Green-bashing is back on Capitol Hill

The newly minted Republican US House of Representatives, influenced by the rise of Tea Party activists, has wasted no time in rolling back policies beloved of the former Democratic majority, starting with a largely symbolic vote to repeal Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law.

Left-wing favourites such as family planning and childhood-education initiatives face the chopping block in the tussle to pass a new budget.

But the gloves truly came off when the house stunned observers by voting to bring back plastic cutlery in their canteen. The lower chamber’s on-site composting programme, instituted to reduce its carbon footprint, has been shelved entirely, and with it the PLA-based compostable plastic cutlery and biodegradable cups.

New house speaker John Boehner crowed this latest environmental rollback on Twitter as: “The new majority – plastic ware is back!”

In truth, the composting programme wasn’t universally loved, even by Democrats: the cutlery had a reputation for fragility, and some argued the environmental benefit didn’t justify the cost. All of this made it an easy target for Republicans, even as it discouraged Democrats from backing away from it for fear of being accused of failure.

Funding stripped 

But in addition, there have been several initiatives to strip funding from  environmental programmes of one sort or another, including an effort to take away the US’s annual $2.3m funding for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – an agency many conservatives love to hate.

There is also an effort under way to cut the Environmental Protection Agency budget by a whopping 30%. Then there is the attempt to bar the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide.

Taken together, do these initiatives amount to a full broadside attack on the environment?

There is a widespread belief – at least among conservatives – that enviro-bashing is a political winner these days. Republicans eyeing a run for the White House in 2012 are busy renouncing their previous admiration for carbon cap-and-trade as part of the anti-climate litmus test likely to be applied in the primaries.

But what about the view from business – will the bombast of elected officials have any impact on the steady march towards more sustainable business?

After all, global companies increasingly operate an internal carbon cost, study sustainability trends closely as part of their risk management, and bring out environmentally beneficial new products every day.

Dave Stangis, Campbell Soup’s vice-president for corporate responsibility and sustainability, says a lot of this is theatre. “I think the new house is trying to make a strong statement that they’re doing what they believe the people who voted them in want them to do. Right now, that means no government-anything, whether that’s healthcare, the budget, EPA – that’s what we hear every day.”

Will this encourage any rethinking in the business sector?

Stangis is unconvinced. He argues that for leading companies, these sorts of regulations “have never been the real driver”. The public hasn’t changed, he says, and neither has business. “What’s changed is a few elected officials. I believe much of this is just noise.”