This article series by reporter Chase Woodruff first appeared on Colorado Newsline, beginning on October 5, 2020.
As multimillionaire tech investor and then-Congressman Jared Polis cruised towards victory in the Colorado governor’s race in 2018, extreme drought conditions were testing farmers and ranchers in nearly every corner of the state. Unprecedented wildfires raged across Colorado and the West. A historic hurricane season battered the Gulf Coast, while cities all over the world reported record-breaking summer temperatures. Scientists’ warnings about the need to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions grew more urgent than ever, and a wave of grassroots, youth-led activism ratcheted up the pressure on world leaders to more aggressively confront climate change.
Polis and his fellow Colorado Democrats, propelled by a nationwide “blue wave” to their strongest grip on power within the state in 80 years, pledged to make bold climate action one of their highest priorities.
“We’re going to confront this challenge head-on,” Polis said in an address to lawmakers two days after taking office in January 2019. “Not only because we must, (but) because we also want to take advantage of the huge opportunities associated with being a leader in the growing green energy economy.”
Two years later, extreme drought conditions are testing farmers and ranchers in nearly every corner of the state. Unprecedented wildfires are raging across Colorado and the West. A historic hurricane season is battering the Gulf Coast, while cities all over the world have reported record-breaking summer temperatures. Scientists’ warnings about the need to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions have grown more urgent than ever, and a wave of grassroots, youth-led activism is ratcheting up the pressure on world leaders to more aggressively confront climate change.
And yet in Colorado, as the clock winds down on two years of total Democratic control of state government, many outside experts and advocates have been left bitterly disappointed by the pace and scope of climate policymaking during what they saw as a critical window for swift, sweeping action.
While historic commitments have been made, actual policy changes have been few and far between. Legislation to set statewide emissions targets got bogged down in the Colorado General Assembly and emerged less forceful than advocates wanted. The Air Quality Control Commission, the state panel tasked with implementing the bill, has proceeded slowly, drawing lawsuits from multiple environmental groups. Commissioners who pressed for more aggressive action were rebuffed by state officials, and several of them were replaced by appointees with ties to the fossil-fuel industry in a major shakeup of the commission this summer.
In nearly every case, these obstacles have come from what may seem to many an improbable source: Polis, the self-assured and unorthodox Democrat who made a pledge to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2040 a centerpiece of his 2018 campaign. Even in cases in which Polis has not been directly involved, more than half a dozen stakeholders participating in the state’s climate policymaking process characterized the governor as a frequent elephant in the room, exerting behind-the-scenes pressure on regulators not to stray too far from his preferred approach.
“The AQCC is getting stuck in conflict with the governor,” said Auden Schendler, vice president of sustainability for the Aspen Skiing Company and one of the commission’s recently departed members. “He doesn’t want heavy-handed regulation, and that’s the only thing that’s going to get you to these targets.”
As a result, the first half of Polis’s term has been marked by an unlikely, uncomfortable rift between state officials and the environmental community. Mainstream advocacy groups, who expected to work hand-in-hand with the new Democratic administration to craft cutting-edge climate policies, instead find themselves battling for every inch, organizing pressure campaigns and facing off with state regulators in court.
Despite its high stakes, the drama has unfolded quietly, overshadowed by a deadly pandemic, an economic downturn and the 2020 election. Many advocates and lawmakers are reluctant to openly challenge Polis, a confident technocrat who — despite rarely weighing in publicly on the finer points of his administration’s climate strategies — has taken an active, hands-on role in many areas of state policymaking. Citing pending litigation, representatives for Polis declined requests for interviews with the governor and his top climate advisers.
“The fact that Colorado is experiencing two of the three largest wildfires in our state’s history this summer is just one of countless indicators that climate change is a threat to our economy and our way of life, today and for generations to come,” Polis spokesperson Conor Cahill said in a statement.
“The state is taking unprecedented action to confront the climate crisis, and the governor believes this work provides an enormous economic opportunity for Colorado to remain a leader on renewable energy development and in creating more good-paying green jobs,” Cahill continued. “We are focused on the implementation of a variety of emission reduction measures, in addition to developing the next suite of legislative and regulatory actions and incentives necessary to improve our air quality and do our part on climate.”
Even by the state’s own projections, however, the climate policies it has enacted since Polis took office will only result in an annual emissions cut of about 1.6 million tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent, or CO2e, by 2030. That’s only a small fraction of the roughly 65 million tons CO2e in annual emissions reductions that scientists — and the state’s new statutory goals — say that it must achieve within the next decade.
Colorado climate officials insist that they’re on track to meet that target, in large part through collaborative efforts with the private sector and market-driven technological shifts. The AQCC is tentatively scheduled to consider more substantial emissions rules in mid-to-late 2021, and other state agencies and commissions are pursuing climate goals of their own.
A long-awaited policy “roadmap” released last week by the Polis administration outlined a host of “near term actions” for the state to pursue to further reduce emissions. In a statement, Polis called the plan “a significant step forward,” but the draft document — not expected to be finalized until later this year — did little to assuage concerns from environmental groups that state’s approach includes far too few strong, enforceable emissions rules.
“After a year of work, the roadmap is missing the most essential element for progress: concrete regulatory policies, to be proposed swiftly, that taken together are fully capable of guaranteeing climate pollution goes down the requisite amounts,” said Pam Kiely, senior director of regulatory strategy for the Environmental Defense Fund, a D.C.-based advocacy organization.
“There’s certainly no shortage of good intentions,” said Jeremy Nichols, the climate and energy program director for activist group WildEarth Guardians. “But so far, it’s just not adding up to the kind of real progress and real action that’s actually needed to confront the climate crisis here. It seems like the problem is not a lack of ideas, it’s a lack of commitment to action. And that does fall squarely in the governor’s lap.”
“Are your eyes burning right now? My eyes are really burning.”