Climate, jobs, and growth: How coalitions powered Biden’s legislation to decarbonize america

In the midst of summer 2022, the Biden Administration and a broad coalition for climate action passed the IRA, the most significant climate bill in American history amid ongoing attacks on the country’s democracy and persistent climate change denialism. How did they do it? And what lessons did they build on to succeed? We spent the last year having conversations inside and outside Washington, with climate activists, union leaders, think tank experts, and legislators, to try to understand what led to the IRA’s success--and whether the lessons from the past decade might offer insights for other green movements in similarly challenging political contexts.

An unlikely victory in a fractured political landscape

In the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden ran for president on an ambitious platform that included passing significant climate legislation, specifically based on policy recommendations that emerged from extensive negotiations in the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force that he formed with his leading primary challenger, US Senator Bernie Sanders. The task force was intended to find common ground between Sanders’ progressive base and Biden’s primarily moderate-conservative backers inside the Democratic Party. Biden’s plan integrated many ideas from the original Green New Deal that progressive and leftist forces working with US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who co-chaired the task force, had already developed in 2019: $2 trillion for a decarbonized energy sector by 2035, major investments in public infrastructure and e-charging networks, support for affordable housing and environmental justice efforts, and a strong focus on well-paying, green jobs.

As we heard again and again from US partners, history loomed large over Biden’s climate ambitions: the US climate movement was scarred by the failures of Democratic predecessors Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to pass more modest climate legislation even though they had far more comfortable political majorities. Hoping to reconcile the country and bring free-market conservatives on board, Obama had made Republican Senator John McCain's cap-and-trade approach, as well as funding for carbon capture and storage (CCS), a pillar of his climate reform. But even the support of oil and gas companies could not bring Republicans to support it. While the legislation, the 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act, passed the Democratic-led House, it was never even brought to a vote in the Senate, where Republicans had vowed to block the bill through filibuster.

Over the ensuing decade, the American climate movement watched its political margins erode. With the rise of the Tea Party and Trumpism, climate change denialism became core to Republican identity. From 2009 until 2016, climate action was relegated to executive actions by a Democratic president (Obama), all of which could be easily undone by any Republican successor.

So when Biden took office in 2021 with a new, Democratic majority in control of both houses of Congress, the pressure to take fast, meaningful, transformative climate action was immense. Yet, the chances of passing such legislation remained slim: the Democratic majority in Congress was thin, giving outsized influence to conservative members of the caucus such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema; the economic situation was tense; and the GOP had become increasingly radical and obstructionist.

Despite these odds, Biden, and the broad US coalition driving climate action, succeeded. Today, the IRA has real potential to significantly decarbonize one of the largest industrialized nations in the world within a decade. It provides uncapped subsidies for industry and households, with the general rule that the greener and more labor-friendly the project, the higher the subsidy.

In our conversations over the past year, we distilled three lessons that were key to enabling this democratic victory – and that might prove equally useful for other green movements.

Lesson 1: The green transformation required a strong coalition of US climate, labor, and justice movements

Two important civil society players in the IRA negotiations were the BlueGreen Alliance (BGA) and the Green New Deal Network (GNDN). Reflecting on two decades of failed climate legislation, both organizations decided that successful climate action needed a base of support beyond the US environmental movement. Climate demands that came solely from Green actors, and viewed transformation only from an environmental perspective, had failed to win enough advocates to become a political priority. Bringing more people to the table, and integrating their concerns and priorities into an expanded climate agenda, became a key goal--one that BGA and GNDN pursued in different, compelling ways.

The BlueGreen Alliance focused on coalition-building for decarbonization and green jobs

The BlueGreen Alliance emerged out of the wreckage of Obama’s American Clean Energy and Security Act. Unions and environmental organizations had failed to agree during the bill’s negotiations – a disconnect that contributed to the effort’s collapse. In response, what began in 2006 as an exchange of ideas between The Sierra Club, one of the oldest conservation groups in the United States, and the United Steelworkers, a particularly traditional union, grew into a formal umbrella organization for environmental and trade union coalition-building. BlueGreen Alliance adopted the organizing principle that "we can no longer choose between good jobs and a clean environment – that the actions we take to create quality jobs and to protect working people and the environment must go hand-in-hand, (...) together, we will build a clean, thriving and fair economy."

Over the next decade, the BlueGreen Alliance grew to encompass 13 trade unions and environmental organizations, including influential players in both the labor and environmental movements, such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (BAC), as well the League of Conservation Voters and the Union of Concerned Scientists. The network proved resilient in challenging times, such as after the 2016 election, when trade union leaders struggled to understand why many of their members had joined the radicalized MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement.

