The Trump Administration’s “break stuff” governance model has unleashed a deluge of widely reported climate setbacks. In July, congressional Republicans gutted the landmark clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to help pay for the President’s tax breaks for the wealthy. Meanwhile, the Administration continues to test legal boundaries in its attempts to freeze clean energy funding, roll back greenhouse gas regulations, and “stop the enforcement” of states’ climate laws.

A less reported casualty of this onslaught is the resulting dysphoria for the U.S. climate movement and popular climate policy. The network of organizers and wonks that recently birthed the largest climate investment in U.S. history now finds itself without a clear offensive strategy.

Many climate advocates are rightly focused on defense—working indefatigably to extinguish the flames that Trump’s Cabinet has ignited in our climate policy edifice. But we also need architects to start sketching what we’ll build in the ashes. It was during the first Trump Administration that we crafted the vision and policy framework that led to the IRA. And it is now that we must start laying the foundation for the next federal governing moment.

The blueprints for what comes next may seem hazy. But one thing is clear: We need to build a climate agenda written not about impacted workers and communities, but by them.

Everything Bagels Make Tasty Popular Climate Policy

A starting point for crafting the next wave of climate policies is to take stock of our successes and missteps in building the last one. What lessons can we glean from our collective work during the first Trump Administration to create the policy, organizing, and narrative architecture that helped pave the way for President Biden’s signature climate law?

From 2018 to 2020, a motley mix of policymakers, unions, climate organizations, and racial, economic, and environmental justice groups forged the strategy that would come to define the IRA: uniting climate, jobs, and justice goals. The underlying theory was clear and compelling. Tackling the climate crisis would require trillions of dollars in clean energy investments, which, properly guided, could flow into good union jobs and communities that have endured decades of disinvestment.

Read the full article about popular climate policy and worker power by Ben Beachy at Democracy Journal.