Newsom Risks Alienating Voters With Costly Climate Policies
COMMENTARY
The decision by Republicans in Congress to dump their own speaker for being too reasonable makes the entire GOP look unreasonable. But Republicans will regroup and continue to make their case to the American people that Democrats are out of touch with regular folks.
In rural Pennsylvania, where I grew up, it’s undeniable that Republicans have developed a stranglehold on peoples’ politics. Drive around where my family lives — and in small towns like it across America — and Trump signs abound.
Yet, the one stronghold Democrats still have with middle-class and blue-collar voters is with union families. This is my background, and I remain a proud Democrat.
The bond between working-class voters and Democrats is critical to President Joe Biden’s reelection.
It is also why former President Donald Trump recently skipped a Republican debate, to speak to workers in Michigan — ironically at a non-union shop — because autoworkers are striking in the state. Conservatives see an opportunity to divide working-class union voters and Biden. The wedge Republicans will use is to accuse Democrats as backing extreme energy and environmental policies that put blue-collar jobs at risk.
Which brings me to a recent decision by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign legislation, S.B. 253, that requires all companies operating in California with total revenues topping $1 billion, to report their total greenhouse gas emissions.
S.B. 253 requires large corporations to track their emissions, so that they can, over time, identify where they pollute the most and seek to reduce those climate-warming emissions. This sounds like a fair plan to help confront the existential threat of climate change. If that was the whole story, I could support this law.
Proponents of S.B. 253 claim that it won’t impact small- and medium-sized businesses, because of that billion-dollar revenue reporting threshold. But that is not true. S.B. 253 requires an impacted company to track its entire supply chain. Meaning, medium and small businesses will be affected if they are a supplier to one of the larger companies covered under S.B. 253. Hence, minority- and women-owned companies will be impacted by this new law.
Part of the problem for these smaller companies is that “Scope 3” emissions reporting requirements are included in S.B. 253.
Scope 3 encompasses emissions that are the result of activities from assets not owned or controlled by the company, but are the emissions released to build the parts or components a company needs to construct their final product. This will force many small- and medium-sized companies to spend large sums of money on these emissions-tracking requirements.
Or worse, it could steer the large companies away from working with any smaller businesses that cannot afford to comply with the emissions-tracking and auditing requirements of S.B. 253. This would be a massive blow to small- and medium-sized businesses and their workers.
California Democrats should also be concerned that the S.B. 253’s new emissions reporting mandates mean that impacted businesses will pass their reporting costs onto consumers.
The good news is that in Newsom’s note to lawmakers about his signing this legislation, the governor acknowledged his concerns about “the overall financial impact of this bill on businesses.”
In other words, he is urging regulators and lawmakers to identify ways to fix this law to ensure that it helps California businesses reduce carbon emissions without putting harmful financial pressures on companies operating in the state.
Newsom is a bright star in the Democratic Party. If he can get lawmakers and regulators to fix S.B. 253 so it does not hurt business, then it will go a long way to help his success as a leader for our nation.
Trish Reilly is a board member of Centrist Democrats of America and served as a chief of staff for a rural Pennsylvania congressman. She can be reached at [email protected].
