Tom Steyer was recently asked by his biggest environmental supporter what his climate change policy was. His reported answer:
“Make polluters pay. Center environmental justice. Clean is cheap, [so] deploy clean energy everywhere.” And then one more line that we’ll get to momentarily.
It’s a good, if incomplete, approach. My question is: Do you really think that Becerra would disagree with any of that? It seems pretty similar to things he’s tried to do and proposed.
So now we get to the real difference between them — that last line:
“Potshots at Chevron and PG&E”
Uhhhh, potshots aren’t policy. They can be rabble-rousing (in either a good or a bad way) or they can be performative expressions of superiority. And yes, Becerra doesn’t do them much! (How can he defend being so nice!)
Well, Becerra has already said that he wants to complete the conversion from fossil fuels to renewables in the next 10-20 years. (The wide range there may be due margin of error may be due to technological advances versus MAGA obstructionism. So I don’t think that there’s much difference between TS and XB there.
The difference is that, by *steering away* from insult and demonizing, Becerra has a MUCH better chance of getting it done.
This is not because of cowardice or a “more flies with honey than vinegar” bromide. It’s a hard-nosed position that takes into account a consideration that Steyer seems unable to even imagine: how to get a complex and significant bill through an ACTUALLY sold-out legislature.
What Becerra really “needs,” then, is not so much Chevron itself but Legislature cooperation. It’s the Legislature that actually “needs Chevron.” And if a Governor goes in from the start swinging around a morning star and cracking open heads — the Legislature has thousands of ways to derail any progress. Most of them would survive that politically.
Steyer may think that he could just go in and run over them. He is thus both a sweet summer child and a dumb bunny. And we don’t have the time to wait for him to clamber up the learning curve.
Now moving on to PG&E: they also want things from the Legislature — continuation of a regional monopoly, indemnification for damage caused by wildfires, higher rates and fewer regulations, and more — but they also can benefit from something that can take away much of the sting: they could do *very well* in s stable and predictable emerging renewables-based transportation economy — as well as in other areas.
As with Big Oil, they have outsized influence with the members and committee chairs in the legislature who can derail pretty much anything they want to — and they do!
So it will take pretty deft steering and negotiation to get things past legislative blockages. Luckily, Becerra has the training, understands the art, and has maintained good relations WITHOUT having sold out.
He will sue the utility companies that he has to — but he doesn’t relish it. He will lead them towards a deal that will allow breaking up the electric utilities to a degree — but will let them know that the more (and earlier) they cooperate, the better deal they can get. And at some point he will put on the Corleone face and let obstructionist leaders know that if the governor becomes too unhappy he can provoke a mutiny in the pirate ship that is legislative leadership.
This ability to navigate legislative paths leads progressives to denounce Becerra as a conservative and a status quo candidate and a sellout. Because they mostly engage with others in their social circle, these beliefs rarely get challenged by people they respect. And they don’t seem to ask whether Steyer can get things past the legislative obstacles anywhere nearly as well as Becerra.
He can’t. But he, and they, may not realize it.
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