Rather than seeking to address every issue important to the environmental movement, the Alliance strategically homed in on core areas of agreement between its members: above all, the need to rapidly decarbonize the economy while creating well-paying, green jobs. Without ignoring their differences, the members looked for creative ways to move forward together.

Precisely because it was clear to all those involved that the various organizations held different positions on many issues, instruments and rules were needed to protect trust in each other. The “no surprises” rule proved to be particularly valuable in this regard: BGA partners vowed to inform each other in advance before publicly taking positions that the other side did not share. In the past, this approach alone helped to ensure that disagreement did not have a lasting impact on the partnership. After the 2016 election, BGA organized a year of listening sessions with members of the industrial heartland’s white working class who had voted for Trump. Environmental activists participated alongside labor organizers, building relationships with a part of American society with which the environmental movement had rarely come into contact.

All of this happened in the background, in a protected setting away from the political circus, but it meant that when opportunity knocked, BGA was ready for public debate. During the Democratic primaries in 2020, every single candidate wanted to meet with the Alliance, and it became an increasingly influential and trusted partner. By the time of the IRA negotiations, the Alliance’s members were aligned on key demands. They wanted a bill that invested in good, clean jobs; increased access to those jobs for BIPOC, women, and young workers; and empowered workers, communities, and unions.

To achieve these goals, they lobbied successfully for conditionality of tax incentives for green technology on workforce development pathways, prevailing wage rates, and investment in so-called justice and energy communities. The demand, ultimately adopted in the IRA, meant that on top of a baseline tax credit that companies receive for deploying green technology, they get further tax credits by offering registered apprenticeships and good salaries, and investing in American communities suffering from environmental injustices or declining fossil fuel industries. BGA also launched advocacy campaigns, commissioned studies, and mobilized their members to support the IRA, all of which proved critical for the bill’s passing.

The Green New Deal Network connected racial and social justice movements with other key actors

The traditional American environmental organizations also lacked relationships with increasingly powerful racial justice movements and leftist labor organizations. Here, the Green New Deal Network (GNDN) proved crucial. Founded in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s call for “A Green New Deal,” the Network brought together 14 national organizations for what it called “a 50-state campaign.” It brought in labor organizers from major national unions, young climate activists from the Sunrise Movement, and traditional environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the US Climate Action Network, and connected them all with large, national Democratic organizations like MoveOn.

What set this coalition apart (and still does) is that it connected issues of social, racial, and environmental justice to the climate agenda. GNDN members were among the early supporters of a Green New Deal, guided by the observation that so-called frontline communities, the first to experience the impacts of climate change, are often forgotten by national climate policies. Members such as the SEIU – a national union representing healthcare and other service employees – highlighted the unique risks of climate change for its workers, who are overwhelmingly from communities of color. Drawing on lessons from the pandemic, SEIU understood that the climate crisis would hit its essential service workers, such as nurses and caregivers, particularly hard. By identifying these kinds of intersecting interests between climate, labor and justice movements, GNDN members built a new base of support for progressive green policies. That ensured, for example, that the topic of work in the care economy became a central part of the IRA negotiations.

Coalitions such as the BGA and the GNDN successfully cultivated a diverse member base by bridging the interests of individual constituencies, creating a powerful new force for climate action and social justice. Their advocacy was central to shaping and ultimately passing the IRA.

Lesson 2: A diverse coalition developed a powerful, positive narrative for climate action focused on hope, jobs, and economic prosperity.

Our conversations with members of the BlueGreen Alliance and the Green New Deal Network also revealed a concerted effort to develop a radically new framing for the decarbonization agenda, one that focused on opportunities for growth, prosperity, good jobs, and reinvestment in struggling communities outside the thriving urban centers. It is a narrative of empowerment that focuses on what people, communities, and states could do and gain from the transformation. It is distinctly not a narrative designed to evoke fear of the impending climate catastrophe, something that coalition members believe would only cause paralysis and helplessness in the face of global disaster.

As a result of these coalitions’ efforts, US progressive movements now frame climate protections in constructive terms of “building prosperity” and “providing security,” rather than in terms of dismantling, restricting, or reducing. In Biden’s words, “Folks, when I think about climate change, I think jobs.” Climate policy is touted as a tool to invest in America's working and middle class and to bring back well-paid industrial jobs to marginalized communities, especially in the Midwest and the South. For decades, the belief that environmental/climate protection and workers’ economic prosperity stood in conflict hampered efforts at large-scale decarbonization; Biden’s IRA is the first major climate bill to overcome that idea by building a climate coalition focused on good jobs and economic development.

