Philippa Kaur

If politics moves slowly, climate politics often feels like it doesn’t move at all.

Yet at the weekend, US senators worked through the night to accomplish something they have failed to do since NASA scientist James Hansen first warned them about the dangers of climate change almost 35 years ago. They passed a major climate bill.

And not just any bill. The A$530 billion of clean energy initiatives in the larger Inflation Reduction Act represent the largest single investment to slow global heating in US history. It means the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases will become a global leader on climate change.

Initial modelling suggests the bill could be enough to cut US emissions by around 40% by 2030, relative to a 2005 baseline. That won’t meet President Joe Biden’s goal of halving emissions by 2030, but it gives America a fighting chance.

What does it mean for Australia? After the go-slow years of Coalition government and Trump’s fossil-fuel-friendly presidency, the times finally favour action. There is a clean energy race on, and Australia needs to keep up.

It’s been a hard road

When the bill passed, senators broke down in tears. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer spoke of “a long, tough and winding road. But at last, at last we have arrived.”

The bill looked dead in the water as recently as July, when controversial Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia pulled his crucial vote for climate legislation.

That led many to despair, believing the window for climate action had shut again given Republican disinterest in climate action. But then Manchin cut a deal. It was the last chance to act before November’s midterm elections, which Republicans are expected to win – although the Supreme Court’s seismic decision on abortion may change this.

Offshore wind could be a game-changer for clean energy in Australia.
Nicholas Doherty/Unsplash, CC BY

I remember being in Washington DC, studying climate policy, the last time the US got this close. In the summer of 2009, the US House of Representatives passed a bill designed to institute a nationwide carbon price. With chants of “yes we can” still ringing in many ears after President Barack Obama’s arrival in the White House, it seemed climate politics was moving. But the Senate killed that bill, and with it any hope for legislative action on climate change.

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America had to wait more than a decade for the next opportunity. The weekend’s vote was close, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the decider.

What was lost in the intervening years was more than time. In the past decade, climate impacts have become more frequent and deadly. Just ask the flood victims of Lismore in New South Wales, or the citizens of Mallacoota in Victoria after the bushfires.

Most of Europe is now in drought. Stories of unprecedented heatwaves and flooding come in weekly from China, India, the Middle East and South America. The western US is in megadrought, the worst in at least 1,200 years, with reservoirs at dangerous lows.

America’s largest water reservoir, Lake Mead, is now at its lowest level since being filled in 1937.
John Locher/AP

What does the bill actually contain?

When climate action is deliberately stalled by political parties, the price is paid by communities, families and the natural world.

That’s why the US bill is momentous. Senate approval of the A$530 billion in spending will directly advance clean energy. This includes billions of dollars in tax credits for solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and geothermal plants, among other technologies.

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This comes through around A$13 billion in rebates for Americans to electrify their homes, tax credits of almost A$11,000 to electrify their cars, and billions more to establish a “green bank”, target agricultural emissions and help disadvantaged communities.

Even better, these billions in public money will crowd in private investment, accelerating the speed at which the US economy can decarbonise.

What should Australia take from this?

There are several lessons for Australia.

The first is legislating a target as Labor has done is a start, but only a start. The world is set for a clean energy race, given China is also investing huge amounts in clean energy while European nations are trying to wean themselves off Russian gas.

The Albanese government should follow the US with historic investments in clean energy, using renewable jobs as an incentive. Key features of the US bill aim to turbocharge local clean energy manufacturing, such as requiring battery components be made in the US. As it stands, America’s geopolitical rival China has cornered the market in many areas of clean tech, such as solar panels.

Second, fossil fuel industries will fight tooth and nail against change. Manchin has received more money from the oil and gas industry than any other member of Congress – and has personal interests in coal. His interventions mean the bill has rewards for the oil and gas industries, such as requiring the federal government to auction new offshore oil and gas leases. There is likely more devil in the detail.

For decades, fossil fuel industries have had an outsized influence on climate policy in Australia. It’s folly to think they’ll just give up. This week we found out the car industry has already launched a secret PR campaign to slow electric vehicle uptake.

Protestors and people involved in climate movements have kept the pressure up during periods of political inaction.
Markus Spiske/Unsplash, CC BY

Against these entrenched interests stand the growing throngs of people involved in climate movements. This is what has kept climate politics moving. Countless Americans, from political activists to schoolkids, mobilised to pressure Congress to act.

The same has happened here. Arid and sparsely populated Australia is already being hit by intensifying natural disasters. As the May election result showed, people have had enough of political delays and inaction.

We must keep moving. Climate science does not stand still, and neither should the politics.

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In the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections, some politicians continue to ride the wave of what’s known as “Christian nationalism” in ways that are increasingly vocal and direct.

