Governor’s effort to promote clean energy while keeping business and labor on board could serve as template for other Democrats.Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s effort to advance clean energy in a state heavily dependent on fossil fuels has him facing a situation that mirrors President Joe Biden’s reelection challenge: showing that stewardship on climate issues doesn’t diminish his standing as a friend of labor.
“He’s 100 percent trying to carve his own lane on these issues,” state Rep. Mike Schlossberg, a member of the state House Democratic leadership team, said of Shapiro in an interview. “National Democrats’ energy message certainly does well in large swaths of the state, but we have to be realistic and understand that in other areas of the state that are particularly energy heavy, that message is going to swing and miss.”an “all of the above” energy approach.
Still, depending on whom you ask, Shapiro’s cap-and-trade proposal represents either a serious effort to find common ground among environmental groups, labor unions, fossil fuel interests and lawmakers in both parties or a middle-of-the-road approach that could end up frustrating everyone. State Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, a Republican who represents a coal-heavy region in the western part of the state, decried the governor’s proposal as “cap and tax.” State Sen. Gene Yaw, the Republican chair of the Senate environmental committee, also isn’t on board.
“As much as we talk about the blue-green alliance, labor is frankly climate agnostic,” Vitali said. “They just want to build stuff, be it natural gas pipelines or coal plants or wind turbines. So there’s this conflict between good environmental policy and keeping labor happy. Elected Democrats tend to view labor as more important to their political ambitions than environmental groups.”