Arguments
Republican Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, a staunch Trump supporter who recently called the Biden administration’s attempts to limit fossil fuel emissions “maybe the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” represents an Ohio district whose bizarre shape has earned it the nickname “the duck.” Just north of the duck’s bill lies the district of Democrat Marcy Kaptur, a long, slender stretch of land along Lake Erie: “the snake on the lake,” as it’s often referred to.
Both districts appear frequently in lists of the nation’s most egregious examples of gerrymandering, a practice Ohioans voted to rein in in 2018. But the reforms put in place for the 2021 redistricting process haven’t worked quite as planned. Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, on November 20 signed into law a new congressional map that confers significant advantage to his party, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which gave the map a grade of F. Groups like the League of Women Voters of Ohio and National Redistricting Action Fund have filed lawsuits claiming that the redistricting commission violated the state Constitution.
Another organization suing the redistricting commission is the Ohio Environmental Council, a Columbus-based advocacy group. According to staff attorney Chris Tavenor, recent history has shown that the new maps will play a key role in shaping climate action in the state.
“Over the past 10 years we’ve had a supermajority legislature in Ohio pass bill after bill that short-circuits Ohio’s ability to fight climate change,” he said. ??These veto-proof Republican majorities are a direct result of harmful redistricting that has given the party a 64-35 majority in the Ohio House and a 25-8 majority in the Senate, although it averaged only 54% of votes in state elections over the past decade.
Redistricting vs. gerrymandering
Variations of this story are playing out across the U.S. this year as political maps are redrawn.
“Redistricting happens every 10 years, following the decennial census,” said Adam Podowitz-Thomas, senior legal strategist at the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. The goal is straightforward: As populations rise and fall over time in different parts of the country, political boundaries need to shift as well to ensure roughly equal representation per number of residents. But too often, the process devolves into a partisan power grab, with Democrats and Republicans both engaging in gerrymandering.
The term gerrymandering dates from 1812, when then-Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry signed a bill approving wildly distorted maps drawn to benefit his party. One of the new districts was said to resemble a salamander – or, as one contemporary wit described it, a “Gerry-mander.”
The practice reverberates throughout American political life. “What we know based on political science research is that gerrymandering distorts the voices that are heard most loudly by representatives. The drawing of lines can result in communities that have a coherent view on some particular issue not being able to go to a single legislator and have that voice heard,” said Podowitz-Thomas. “It also, I think, results in distortions in the partisanship and polarization of those that are elected.”
An anti-renewables agenda in Ohio
In Ohio, gerrymandering has enabled Republican legislators to ignore strong public support for clean energy.* In 2014, state officials passed a law mandating setbacks for wind farms that critics said would make new development cost-prohibitive. Five years later, the state passed House Bill 6: “the worst energy bill of the 21st century,” David Roberts wrote in a 2019 piece for Vox. The bill propped up aging coal plants while decimating the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards, ultimately leading to a Justice Department investigation into bribery and corruption.
More recently, Ohio Senate Bill 52 created a new layer of challenges for renewable energy projects by empowering county officials to determine the fate of proposed solar and wind farms, including banning them altogether. Fossil fuel developments face no such restrictions in the state.
As has occurred in many parts of the country, the Ohio legislature has also sought to limit the environmental ambitions of the state’s cities, whose voters and elected officials are reliably more liberal than those in surrounding regions. One bill prohibited municipalities from banning natural gas, even though no such ban had been enacted in the state; another banned taxes on plastic bags.
Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, a Democrat, believes that Senate Bill 52 falls into the punish-the-cities category. “Right now, Cincinnati is building the largest solar farm in America ever built by a city,” he said, with the aim of making municipal operations carbon-neutral. “It was in reaction to us doing that that [the Ohio Senate] passed a law that now says that if local governments like Cleveland or Columbus or Toledo wanted to follow suit and do something similar to us, they are now subject to a new law that allows small counties to tell farmers what they can and can’t do with their land.” Because the best land for wind and solar development tends to be in conservative rural areas, state senators reasoned local officials would be sympathetic to their agenda, Cranley said.
Messing with Texas
Similar scenarios are playing out elsewhere in the nation. In Texas, for instance, a majority of residents strongly support bold climate action,* but elected officials stand in its way. “This past [state] legislature, there wasn’t a single hearing on a climate change bill – well, on a bill to improve action on climate change,” said Luke Metzger, the executive director of advocacy group Environment Texas. “There were some hearings on bills to take away the rights of cities to tackle climate change, but no bills to proactively try and solve the problem.”
