POLITICO: ‘Be realistic’: Democrats’ new approach to Trump on climate change – ‘Blue states grappling with voters’ concerns over high electricity & gas prices’

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/28/democrats-trump-climate-change-00200816

Even before President Donald Trump started dismantling the regulations and incentives that were meant to cut planet-warming pollution, blue states were grappling with their own voters’ concerns over high electricity and gas prices.

Taken together, the dynamics threaten the success of Democratic officials to aggressively fight Trump’s agenda and save their own climate goals.

“The public is exhausted,” said New York Assemblymember John McDonald, a Democrat from the Albany area. “At the end of the day, they don’t want to see their bills go up. We have to be sensitive to that.”

Democrat-led states have responded with an acknowledgment that they may not be the bulwark against federal climate rollbacks that they were during Trump’s first term.

“We should not surrender because of the change in Washington, but we have to be realistic that we’re not going to have a federal partner,” McDonald said.

Democratic politicians’ wariness of public backlash to the high consumer costs of the clean energy transition was evident before Trump won. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has warned of her state’s climate law’s effect on home heating bills and prices at the pump, emphasizing it was passed before she took office.

“What is the cost? I can’t do things without knowing the cost on consumers and either educating them that this is the way to go because it’s good for the future or just making it go a little bit slower,” she said over the summer about New York’s efforts to transition to clean energy. “The goals are still worthy — but we have to think about the collateral damage.”

Now, many of the same states that enacted ambitious emissions reduction goals are balking at carrying out the far-reaching measures needed to meet them as Trump pursues the same playbook this time around.

Hochul announced this month she would no longer finalize a landmark pollution pricing and climate funding program this year as originally promised. Maryland is delaying action on a similar program, and Vermont also looks poised to jettison an effort to fund home electrification by charging more for heating fuels after bruising losses for Democrats in the Legislature.

Canada is dealing with a conservative offensive against its carbon tax, too. The policy has fallen so far out of vogue north of the U.S. border that most Liberal contenders vying to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister in March are walking back their support for the federal price on carbon. And even California is pushing back reauthorization of its emissions cap, the nation’s first.

The latest setbacks reflect Democrats’ decadeslong struggle to navigate the balance between climate action and the shorter-term economic interests of their voters.

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