Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

How partisanship hinders action on environmental policy

Climate chnage protest

Republican and Democratuc lawmakers are divided on environmental policy, even though voters are more aligned.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

In February, the United Nations issued a new report that claimed climate change is happening faster than anticipated. The U.N. report was the latest in a string of studies warning that humans are approaching a red line, after which it will be too late to reverse the damage.

But the federal government has not advanced major environmental protection legislation in decades, as partisanship has brought Congress to a state of near total gridlock. In fact, it may take some structural reforms to recreate the shared sense of responsibility that drove the legislative process of the mid-to-late 20th century.


Beginning in 1963 with the Clean Air Act, Congress passed a series of laws, often with bipartisan backing, to limit humanity’s impact on the environment. However, momentum waned in the 2000s, as both parties moved further away from center.

Stephen Long, director of government relations at The Nature Conservancy, noted that although a few legislative actions on specific environmental impacts have been made, “no major climate change legislation” has been passed in recent years.

Partisanship has been a major roadblock in Congress for decades, according to Convergence CEO David Eisner, who leads efforts to mediate public policy disagreements on far more issues than just environmental policy.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

“We’ve seen a steady march since the ’80s of increasing political tribalism,” said Eisner, who directed major programs under both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.

Indeed, studies show that negative opinions of the opposing party have more than doubled since 1994. “There’s a lot more distortion and toxicity in how all Americans look at each other. That toxicity is distilled to a particularly poisonous level in Congress,” he said.

The two parties have generally retreated into two camps on environmental issues, with the division centered around the debate over whether climate change is man-made or a natural evolutionary process.

Climate action has become almost exclusively aligned with Democrats while Republicans tend or prioritize the economy over environmental concerns. Republican President Donald Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord in 2017, whereas fellow Republican President Richard Nixon adamantly supported climate policy in the 1970s.

‘Golden era’

Public concern over human impact on the environment led to the Clean Air Act in 1963. That law, which was passed with bipartisan support, marked the beginning of a national effort to enact protective measures for the environment, eventually giving rise to the “golden era” of the modern environmental movement, stretching from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Six years after the enactment of the Clean Air Act, Democratic Sen. Henry Jackson proposed the National Environmental Policy Act, which was eventually signed into law by Nixon in 1970. This law was foundational in creating a broad framework for environmental protection in the United States and establishing the Council on Environmental Quality.

“It is particularly fitting that my first official act in the new decade is to approve the National Environmental Policy Act,” Nixon said. “I [am] convinced that the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.”

Throughout the remainder of the 1970s Congress passed several other climate protection measures including amendments to the Clean Air Act and then the Clean Water Act, with bipartisan votes to approve the bill and again to override Nixon’s veto.

The following two decades also saw a continuation in this trend of environmental protection. The introduction of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act was enacted with broad support in 1980 as a response to the devastating effects of hazardous pollution and contamination in Superfund sites.

Polarization: fact and fiction

The partisan chasm in Congress may not be reflective of the American public.

Both Eisner and Long said voters may often agree on more than they realize due to media portrayals of each party’s stance on certain issues. For example, public opinion polling shows the majority of Republicans place significant importance on government action against climate change.

Some experts believe the path back to bipartisan legislating must include structural changes to the political system.

For example, Long believes altering the campaign finance system would lead to more thoughtful policymaking.

“The cost of running a campaign has increased dramatically … a lot of elected officials have to spend a huge amount of time doing fundraising … meaning they spend less time making policy and less time getting to know each other as people,” he said.

Other ideas center around altering an election framework that tends to drive highly partisan outcomes, rather than the selection of lawmakers who are willing to collaborate across the aisle.

We must “recognize that there are structural elements in our electoral system that contribute to candidate selection which yields more partisan candidates than you would otherwise,” said Erik Olsen, co-founder of the Common Ground Committee.

Reform advocates often point to closed primaries, partisan gerrymandering and “first past the post” elections as systemic constructs that reinforce partisan positions.

Because a small percentage of the population often determines the winner of an election (what Unite America refers to as the “primary problem”), “the polarization that you see in media and on the internet is not representative of the population at large,” Olsen said.

The key, according to people like Eisner, Long, and Olsen, is to highlight areas of agreement when they arise. Specifically, Eisner emphasized the importance of listening and self-awareness.

“The ability to listen is what enables us to recognize each other as human beings, and what enables us to approach each other without judgment and with curiosity,” he said. “Self-awareness is critical for us to understand that all of us have biases. … But once we know that then we can address the distortions of the bias.”

Read More

The FEC Can’t Do Anything. Congress Should Leave It That Way

People stand on the pieces of a shattered United States flag.

Getty Images, mathisworks

The FEC Can’t Do Anything. Congress Should Leave It That Way

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is vital to America’s political process. As the only federal agency dedicated solely to enforcing election laws, the FEC plays a critical role in protecting voters and maintaining a level playing field for political campaigns.

But at this moment, America faces an unfortunate choice: We can have an FEC that does nothing or an FEC that President Trump wields as a partisan weapon against his political opponents.

Keep ReadingShow less
Are President Trump’s Economic Promises Falling Short?

U.S. President Donald Trump takes a question from a reporter in the Oval Office at the White House on May 05, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Anna Moneymaker

Are President Trump’s Economic Promises Falling Short?

President Donald Trump was elected for a second term after a campaign in which voters were persuaded that he could skillfully manage the economy better than his Democratic opponent. On the campaign trail and since being elected for the second time, President Trump has promised that his policies would bolster economic growth, boost domestic manufacturing with more products “made in the USA,” reduce the price of groceries “on Day 1,” and make America “very rich” again.

These were bold promises, so how is President Trump doing, three and a half months into his term? The evidence so far is as mixed and uncertain as his roller coaster tariff policy.

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. President Donald Trump walks towards Marine One on the South Lawn on May 1, 2025 in Washington, DC.

U.S. President Donald Trump walks towards Marine One on the South Lawn on May 1, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

Trump’s First 100 Days on Trial

100 Days, 122 Rulings

Presidents are typically evaluated by their accomplishments in the first 100 days. Donald Trump's second term stands out for a different reason: the unprecedented number of executive actions challenged and blocked by the courts. In just over three months, Trump issued more than 200 executive orders, targeting areas such as climate policy, civil service regulations, immigration, and education funding.

However, the most telling statistic is not the volume of orders but the judiciary's response: over 120 rulings have paused or invalidated these directives. This positions the courts, rather than Congress, as the primary institutional check on the administration's agenda. With a legislature largely aligned with the executive, the judiciary has become a critical counterbalance. The sustainability of this dynamic raises questions about the resilience of democratic institutions when one branch shoulders the burden of oversight responsibilities.

Keep ReadingShow less
The President Must Affirm His Commitment to the Constitution
The preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
Getty Images, Douglas Sacha

The President Must Affirm His Commitment to the Constitution

The United States of America is at a precarious moment. Our Constitutional republic is hanging by a thread when the President himself seems uncertain about his obligation to uphold the Constitution — while those who do are being honored for their courage, as though fidelity to our founding principles were exceptional rather than fundamental. The U.S. Constitution is what holds us together as a nation. Without allegiance to it, I fear we risk losing our very identity.

Meanwhile, the legislative branch envisioned by our founders as having the most power has completely abdicated its duty of good governance, surrendering instead to partisanship.

Keep ReadingShow less