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Donald Trump loyalist from Georgia, told an interviewer on July 23, 2022, that the Republican Party “need[s] to be the party of nationalism. And I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

Similarly, Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, recently said, “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.” Boebert called the separation of church and state “junk.”

Many Christian nationalists repeat conservative activist David Barton’s argument that the Founding Fathers did not intend to keep religion out of government.

As a scholar of racism and communication who has written about white nationalism during the Trump presidency, I find the amplification of Christian nationalism unsurprising. Christian nationalism is prevalent among Trump supporters, as religion scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry argue in their book “Taking Back America for God.”

Perry and Whitehead describe the Christian nationalist movement as being “as ethnic and political as it is religious,” noting that it relies on the assumption of white supremacy. Christian nationalism combines belief in a particular form of Christianity with nativist and populist political platforms. American Christian nationalism is a worldview based on the belief that America is superior to other countries, and that that superiority is divinely established. In this mindset, only Christians are true Americans.

Parts of the movement fit into a broader right-wing extremist history of violence, which has been on the rise over the past few decades and was particularly on display during the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

The vast majority of Christian nationalists never engage in violence. Nonetheless, Christian nationalist thinking suggests that unless Christians control the state, the state will suppress Christianity.

From siege to militia buildup

Violence perpetrated by Christian nationalists has manifested in two primary ways in recent decades. The first is through their involvement in militia groups; the second is seen in attacks on abortion providers.

The catalyst for the growth of militia activity among contemporary Christian nationalists stems from two events: the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff and the 1993 siege at Waco.

At Ruby Ridge, former Army Green Beret Randy Weaver engaged federal law enforcement in an 11-day standoff at his rural Idaho cabin over charges relating to the sale of sawed-off shotguns to an ATF informant investigating Aryan Nation white supremacist militia meetings.

Supporters of Randy Weaver. The Ruby Ridge standoff sparked the expansion of radical right-wing groups.
AP Photo/Jeff T. Green, File

Weaver ascribed to the Christian Identity movement, which emphasizes adherence to Old Testament laws and white supremacy. Christian Identity members believe in the application of the death penalty for adultery and LBGTQ relationships in accordance with their reading of some biblical passages.

During the standoff, Weaver’s wife and teenage son were shot and killed before he surrendered to federal authorities.

In the Waco siege a year later, cult leader David Koresh and his followers entered a standoff with federal law enforcement at the group’s Texas compound, once again concerning weapons charges. After a 51-day standoff, federal law enforcement laid siege to the compound. A fire took hold at the compound in disputed circumstances, leading to the deaths of 76 people, including Koresh.

The two events spurred a nationwide militia buildup. As sociologist Erin Kania argues: “Ruby Ridge and Waco confrontations drove some citizens to strengthen their belief that the government was overstepping the parameters of its authority. … Because this view is one of the founding ideologies of the American Militia Movement, it makes sense that interest and membership in the movement would sharply increase following these standoffs between government and nonconformists.”

Distrust of the government blended with strains of Christian fundamentalism have brought together two groups with formerly disparate goals.

Christian nationalism and violence

Christian fundamentalists and white supremacist militia groups both figured themselves as targeted by the government in the aftermath of the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco. As scholar of religion Ann Burlein argues, “Both the Christian right and right-wing white supremacist groups aspire to overcome a culture they perceive as hostile to the white middle class, families, and heterosexuality.”

Significantly, in 1995, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and accomplice Terry Nichols cited revenge for the Waco siege as a motive for the bombing of the Alfred Murrah federal building. The terrorist act killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

Since 1993, at least 11 people have been murdered in attacks on abortion clinics in cities across the U.S., and there have been numerous other plots.

They have involved people like the Rev. Michael Bray, who attacked multiple abortion clinics. Bray was the spokesman for Paul Hill, a Christian Identity adherent who murdered physician John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett in 1994 outside of a Florida abortion clinic.

In yet another case, Eric Rudolph bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. In his confession, he cited his opposition to abortion and anti-LGBTQ views as motivation to bomb Olympic Square.

These men cited their involvement with the Christian Identity movement in their trials as motivation for engaging in violence.

Mainstreaming Christian nationalist ideas

The presence of Christian nationalist ideas in recent political campaigns is concerning, given its ties to violence and white supremacy.

Trump and his advisers helped to mainstream such rhetoric with events like his photo op with a Bible in Lafayette Square in Washington following the violent dispersal of protesters, and making a show of pastors laying hands on him. But that legacy continues beyond his administration.

Candidates like Doug Mastriano, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania who attended the Jan. 6 Trump rally, are now using the same messages.

In some states, such as Texas and Montana, hefty funding for far-right Christian candidates has helped put Christian nationalist ideas in the mainstream.

Blending politics and religion is not necessarily a recipe for Christian nationalism, nor is Christian nationalism a recipe for political violence. At times, however, Christian nationalist ideas can serve as a prelude.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Jan. 15, 2021. More