Huffman gains a gavel and stature as Democratic leader on environment

Jared Huffman, the North Coast’s representative in Congress, is emerging as a key leader as House Democrats, back in power after eight years, mount a wave of environmental legislation meant to spur action on climate change, block offshore oil drilling and bolster support for public lands and wildlife protections.

Huffman, now in his fourth term on the Hill and chairman of a House subcommittee on water, oceans and wildlife, signed on this week as a co-sponsor of a major bill challenging President Donald Trump’s intention to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement aimed at curbing global warming.

The 81 co-sponsors, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, attest to the prominence of the Climate Action Now Act, which requires the United States to remain in the landmark pact signed by nearly 200 nations in 2015. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, also was a co-sponsor.

“There really is no other issue that has greater longterm importance than climate change,” Huffman, a San Rafael resident with an 18-year record as an environmental lawyer and lawmaker, said Thursday in an interview.

Also this week, he was one of 30 original co-sponsors - including outspoken first-year Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York - of a bill that would permanently ban oil and gas leasing off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

For Huffman, who has fought oil drilling off the California coast since 2013, the bicoastal bill - with one Republican co-sponsor so far - marks the first unified stand against oil drilling in his tenure and challenges a Trump plan that initially proposed to sell off more than 90 percent of the nation’s coastal waters to the fossil fuel industry, including six lease areas in California.

“Americans from coast to coast have made it very clear that they do not want to see more oil rigs in their oceans,” he said.

Huffman this week attended the first meeting of the House’s new Select Committee on the Climate Crisis established by Pelosi last month.

The 15-member committee - with nine Democrats and six Republicans - is charged with preparing a report due next March that Huffman said would provide a “detailed policy road map for achieving our climate goals.”

Climate change, a topic that elicits scorn and disbelief from Trump and many Republicans, truly is an existential crisis, Huffman said. This week began with more disturbing news on that front: Worldwide energy-related emissions amounted to a record 33 billion tons of carbon dioxide last year, a rise attributed to an expanding global economy.

The U.S., China and India together accounted for nearly 70 percent of the surge in energy demand, according to the International Energy Agency’s report.

Total human-caused emissions would need to fall about 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the goal of the Paris agreement, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

That step would “require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” the IPCC said in October.

Asked if the world could still meet the global warming goal, Huffman said, “The window of opportunity is closing. Clearly, the Trump administration and the oil industry want to slam it shut.”

Staying in the Paris accord is critical, Huffman said, calling it the “starting point” in addressing “the greatest moral, economic and environmental imperative of our time.”

Trump announced in 2017 his intention to withdraw from the agreement, but Huffman said the earliest the U.S. could legally do so is November 2020, making next year’s presidential election a pivotal moment for climate action.

The movement on environmental bills in the House stands in stark contrast to years of GOP-led inaction and rollbacks. It comes amid solidifying public consensus about the perils of a more volatile global climate, including rising sea levels, persistent drought, and more catastrophic fires and floods.

The Department of Defense said in a January report it considers climate change “a national security issue” that could impact military “missions, operational plans and installations.”

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll in December found 45 percent of adults think climate change demands immediate action, nearly double the percentage that felt that way in 1999. Only 12 percent said concern was unwarranted, a level that has held fairly steady since 1999.

The Climate Action Now Act introduced this week would prohibit any use of federal funds to facilitate withdrawal from the Paris agreement.

Congress will consider lots of climate-related legislation this year, and with their 235-member majority gained in November Democrats can generally enact measures at will. The last time Democrats ran the House was from 2007-11, when Pelosi first held the speaker’s job.

But the Republican-held Senate is unlikely to send climate action measures to the president’s desk.

“Not under the leadership of Mitch McConnell, no,” Huffman said, referring to the Kentucky Republican who is Senate Majority Leader.

Many Republicans concur with Trump, who once called climate change a hoax but has more recently questioned whether it is man-made and said he doesn’t want to put the nation at a competitive disadvantage by responding to it.

At the climate crisis committee’s first meeting, Huffman said Republican members repeatedly insisted that any climate change proposal must include an assessment of its cost, including lost jobs.

“They continue to treat climate solutions as if they cost money and the status quo is free,” he said. “The fiction is that there’s no cost to inaction.”

The disparity between the parties is reflected in the average lifetime score on environmental voting, calculated by the League of Conservation Voters. For the climate committee members, the group gave 95 percent scores for the six Democrats and a little over 2 percent for four Republicans. Three Democrats and two GOP members are freshmen with no score.

Three of the committee’s nine Democrats are from California, including Reps. Mike Levin of Oceanside and Julia Brownley of Westlake Village.

Huffman said that is appropriate because California is “disproportionately impacted” by climate change and “way ahead of other states in implementing solutions.”

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra has filed 38 lawsuits challenging Trump administration actions, including 21 aimed at proposals to roll back environmental protections, the Los Angeles Times reported last year.

Huffman, 55, an honors graduate from UC Santa Barbara and a National Resources Defense Council attorney for six years before he entered politics, has long been a strong voice in environmental advocacy.

Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club Lands Protection Program, said the congressman has made protecting the environment, public lands and climate among his top priorities “since the moment he got to Washington.”

“He is one of the most outspoken leaders our country has when it comes to protecting special places in California and the Arctic refuge,” Manuel said in an email.

Richard Charter of Bodega Bay, an offshore oil drilling opponent since the 1970s, complimented Huffman for the bicoastal approach to shielding the nation’s shores from oil rigs.

“And confronting the White House over the administration’s sheer negligence in the face of global warming, speaking as the chair of a key House subcommittee and as a member of the climate crisis committee, exhibits true leadership,” said Charter, a senior fellow with The Ocean Foundation,

David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist, said Huffman’s rise as an environmental leader is “rapid and wide” within Democratic ranks.

The environment remains a secondary public concern - a Pew Research Center report in January put it well below the economy, health care, education and other issues - but it seems to resonate with younger, emerging voters who will play a role in the 2020 and 2024 elections, McCuan said.

As a state assemblyman for six years, Huffman authored more than 60 successful bills, chaired the Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee and was co-chairman of the Legislative Environmental Caucus.

During his first term in Congress, Huffman secured an expansion of the California Coastal National Monument to include the 1,665-acre Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands on the Mendocino County coast.

Huffman, an angler with a soft spot for rivers, said his commitment to the environment also stemmed from reading the book “Cadillac Desert,” a seminal work on western water management and dam development.

The book by the late Marc Reisner prompted Huffman, then a young attorney, to run for the Marin Municipal Water Board at age 30, kicking off his political career.

In a Democratic administration, some observers think Huffman could ascend to a post such as Interior secretary.

“I have bad news (for them),” he said, asserting his current job is a great fit, “especially with a gavel in my hand, in the majority, chairing the most interesting subcommittee I could imagine.”

But he acknowledged that he could be in line to some day lead the powerful Natural Resources Committee, source of some of the nation’s most groundbreaking environmental laws.