices, but would have clear climate and health benefits. 

Still, smaller methane sources tend to be more persistent and represent the bulk of emissions. Experts say that while cracking down on the ultra-emitters is a small piece of a puzzle, opportunities to address them should only grow as satellite technology expands.

Viral

We considered saying something here about how climate change can increase snowfall, but honestly, we just thought this was a funny tweet. 😂

Thanks for reading!