In 2024 U.S. Presidential Race, Here’s Climate Policy Outlook
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As the third heaviest-polluting country in the global climate crisis, the stakes are high in the U.S. for the 2024 presidential election.
Climate risks are materializing nearly everywhere, be it floods in Libya, wildfires in Maui or hurricanes in Florida. The apparel industry has borne witness to the reality that $65 billion worth of apparel exports are at risk as value chains and, more importantly, the garment workforce is strained by severe heat and flooding.
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Climate agenda — as it stands
Consumer awareness has stoked sustainability. “Young people will force candidates to make climate a top campaign issue; however, whether climate takes center stage throughout the election cycle will depend on the urgency of other issues when voters go to the polls,” said Kenya Wiley, founder at Fashion Law and Social Justice and policy professor at Georgetown University’s fashion law and social justice program.
“President [Joe] Biden has moved an ambitious environmental agenda during his first two years in office and he’ll campaign on his record,” she continued. “There’s the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law with EPA funding for recycling, reuse and waste prevention programs and the Inflation Reduction Act. President Biden also announced the American Climate Corps program for young people during Climate Week — prioritizing emissions reductions, sustainable agriculture and water conservation. These are all key areas for reducing fashion’s environmental footprint.” Wiley said environmental lawyer and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will continue to make environmental policy a key campaign issue, and thus, “hold the other candidates accountable to discuss their climate platforms.”
Where industries stack up
A lot is riding on a green transition. An executive in the clean energy and climate space, who spoke on background so as not to conflate his views with his workplace, said a Biden administration is “important for [circularity], but not the end-all, be-all.”
Circularity policy is “coalescing,” he said. Textile talk has done a 180-degree turn from a year ago, with lawmakers now much more clued in on apparel’s impact. Success may mean a multipronged approach or “integrated advocacy” starting with the federal level.
He reassured a diplomatic consensus: all climate appeals must be bipartisan. If Donald Trump were reelected, big things to look at would included implementation — rather than appeal — of the IRA (though the Paris Agreement is less safe, he countered). The IRA has “too much of an economic interest to be repealed outright,” he said. Other key mechanisms to watch involve the “apparatus around permitting reform.” This includes pipelines but also the approach to offshore wind, solar farms, hydrogen access and the like. Consumer price increases will play a factor in a green future. After all, electric vehicles and solar panels require costly precious metals and a mine takes 10 years to build.
Many existing systems are ripe for reform. A health care professional with climate expertise said rather than climate policy shaping the next election, climate policy’s fate will be shaped by the 2024 election. Today, climate policy remains stuck in divided waters which is “disappointing,” in her words, given that severe weather events fuel public health crises.
“Our health systems need resiliency and need to decarbonize,” she said. Not unlike fashion or any other industry, healthcare has relied upon voluntary commitments to track indirect supply chain or Scope 3 emissions. By 2020 estimates from researchers at Northeastern and Yale, 82 percent of a hospital’s footprint lies upstream in procurement activities. Unified purchasing commitments are something the health care sector expects to see at COP28 — but less so on the presidential debate stage.
Though the source commends progress made with the IRA and new offices set up, she said the Biden administration has, in many ways, “fallen short” on climate commitments “relying on carrots over sticks.”
Any hope for circular fashion?
Circular fashion has been the subject of a relentless advocacy crusade. Austin Whitman, chief executive officer at Climate Neutral, a commitment vetting organization for Reformation, Allbirds and Nisolo, said these ambitions may be scaled down. “I would expect to hear Biden put at least one bigger climate proposal on the table, but nothing as large — in dollars — as the IRA [which earmarked $369 billion for climate change]. I would not expect anything that’s added to the agenda to have a direct impact on fashion and retailing. I would expect to see some narrower ideas proposed for reducing emissions from transportation and the electric power sector. These policies would touch the fashion and retailing sectors to the extent that companies have domestic manufacturing or material sourcing.”
He said green marketing proposals could follow that of the E.U. but gave it “fairly low odds.”
The obvious power imbalances could cause hangups. “People are making some pretty wild predictions about the Congressional balance of power, and that’s a big wild card. So it could be argued that this uncertainty — and the seemingly low likelihood of any one party ending up with control of Congress — would call for a less ambitious climate agenda from moderate Democrats in 2024,” Whitman said. “This is not to say we won’t hear about climate change during the height of campaign season — we will certainly hear a lot about it from the more progressive Democrats, as well as from concerned voters, the large number of folks in media who now cover climate, and debate moderators.”
In this case, circular fashion is an afterthought. The American Circular Textiles coalition, or ACT, has been pressuring the Biden administration for textiles’ inclusion in broader circularity aims. The group submitted a handful of letters to the administration with the latest being Oct. 2. In it, ACT urged the agency to contemplate textile circularity — long left out despite the 30 billion pounds the U.S. exports annually.
“I am hopeful,” said Rachel Kibbe, executive director of ACT. “It’s unclear if circularity is truly on the administration’s radar in the capacity it should be, especially when we talk about decarbonization and energy savings. It’s a big missing link. But we have some ownership for being overlooked as an industry. We haven’t formally submitted our requests in this way. This is why ACT has put out five public comments, nearly once a month since May, to states, agencies and the administration pointing out where textiles and circularity overall are being overlooked.”
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