For most environmentalists, the day in November was when Donald Trump was elected president.Dark day“But there was one small overlooked corner of the movement that I celebrated,” she said in a statement Congratulations to Trump on his victoryleaders of the American Conservation Alliance saw an opportunity to bring their “America First Climate Strategy” to fruition. “Now, we will build a new era of American industry and win the Arms Clean Energy race,” they wrote.
The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit was founded in 2017 by college students who wanted to make a conservative case for climate action. Since then, it has evolved from a group on the fringes of the right into a political force. The American Conservation Alliance has broad support, with about 60,000 members in chapters across the country and contacts throughout Congress. Trump’s second term, which begins Monday, will be a test of the strength of his influence.
“I think there’s a golden opportunity right now for Republicans to change the environment from a left-wing issue that Republicans are losing to a conservative issue that they can win,” said Chris Barnard, the organization’s president. “And by the end of this administration, that’s what we hope to achieve, and we hope to have real, tangible progress and solutions going back to that.”
The group has extensive relationships Trump Cabinet Nomineesaccording to Bernard. Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, who has been nominated for Secretary of Energy, is a “personal friend” of the American Conservation Coalition, or recently hosted a fundraiser for the coalition. Former Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, Trump’s nominee to lead the Interior Department, He led the city hall in New Hampshire with Barnard during a six-month presidential term in 2023; Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick to run the EPA, has worked on various issues with the ACC.
“If this is the norm — helping Republicans engage on climate — they have had a resounding success,” said Matthew Burgess, an environmental economist at the University of Wyoming who studies how to undo climate change. In his credit, the Republican Party has clearly changed its position on climate change, moving away from outright denial in recent years. “Whatever movement there is on the Republican side, the ACC is probably easily the most important advocacy group in that.”
You won’t mistake the American Conservation Alliance platform for one found on the progressive climate group’s website. The upper part Three priorities Unleashes nuclear power, reforms the permitting process to make it easier to build new energy projects, and overtakes China by “leading the world in total energy production.” This includes more oil and gas development, in line with Trump “Energy Dominance” Agenda. In his first week, Trump is expected to push back on President Joe Biden’s limits on offshore drilling and federal lands, roll back emissions standards for vehicles, and end a freeze on new liquefied natural gas export projects.
“Our approach will always be distinct from that of a progressive group, because it is guided by conservative principles such as innovation, disruption and empowerment of individuals and communities,” ACC CEO Danielle Butcher Franz said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re not on the same page about the severity of these issues.”
Butcher Franz says that effectively addressing climate change means conservatives and progressives need to change their approach. Conservatives can be bolder in the solutions they propose, she said: “They often have a reputation for ‘no’ and hitting on things they don’t like.” Progressives, on the other hand, can work hard to find common ground. “There are a lot of self-imposed Litmus tests where if you don’t agree with everything, you don’t do it [seen as] “It’s worth working with,” Butcher Franz said. She said she’s seen potential partnerships with other climate groups collapse over one area of difference, such as subsidizing fossil fuel production.
For some progressives, Republican ties in the ACC are the problem. “I think people often try to hold us accountable for the views of prominent Republicans that people don’t like,” Butcher Franz said. You get questions like, “Well, President Trump said climate change is a hoax, so how can Republicans make progress on this?” That’s the wrong place to start, she said. “I think the better question is, does someone need to buy into a progressive climate agenda to reduce emissions? And I would argue that, no, they don’t.”
The group approach creates a pairing of ideas that are rarely seen side by side. “Enough alarm. Enough inaction,” reads a slogan on the ACC website.
These sentiments may be reflected in most of the country, regardless of political affiliation: 80 percent of Americans say climate news makes them feel frustrated because there is too much political disagreement over the issue, according to The Issue. A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
“The interesting thing about the ACC is, I think a lot of what they say, if you look at the polls, is very close to what the median voter says about climate change,” Burgess said. “You know, it’s true, doing something is much better than doing nothing, and renewables and nuclear are good and we should prioritize them, but we don’t want to get off fossil fuels, especially natural gas, in the short term, especially as much as it hurts me.” “Our economy.”
When the ACC began in 2017, talking about climate change with Republican politicians who had long shied away from the topic — or simply denied it — wasn’t easy. “In the early days, we were all volunteers who were just trying to chase every opportunity that presented itself,” said Stephen Perkins, now the coalition’s director of operations. “It was difficult at the time to even say ‘climate’ or ‘environment’ in conservative spaces. We found it difficult to get those meetings and have those conversations with elected officials or with other leaders in the conservative movement.”
But early in 2019, by Trump’s first term, some of this resistance began to fade. Trump’s EPA official, Andrew Wheeler, signed a Memorandum of Understanding With ACC to find ways to engage young environmental leaders in the agency’s programs. In 2020, Barnard W Bani Bakkarfounder of ACC, He went for a walk With Senator John Curtis, who was in the House of Representatives at the time, in Utah. The conversation sparked the idea of a Conservative Climate Caucus, which Curtis started as a safe place for House Republicans to talk to each other about climate change. It now has more than 80 members, More willing to support green technology than other Republicans, if still generally opposed to measures to directly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
As these changes unfolded, the American Conservation Alliance’s base grew. In 2021, Perkins was appointed to build grassroots support for the group, which had about 5,000 members at the time. Across the country, through outreach and advertising, they now have 60,000 members, most of whom are college students and young professionals who are right in the middle, Perkins said. The goal is to reach 100,000 members by the end of 2025.
“A lot of our members are in government offices,” Perkins said. “In fact, it’s difficult for us now to walk into a congressional office without someone in the front room knowing about ACC because they were involved in college.” According to Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank, the ACC’s tough support is critical to its success. “They have influence in D.C., because they have influence across the country,” he said. “So they can both mobilize people locally, and it gives them a way to talk about the same issues in the capital.”
Over the past two years, the American Conservation Coalition has been on the national stage. In August 2023, The Republican primary debate included a question From a college student, one of the group’s members, about how presidential candidates have allayed fears that their party didn’t care about climate change. Despite the candidates’ drift, some younger conservatives saw progress as the topic came up. Sponsored by the Administrative Coordination Committee Republican National Convention Last July, there was a booth there for the first time, with Trump’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, They talk at their reception.
“These are just signs that the narrative is changing, and that conservatives or Republicans are seeing that there is an opportunity for them to participate authentically conservatively,” Barnard said. “They don’t feel like they have to leave their values at the door when talking about these things.”
However, Barnard says he is more interested in achieving practical results than getting Republican politicians to say the right thing. If they pass a bill to increase nuclear and clean energy, but for economic or national security reasons rather than climate reasons, it’s still a win, “We need to focus more on what actually works than what looks good, and on tangible progress from Litmus tests that increase… From polarizing both sides.”