Metzger says he believes that allowing politicians to draw districts that virtually guarantee their own victory makes them less sensitive to constituent concerns and more susceptible to persuasion by powerful business interests – e.g., the oil and gas industry. Living in liberal Austin, he rarely takes the time to contact his representative, Roger Williams, a conservative Republican serving the sprawling, gerrymandered 25th Congressional District. Williams doesn’t need or expect his vote and has little incentive to take his concerns seriously. But corporations and trade groups devote extensive resources to winning politicians’ support on issues like energy policy.
“The big fossil fuel companies spend millions of dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying efforts and PR campaigns, and that ultimately will influence politicians quite significantly,” Metzger said.
Rethinking redistricting
While Ohio’s redistricting reforms have floundered, others have had more success. According to Podowitz-Thomas of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, states like California and Michigan have shown that they can increase fairness and transparency by actively engaging the public in well-designed citizen-led redistricting processes.
This year, he and his colleagues are watching Colorado closely as it transitions to a new redistricting process intended to eliminate partisan influence and maximize citizen participation.
According to Marco Dorado, the Colorado state director of anti-gerrymandering group All On The Line, the effort has been functioning essentially as intended. One example: The state’s two 2021 redistricting commissions – groups comprising average citizens (four registered Democrats, four registered Republicans, and four independents) rather than politicians, with all members selected through a rigorous, randomized process – opted to exceed the requirements for the number of public meetings held throughout the state.
Redistricting often most hurts those most hurting
Dorado said that redistricting reforms like these are vital for making progress on climate issues. “Ensuring that voters are able to choose who their elected representatives are and not having it be the other way around – having elected officials choose who their voters are – is a really critical component in ensuring that we’re able to address whatever challenges we’re going to face in the next decade, climate change being one,” he said.
When it comes to environmental issues like climate change, Podowitz-Thomas emphasized that the stakes for redistricting are particularly high for the people who face the most risk.
Across the nation, environmental justice communities are often split apart during redistricting, diminishing their ability to seek help from elected officials, he said. “They’re such a small percentage of any legislators’ district that it’s very easy for a legislator to wave them off and say, ‘Well, I don’t really care about this. You don’t really elect me anyway, so I’m just going to ignore your issues.’”
Podowitz-Thomas believes that unless the U.S. Senate modifies or eliminates the filibuster, state-level efforts like Colorado’s represent the best hope for allowing communities to make their voices heard on climate change and other pressing issues. And although some states lag behind others on redistricting reform, he’s optimistic about the future.
“I don’t want people to feel hopeless about this. There has been a lot of energy, a lot of focus from your average citizen that just wasn’t the case ten years ago,” he said. “I think folks showing up and speaking out does make a difference. It does put pressure on the folks that are drawing the lines to draw fairer districts.”
*Editor’s note: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication is publisher of this website.
Sarah Wesseler is an Ohio-based writer focusing on cities, culture, and climate change.
Tom Toro is a cartoonist and writer who has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010.
There is clearly no connection between sensible, practical and necessary methods to remedy human behavior in seeking solutions to climate and environmental problems, based on political affiliation or the assumed leverage of a majority constituency. People and groups working proactively on climate are doing so with no regard to their own political party affiliations. If Democrats were really better at this work than Republicans, progress would be significant because the Yale study back in 2012 showed that more people identifying as Democrats were delivering support to reducing fossil fuel consumption, but it's Republicans whom are buying the electric cars. What is needed is not support of a political constituency, rather the declarations and positive actions of dictators who, from scientists, know what has to be done. Consequently, nothing will be done. Humans are an outlaw species on planet Earth and will just have to try and pick up the pieces after the coming extinction event runs its course.
Swampfoxh,
It is possible to understand that "What is needed is not support of a political constituency, rather the declarations and positive actions of dictators who, from scientists, know what has to be done." is a misled belief.
Any type of leadership will work. The commonsense requirements is that the leadership (winners) all pursue increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful and aggressively act to rapidly end the harmful activity in "the least harmful way", with the political differences being different perspectives that create a diversity of effective ways to rapidly end the harm being done. An important understanding is that "perceptions of harm done by the ending of harmful activity" need to be restricted to concerns to ensure that everybody live at least a basic decent life - No Poverty. It is important to understand that it is not harmful for supposedly superior people to become less superior because harmful activity they benefited from is ended.
The key is to end the nonsense belief that any developed perceptions of prosperity deserve to be maintained as the harmful activity is ended. That legacy argument that excuses incredibly harmful things like oil extraction in California to continue because it "was initially permitted and therefore is grandfathered into being allowed to continue" has to be scrubbed from the system.
Sustainable activity by all of humanity is the only starting point that can be constantly continued or improved on by the development of better "also sustainable harmless" alternatives. Humanity has millions of years to enjoy this planet, so the accumulated impact of actions of each generation have to be essentially harmless.
