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The new former chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Tom Carper (D-Del.), may be leaving Congress, but he told The Hill he’s “never retiring” and plans to continue working on climate-related issues .
In an interview on the penultimate day of his more than two decades in the Senate, the 77-year-old said he hopes to continue working to “make sure that our children and grandchildren will have a planet to grow up on. “
With Trump’s second administration about to take over, he expressed concern about the president-electplanned efforts to reverse climate regulations.
He especially called out Trump’splans to back offelectric vehiclestandards“crazy” because the vehicles are madean important partof the country’s total global warming emissions.
But he also said he expects the administration to run into trouble if it tries to repeal some of the climate-friendly incentives passed under Biden because of the jobs they created in Republican-held districts.
“Just as market forces helped save the Affordable Care Act and make it permanent, I believe market forces themselves will go a long way to saving our efforts to address climate change,” he said. say
Carper has been a senator since 2001, serving alongside then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) for several years, and was previously governor of Delaware.
Since 2017, he has been head of the Environment and Public Works Committee of the Senate.
In that role, he took on the deregulatory agenda of the Trump administration. Under the Biden administration, Carper helped work on both the Inflation Reduction Act, which included massive investments in low-carbon energy sources, and the bipartisan Infrastructure Act.
He was also one of several legislators who workedrecently collapsed effortspass legislation to speed up the construction of the nation’s energy projects.
Although they couldn’t reach a bipartisan deal, Carper said “we’ve laid the groundwork” for the next Congress. In the same way, he said he expects the negotiations for the legislationwith the goal of addressing toxic “forever chemicals.”it will eventually bear fruit.
However, representing the business-heavy state of Delaware, Carper considers himself a moderate and has at times rejected his party. In particular, he was one of eight Democrats who, in 2021,voted against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Asked about that vote, he said: “I think as a party, we should be the party of Labor … and we should be encouraging people to get the kind of tools they need to be able to get into the workforce and make a difference in their lives.”
Taking a page from his former running mate Biden, Carper also stressed the importance of personalizing politics to bring about climate action.
He cited this approach in his association with fiery Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy (R) that eventually led to aphasing out the very potent global warming hydrofluorocarbons.
“When I found out his middle name was Neely, I told him my father-in-law, his name (was) Neely,” Carper said. “I never said John Neely Kennedy, I never called him John. I always call him Neely.”
“We just … ended up being friends and having a trusting relationship,” he added.
Carper still doesn’t have firm plans on what he plans to do next. But he particularly expressed hope for employment at the intersection of climate change and jobs, saying that as younger generations “grow up and age, I want to make sure they have jobs.”
“I think there may be opportunities for me,” he said. “It could be in the private sector, it could be in the nonprofit sector.”
