La Mesa’s Fight Over Climate Change Has Global Reach

TLa Mesa appears to be as progressive as it gets. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2:1 margin—and, generally speaking, the San Diego suburb votes bright blue. The city council plans to build low-income apartments in a downtown lot that was once home to a police station. It adopted a plan four years ago to drastically reduce local greenhouse-gas emissions.

It’s the kind of place where someone like Laura Lothian, who is cut from the cloth of conservative cable news, might not be the most popular. In a recent conversation on the patio of her hillside home, she railed against COVID-19 shutdowns and unisex dressing rooms, and told me with delight about her “intimate” meal with “MTG”—Marjorie Taylor Greene, a U.S. Representative from Georgia known for trumpeting far-right conspiracy theories.

It turns out that Lothian is exactly what progressive La Mesa needed. In November, she clinched an unlikely electoral victory, becoming La Mesa’s newest city councillor, by focusing on a single issue: opposing a new road-usage fee, which would charge people for every mile they drive. Lothian gambled that voters would place their financial concerns above their concerns about climate change, with gas prices rising and inflation at their highest levels in decades. The gamble paid off. “This issue brought out everybody—and it changed things,” she says.

It’s not surprising that road-usage fees are being collected. It’s part of a $160 billion plan to restructure San Diego County’s transportation system, spearheaded by the regional planning authority, the San Diego Association of Governments, also known as SANDAG. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than a dozen states are considering similar fees. The idea is simple: By imposing a small fee for mileage driven, state and local governments can recover some of the revenue lost to gas taxes. These taxes are decreasing as more cars go electric. This will encourage people to use cleaner ways of getting around like rideshares or public transit. San Diego’s new fee would generate revenue that would finance a number of local projects that reduce emissions.

At first, SANDAG’s road-usage fee, which is slated to go into effect in 2030, flew under the political radar. However, last year, as energy prices rose, San Diego Republicans saw it as a political gold mine. “We made this issue the singular issue in that race,” says Carl DeMaio, a local Republican activist, referring to Lothian’s campaign. “The Mileage Tax being backed by La Mesa City Council members would charge you 4–6 cents PER MILE you drive—costing $600–900 per driver in La Mesa!” read one Lothian mailer.

Lothian’s surprise victory upended politics in San Diego County. Democrats in the region immediately began to backtrack and insist that they no more support the road-usage fees or demand more study. However, Republicans doubled their efforts on the issue and made it the center of their 2022 campaign. Local Republicans called thousands of people to flood county officials’ inboxes with information. “This is kryptonite for the Democrats,” DeMaio says.

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It’s not just San Diego. The political drama playing out in this sunny Southern California outpost is in many ways a microcosm of what’s happening both nationally and globally. As energy prices rise at the same time that many governments are finally getting serious about climate change, lawmakers are facing an inescapable dilemma: effective climate policy requires raising the price of fossil fuels—and, by extension, the price of high-carbon products and services. Increasing prices is not popular with voters, especially in times of high energy costs and rapid inflation.

Climate-minded politicians face a difficult choice. Politicians who raise prices to implement climate action plans run the risk of being removed from office. Those who refuse to do so will undermine effective policy and invite a world where unchecked, catastrophic global climate change will impose a greater, if not more diffuse, cost on communities long-term. Whether democratic societies can enact policies that meaningfully curb greenhouse gas emissions depends on whether elected officials—in San Diego and around the world—are able to navigate this political tar pit.

“There’s a tension with implementing this plan at a rate that people can accept, against the backdrop of the climate crisis, of economic challenges and other externalities,” says Todd Gloria, the Democratic mayor of San Diego, who supported the road-usage fee before reversing his position in the wake of Lothian’s victory late last year. “People often are fearful of change, and they often resist it until they can see it.”

Democrats’ kryptonite, Republicans’ goldmine

The standing-room-only crowd at the local veterans’ hall in Oceanside, Calif., about 40 miles north of San Diego, feels a little like a Trump rally. While the meeting is about the road-usage fee and SANDAG’s larger regional plan, attendees sport Trump hats and anti-vaccine T-shirts, and upon entering, I am asked to sign a petition in favor of school choice. At one point, an audience member yells, “Stop the steal!”

