Climate Experts Urge Democrats to Embrace 'Green Economic Populism' for 2028
"We must replace the Prius economy with one focused on affordable green housing, higher wages, cheap clean energy, lower commuting costs, and expanded mass transit. States, cities, and towns can get the ball rolling."
Amid reflections on Democrats' November losses and fears of what the Republican-controlled federal government will mean for economic justice and climate chaos, a pair of professors on Tuesday published a New York Timesopinion piece connecting future U.S. elections, the transition away from fossil fuels, and working people's priorities.
"If Democrats want to win voters with policies that avert catastrophic climate change, they need to bring immediate, material benefits to the working class," Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos wrote in the Times. "That means folding climate policies into an agenda that tackles the cost-of-living crisis. This is green economic populism."
Cohen, an assistant professor of sociology and director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative at the University of California, Berkeley, explained on social media that the piece with Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College, emerged from a project with Climate & Community Institute "articulating the links between climate crisis, economic struggles, and the imperative to end genocide and forever wars."
If we're going to secure a livable future, cities and states need to tether the green economy to changes that everyone can see and touch, not just the 1%. Thanks @aldasky.bsky.social and @triofrancos.bsky.social for making the case and getting it out on a big platform
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— Alex Miller ( @notamiller.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Their essay followed Republicans taking control of both chambers of Congress on Friday and came less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House. Cohen and Riofrancos made the case that "even under Mr. Trump, progressives can build momentum around this agenda" at the local level while planning for the future.
Biden campaigned as a "climate president" during the 2020 cycle. His major legislative achievements on that front—the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—were watered down due to narrow congressional majorities and obstructionist right-wing Democrats who later left the party.
"The problem with the Inflation Reduction Act was that it was an awkward compromise between neoliberal, market-based policy and government intervention. By mobilizing public investment through tax credits and other incentives, it effectively asked companies and affluent consumers to lead the transition," Cohen and Riofrancos wrote, citing statistics on electric vehicle purchases, job creation, and rooftop solar.
Gustavo Gordillo of the Democratic Socialist of America's New York City chapter called that an "excellent description of the IRA, and by extension current Democratic Party orthodoxy."
The professors continued:
The law's all-of-the-above approach also supports oil and gas extraction. Under Mr. Biden, the United States cemented its status as the world's largest oil producer.
All told, this looks less like an equitable green transition than what we call a Prius economy—a hybrid model of green energy and fossil fuels, wedged together side by side. Like hybrid cars, which can't run on electricity alone, the Prius economy yields some climate progress while holding back more ambitious change. And it puts the burden of transforming sprawling energy infrastructures onto companies' balance sheets and consumers' bank accounts.
While acknowledging the long-term benefits of the IRA's investments, Cohen and Riofrancos stressed that securing the political support needed to achieve the swift, sweeping reforms that scientists say are necessary for a livable future will require "a green economic populism that helps voters more easily get from one paycheck to the next."
Working people, held back by limited wage growth, face high prices for food, housing, transportation, and utilities—and fossil fuel-driven climate breakdown exacerbates those costs. According to the professors: "We must replace the Prius economy with one focused on affordable green housing, higher wages, cheap clean energy, lower commuting costs, and expanded mass transit. States, cities, and towns can get the ball rolling."
The pair highlighted recent examples at the local and state level, including: tribe-owned companies' development of renewable energy; New York City's rezoning policy and rent regulations; New York state's Build Public Renewables Act; Pennsylvania's Whole Homes Repair program; Illinois' restrictions on utility shutoffs during extreme heat; and California's funding for electric vehicle chargers.
"To be sure, local governments' role is relatively limited. Some of their best policies depend on federal funds, which may be cut under the Trump administration," they noted. "Still, local governments can help fold green economic populism into a broader agenda for economic security—from a $17 minimum wage floor to universal health insurance to universal prekindergarten and affordable childcare. Ideally, governments would coordinate countrywide, as some have done around protecting undocumented migrants and abortion access. If progressives win a national governing coalition for these ideas in 2028, they can hit the ground running."
Tying the climate emergency to the economic concerns of working people is not new—for example, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) first introduced a Green New Deal resolution in Congress in 2019 and the Green Party was campaigning on the concept years earlier—but there is an urgency in the current moment, in the wake of the hottest year on record and the November victory of Big Oil-backed Trump.
The essay came as political observers as well as critics and members of the Democratic Party—including Ocasio-Cortez—are urging leadership to learn from losses in the last cycle. Based on dozens of national surveys of likely voters, the left-leaning think tank Data for Progress concluded in December that "by branding itself as an active party of economic populism that fights for needed changes for the working class the Democratic Party can put itself in a position to regain the support of the voters it lost in 2024."
That potential path has some right-wingers scared. Victoria Coates, a former Trump adviser who is now a vice president at the Heritage Foundation, shared Cohen and Riofrancos' essay on social media Tuesday and said, "Thank heavens the hands of the radical environmentalists have been removed from the levers of power but this should serve as a cautionary tale of what they intend to do if reelected."