The narrative at the core of the IRA also recognizes that US workers are more diverse than ever, and that communities of color have historically been the hardest hit by environmental pollution, while benefiting the least from economic prosperity. Because of the diverse coalitions driving the IRA agenda, it is also the first climate bill to put environmental and racial justice at its core.

Lesson 3: Implementation can only work if there has already been deep, grassroots organizing in local communities to build support from the bottom up and outside of traditional climate groups.

To grasp the full impact and potential of the IRA, we left Washington, DC, and traveled to regions of the United States that have been particularly affected by economic structural change in recent decades –places such as South Bend, Indiana, once a prosperous automotive manufacturing and industrial center. The city has seen its economy and population decline as auto manufacturing moved abroad. The loss of the Studebaker automotive company and good union jobs left a large hole in the social fabric of the town. Today, vacant lots dot the streets, the radical right has gained a foothold in the surrounding suburbs, and young people move away in droves. Things started to change when Pete Buttigieg became mayor, and started investing heavily in city infrastructure, and proposed the South Bend Carbon Neutral 2050 Plan, right before he went on to run for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 2020. Local initiatives laid the groundwork to implement these developments, and continue to play a decisive role in creating support for and participation in a large-scale green transformation.

A standout example is a community nonprofit called EnFocus, which has made it its mission to keep local talent in the region. Through a fellowship program, recent college graduates are matched with local partners and develop projects designed to make South Bend more resilient – against climate change, economic transformation, and social, racial, and environmental injustices. The organization has launched city government-funded programs to increase tree coverage in the city (particularly in poorer neighborhoods) and worked with local small businesses and unions to design programs to retrain workers to install clean energy infrastructure (e.g. heat pumps or solar systems). The model has proven to work well over the past 10 years, with hundreds of fellows carrying out a host of climate resilience and justice projects for which the local government lacks capacity. Now, EnFocus is central to the IRA’s local implementation, translating the complex, sprawling body of policies into concrete opportunities for South Bend’s residents, businesses, and government to decarbonize and create good, green jobs.

Another local organization in South Bend, Near Northwest Neighborhood Inc. (NNN), works to make good, affordable housing available, while also building a climate-resilient neighborhood. Through community organizing, NNN works to foster relationships and engagement in improving the neighborhood. The strategy is a highly local version of BGA’s strategy of trust- and relationship-building as the basis for change: in the Near Northwest neighborhood, it has created a sense of trust, solidarity, and shared mission, and provided a basis for hard conversations about coming changes and existing economic, social, racial, and environmental injustices.

South Bend’s Office of Sustainability, though operating with a small team and budget, manages to have a big impact by relying on these strong community networks and ties. Perhaps the most impressive example of this community-based, bottom-up approach is their Climate Action Ambassador Network. This diverse set of community leaders from across South Bend takes on the mission of going into their communities and nurturing conversations about climate change by starting with people’s lived experiences, worries, and ideas. These conversations, as well as surveys and town hall meetings, formed the basis for South Bend’s new Climate Action Plan. This way, building climate policy and public support go hand in hand, improving both in the process.

In our visits, we saw the critical role that these hyper-local initiatives have played in building grassroots support for a green agenda, especially in regions of the country where the political atmosphere trends to the right. The above initiatives, and many like them, are long-term efforts that have created meaningful local constituencies with a feeling of empowerment and ownership over a just green transition, while also helping to train the workforce that will implement it.

Conclusion

There are plenty of reasons to criticize the IRA: its concessions on new oil and gas permitting; its tech-optimistic support for zero-carbon – but not necessarily green – technologies such as carbon capture and storage; or even its narrow focus on decarbonization over broader environmental concerns. The IRA does not initiate cultural change (and does not even address it) – changes such as in consumer habits, mobility patterns, or food production. Those will not change because of the IRA alone. Certainly, its incentive-driven approach designed to get businesses to spur private investment in the green transition in no way challenges the growth paradigm.

And yet, one year out, the broader paradigm shift that the IRA has created in the American climate movement is remarkable. It has demonstrated the transformative effect that diverse coalitions can have in advancing a green agenda. It has launched a persuasive and hopeful new narrative that a carbon-free future does not come at the cost of jobs and wellbeing – in fact, to the contrary. It has created a tremendous momentum for green technologies and businesses. And it has successfully built on decades of local, grassroots efforts laying the groundwork for a large-scale green transition to foster broad support.

Perhaps most importantly, it has reaffirmed many Americans’ belief that their government can develop real solutions to solve society’s most difficult problems and to address their everyday challenges. In a time when so many Americans are losing faith in democracy, that’s an achievement worth celebrating.