A group of veterans-turned-lawmakers coalescing around climate action makes all the sense in the world, but it is hard to believe that Elected Officials to Protect America (EOPA) exists within the chaos of our current political landscape. For starters, the network is bipartisan – and I don’t mean “bipartisan” in the beltway vernacular that translates roughly to “carrying water for corporate America.”
Last month, the EOPA hosted the Climate Emergency & Energy Security Summit to commend the package of climate-related federal investments that quite nearly never was. Despite living in the D.C. metro area for the past four years, I consider myself anything but a Washington Insider. I reasoned, however, that federal progress on climate was as good a reason as any to make my first trip to the Department of Energy.
There’s a lot to like about the Inflation Reduction Act or IRA (Manchin-inspired name change and its corresponding acronym not included). The Climate Summit’s agenda prominently featured a briefing from White House officials, and I hoped they would detail innovative provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act like:
The women representing the White House in the cell-signal-devoid DoE basement auditorium offered no formal comments on any of the items above; my fellow attendees, however, did not share in my disappointment. Instead, the local elected officials in the audience spotted an opportunity to advocate for their communities’ overlooked needs, and the time set aside for a briefing from government’s highest office quickly transformed into an ad hoc Town Hall meeting.
The mayor from Piedmont, CA was brave enough to speak first, advocating earnestly for heat pumps in her municipality’s public swimming pool before the federal grants earmarked for California were inevitably consumed by influential neighboring cities, as had been the case with the construction of SFO. Similar calls for assistance followed, ending with New Mexico Rep. Roger Montoya asking how he could ensure his constituents in towns like Mora, with an average household income of $22,500, received financial assistance desperately needed to rebuild after wildfires ravaged 318,000 acres in May.
While bearing witness to the enormity of community needs dampened any optimism I had about federal support for climate action, the courage displayed by local leaders fighting for communities accustomed to being overlooked offered hope in the small-d-democratic experiment that is the United States. Despite all odds and logic to the contrary, there remain individuals willing to lead at the local level and fight for fairness on behalf of their constituents.
These efforts aren’t glamorous. They won’t capture the attention of TV’s talking heads because they won’t fuel the culture wars that draw eyeballs and ad dollars. They are slow – incremental and arduous, one foot in front of the other, day after day – arriving with the deliberation that lasting change requires. The worthiest victories aren’t won by celebrities on the national stage or by CEOs atop Fortune 500 companies; they are won by regular people with the audacity to reimagine reality, go against the grain, and start the scary process of trying.
- Tara Doyle, Senior Vice President of Business Development & Strategic Marketing, Boston Common Asset Management
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