While Lothian and others readily admit that the road-usage fee is hardly the biggest topic concerning local Republicans, they see it as a crucial wedge issue, capable of sparking outrage, wooing moderates, and ultimately gumming up the Democrats’ broader agenda on climate and other issues. DeMaio, who is hosting the town hall, tells the crowd to think strategically: Republicans need to leverage anger over the road-usage fee—which he and other conservatives call a “mileage tax”—to reach voters who might not be following politics closely. “When we approach voters, we only need two or three issues,” he tells the crowd. “This is going to be one of the most important issues in bringing voters over and creating a coalition that can help us change policy.”

One reason the road-usage fee is so politically useful, DeMaio tells me, is because unlike a lot of climate policy, it’s easy to understand: the more people drive, the more they’ll pay—and no one likes to pay. Lothian compared the road usage fee to a taximeter that keeps going up and up during her campaign. “You’re halfway there and you want to jump out of the car,” she says. It is also difficult to communicate the benefits of the new fee. SANDAG expects it to raise $14 billion in revenue over two decades, which would help underwrite new trolley lines, more efficient highway lanes, and rideshare programs—benefits that don’t necessarily accrue to voters’ bank accounts.

In February, I saw the ripple effects of Lothian’s electoral victory firsthand. Nearby San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones, active in conservative-minded circles, made the road-usage fee a priority during her re-election campaign. Her constituents, already battling high gas prices, can’t afford to pay anything more, she says. “It’s a complete lack of understanding as to what is happening to people financially,” she adds.

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In other parts, the issue has forced Democratic leaders to take to the streets. Gloria, the mayor of San Diego, is an influential member on the SANDAG board. To explain reversing field on the road-usage fee, he argued that while the concept could make for smart policy, the timing wasn’t right. He said that public-transit alternatives aren’t yet good enough to be a reasonable replacement for driving. He also points out the political and economic climate. “I think that there’s a wrong time to ask San Diegans to consider this,” he told me.

Paul McNamara, the Democratic mayor of Escondido, about 40 minutes north of San Diego, remains an unshakable supporter of the road-usage fee—and he has the political bruises to show for it. Just before I met McNamara, Republican members of his Escondido city council had voted him out of the SANDAG Board, leaving Escondido with no representation on a body that spends hundreds and millions each year on local improvements. McNamara dismisses this as political gamesmanship. “There’s always some silliness during election years,” he says.

The powerful politics of energy prices are not something that can be ignored by elected officials. Even President Biden has made it a priority to lower high energy prices. As oil prices rose last year, the Biden Administration pushed the OPEC oil cartel to increase its output. The cartel controls 40% of global crude-oil production. The Administration released 50 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when that effort failed. This was a move meant for emergencies. On Feb. 24, even as Biden sanctioned Russia for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, he promised to “do everything in my power to limit the pain the American people are feeling at the gas pump.”

David Turk, the U.S. deputy secretary of energy, stated last November that the Administration sees affordable energy as a prerequisite to strong U.S. policy on climate change. “You’ve got to have affordable and resilient, reliable energy for Americans. That is a political imperative,” he told me. “Everything else depends on that.”

At least for now in the U.S., enacting climate policy means electing Democrats—and evidence both anecdotal and scientific suggests that an uptick in energy prices creates a serious liability for Democrats. A 2009 study published by the journal- Applied EconomicsHigh oil prices have historically increased the chance that an incumbent President would lose a state that he won in a presidential election. The next two election cycles could be particularly dark for Democrats. Since April 2020, there has been an average fivefold rise in monthly oil prices. This has been accompanied a wide range of inflation across a variety of consumer goods.

Some lawmakers are already working to prevent further damage. In California’s Central Valley, U.S. Representative Josh Harder, a Democrat, has made gas prices a key issue, urging a suspension of the state’s gas tax, which, combined with strict environmental rules, makes California’s gas consistently the most expensive in the country. “I almost had a heart attack filling up my tank,” he said on a local television interview.

The same is true for governments across the globe. Frans Timmermans from the E.U. was the head of climate policy. He told me in September that his awareness of the social pressures associated to climate policy was acute. “If the package leads to social disruption, it will never happen,” he said. “The only way we can address the climate crisis is in a socially acceptable- way.” A few days later, Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada, who has worked to decarbonize his country, told me he worried about the upheaval that might come from too aggressive an approach to taxing fossil fuels. “Fuel for vehicles is something very close to people, and people are having a hard time,” he said. “Going straight to taxes, particularly when it comes to the people, is something delicate.”