The challenge of today is "getting to the starting point of all of humanity living sustainably, all people living decently, no harmful poverty". That means everyone learning and pursuing living in ways that are not harmful to others or the environment of the planet that is essential to all future life on this planet (a key point being the understanding that technology can be helpful, but is not essential to life). And the "wealthy and powerful" need to be required to be leaders of the correction of what has developed. The alternatives to that responsible leadership are ultimately disastrous for humanity.
The problem is the small portion of humanity who develop a liking for benefiting from being harmful. That small group have been in control of much of humanity since the earliest days. The evidence is growing that the growth of that type of "controlling people" has always been a harmful growing problem. It has now grown past the point of being able to be ignored or excused. And a growing number of people are realizing that ... including the gerrymandering types using their powers to prolong their ability to be harmful Winners who are just like the harmful dictators and populist pursuers of power.
Something has to be done. Hopefully it will be the Winning by responsible thoughtful people. The alternative is a growing disaster in the making. (btw, the likes of Trump owning a Tesla as one of their personal vehicles obviously does not represent their overall actions and impacts).
Swampfox. Your assertions are simply not correct. Numerous polling studies (eg Pew Research) find huge difference on climate issues between republicans and democrats, where republicans are generally more sceptical than democrats about the science, carbon taxes, and wind and solar power (although the gap is smaller for wind and solar power). A simple google search found Democrats far more likely to buy EVs than Republicans. It shouldn't be like this, but it is like this.
nigelj
As you like. Not being a Democrat or a Republican, I've no skin in this game. But looking up the "far more likely to buy elctric cars" is different than the evidence that the actual buyers fall into a social-economic category comfortably dominated by Republicans. Of course, that proves nothing with the actual polling question addressing political affiliation, which as I look back on it...didn't. So you have my mea culpa.
I don't see a connection between wealth and being harmful. I do see a connection between ignorance and bad conduct, including picking up your own trash and buying McDonald's hamburgers, etc. I think it risky to bottle up the "rich" into a handy "controlling people" group and flail at them until the masses turn and smite them, because since they are much less than 1% of the global population their "climate footprint" can't amount to much. "Climate footprint", seems to me, has nothing to do with socio-economic status, or power status (for that matter). It's behavior.
Swampfox @4 I couldn't find anything analysing whether democrats or republicans buy more electric cars.
Wealthy people do have more carbon emissions than lower income people. There are numerous studies for example:
"World's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%"
[Link]
"The statistics are startling. The world's wealthiest 10% were responsible for around half of global emissions in 2015, according to a 2020 report from Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute"
[Link]
However I dont see any point demonising / blaming the rich, and that won't change behaviour. It needs a bit of diplomacy and gentle cajoling.
[BL] Shortened links that were causing page formatting issues.
swampfoxh @4,
I did not say the wealthy were harmful. But, to be blunt, someone making-up that interpretation is understandable (making-up stuff is the refuge of those who resist learning).
I do say the wealthy need to be required to prove they deserve their status by being leaders, providing examples of living more sustainably and less harmfully than others who would be expected to aspire to be like the Leaders or develop to be superior to the current Leaders. Suggestions?
nigelj,
Many sources (potentially hundreds) confirm the understanding you present, that the richest portion of the global population is significantly higher harmfully impacting per-person than people who are less wealthy.
But it is important to understand that there is a differentiation within any "general group". Some of the richest, but likely not the majority, strive to live less harmfully than their peers, and less harmfully than those who are less wealthy, even though it admittedly is "a competitive disadvantage in the competition for perceptions of superiority" for them to do that (people like Al Gore can have lower impressions of wealth than their peers because of their choice to try to have less harmful impact).
The same can be said about the importance of differentiating within Republicans (some like Liz Cheney stand out positively, and many Republicans who have recently left politics, like Jeff Flake, stand out tragically), and Democrats (some like Joe Manchin stand out negatively).
My understanding is that there are harmful over-consuming people in almost every nation on the planet (a few Island nations and places like Bhutan may be exceptions to that). So it is even incorrect to target a nation or region of a nation or to excuse everyone in a low impacting region. The harmfully selfish deserve to be the targets. The more harmfully wealthy and powerful a person is the bigger a target for correction they deserve to be. And diplomacy and gentle cajoling are unlikely to influence the wealthiest and most powerful members of the harmfully selfish group. Reducing their ability to maintain their developed perceptions of superiority, with peer penalties like sanctions, are required to get them to be less harmful (revolutionary actions by the less fortunate has a history of not really working out as sustainable improvements and usually causes massive harm to the poorest.)
What can be pointed out is the total harmful impact of the harmfully selfish in any group or region or nation for comparison to other groups, always keeping in mind that the Total Group Impact is not equally attributable to its members. The highest harming portion of any group needs to be targeted for correction by the portion of that group that is able to effectively penalize them, because the threat of penalty can sometimes be enough to get the more harmful people to "learn to change their mind."