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While I was in San Diego I asked Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, how he managed to explain to voters that rising prices are necessary. Brown declined to answer the question. The reality, he said, is that higher prices are unpopular and politicians “can’t shove it down [the public’s] throat,” until they are ready to accept it. “Everyday people are going to say, ‘We don’t need this cost, and so we’re not going to support it,’” he says. “It’s going to take the historic context.” But with temperatures already having risen 1.1°C since the Industrial Revolution and the U.N.’s climate-science body warning on Feb. 28 of a “brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all,” it’s hard to imagine a context more historic.

The central challenge facing global policy on climate change

On the 20th floor of a San Diego skyscraper, at the end of a hallway under renovation, SANDAG’s senior leadership has created what they call a “vision lab” but to me feels like a makeshift war room. The goal is to wage a fight for SANDAG’s larger regional plan. “We are totally reimagining the future of the transportation system,” says Hasan Ikhrata, the agency’s executive director, “not only in San Diego but actually in California and the country.” Using a topographic map of the county the size of a large door, he shows me where new trolley lines will be built and where locals will be able to catch subsidized rideshares. He also shows me a network of “mobility hubs,” where new housing may be built in close proximity to transit.

He states that the road-usage tax is part of this ambitious plan. It not only raises the revenue needed to fund the project, but it also charges drivers. This makes public transit and ridesharing more attractive options. These factors will drive a 20% per capita reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2035, according to the agency’s data. Ikhrata admits that any plan that increases the cost of driving will be controversial. But, he insists, there’s no way around it. The cost of driving, as measured by everything from traffic jams to emissions, is simply too great, and right now, people don’t pay. That’s a problem when you’re trying to get people to change habits. “Bad pricing kills good planning,” he says. “You could have the best plan in the world, if you don’t price the system right, in a market economy it’s not going to work.”

And so we return to the central challenge facing climate policy in democratic societies across the globe: how do leaders get voters to accept an immediate burden, in the form of higher prices, in exchange for a diffuse, future benefit—mitigating catastrophic global crisis. Recent polls indicate that Americans want the federal government do more to combat climate change. However, the same polls also show that the average American is only willing to pay a small amount to address it.

“It’s an unpopular thing to say, but energy prices have been too low for a long time,” says Michael Greenstone, the director of the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers under Barack Obama. “As countries around the world, and more generally societies, begin to make it more complicated to produce energy from fossil fuels, prices are going to go up—and we actually want them to.”

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If we accept that fossil fuels’ prices need to rise and that carbon-intensive activities such as flying and driving must also rise, then it becomes a question of how governments can manage these price increases. Many economists, including Greenstone and others, recommend that such policies be accompanied by a rebate to the most vulnerable. It could be in the form direct-deposited cash or checks. This is how tens and millions of Americans received stimulus money during this pandemic. Others suggest a complex set of policies that fund everything from bus passes and job retraining.

The regional plan in San Diego took a similar all-of-the-above approach—both to advance the policy and to build political will, Ikhrata says. The framers highlight new rules that foster the development of affordable housing along transit lines; reduced pollution that helps address health ailments in some of the region’s vulnerable communities; and road improvements that make driving easier and safer. Starting this spring, all local residents aged 18 or under can take public transit at no cost.

Despite the obvious benefits of the regional plan, few people expect the road-usage fee will survive in the short-term. The SANDAG board approved the entire plan in December. However, the road-usage fee will likely be scrapped after the fact. Board members also passed a measure promising that the road-usage fee would be reassessed this year. “We have started the discussion,” says Ikhrata. “Does that translate into people just accepting it? Of course not.” SANDAG’s larger regional plan has multiple funding sources, including a sales tax and state and federal funding, so it’s not dead in the water. But without a fee the emissions math won’t add up as projected.

It takes strong leadership and communication to get the public to accept price increases. Many supporters of San Diego’s road-usage fee, such as Jack Shu, a Democratic council member from La Mesa are frustrated. Shu cites academic literature as a reason for the road-usage fees and expresses anger at the way opponents have politicized the issue. He does not blame his fellow Democrats for failing to see the policy through. “What I constantly hear is, ‘We can’t do that. We have to deal with political reality,’” he says. “And now I understand political reality: it’s about getting enough votes for the next election.”

The necessary policy shifts will not be easy as climate change becomes more urgent. The sooner politicians realize this and find honest ways to communicate it, the sooner they can get to work. —-Reporting by Simmone Shah, Nik Popli, Leslie Dickstein

Write to Justin Worland [email protected].