Addressing the U.S. Federal Government’s Failures in Climate Leadership
Four years of Donald Trump and a year and a half of Joe Manchin have paralyzed much, but not all, of our nation’s climate agenda. Biden’s trillion-dollar infrastructure bill includes more than $300 billion in environmental capital, while federal procurement policy calls for an additional $600 billion a year in green spending. But senators from West Fossil Fuel-land rejected federal incentives for solar and electric vehicles. This will hurt our home solar and automotive industries as they compete with government subsidies for companies in these critical industries. If Manchin wasn’t so clearly in the pocket of the fossil fuel business, he would have pushed for subsidies and a factory in his hometown. But the terrible leadership of West Virginia doomed the state to economic trouble as they doubled down on dying industries and refused to turn to the future. West Virginia has a poverty rate of 17.7 percent, the fourth highest in the United States. Only Mississippi, Louisiana and New Mexico fared worse. Manchin may be using his temporary influence to drive poverty reduction in his hometown; instead, he is using it in vain to save the fossil fuel business.
While federal inertia is frustrating, it is far from fatal. Pundits and pundits place more importance on the U.S. national government than they should. We are just a country, and within our country, the national government is not omnipotent.yesterday, in New York TimesReflecting a typical view that climate change is somehow slipping into a political issue, Jonathan Weisman and Jazmine Ulloa observe:
“…voters already battling inflation, exhausted by the coronavirus, and adapting to structural changes, like ending constitutionally protected abortions, could shrug off the Democrats’ recent defeat.” It may be why climate change remains an issue with little political power, both for those who desperately need dramatic action and those who stand in the way.”
They point out that most people don’t see climate as the most important political issue. These types of polls are very volatile and measure what people care about most, such as food prices or soaring crime, rather than people’s basic values and beliefs. The problem is that this call for dramatic action comes at a time when the climate crisis is winning the race slowly but surely, like the tortoise and the hare. Decarbonization is complex, and no single action, no matter how dramatic, can be achieved. The media prefer drama, I prefer reality.
Despite setbacks at the national level, states, localities, corporations, and large nonprofits in education, medicine, and culture have goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are serious about achieving them.One Brookings Report 2020 shows that many cities have set targets, and while emissions reductions have been achieved, progress has been slow. 2017 World Resources Institute Research, updated August 2021, shows that many US states have been reducing greenhouse gas emissions. According to the World Resources Institute:
“Overall, U.S. emissions decreased by 9 percent from 2005 to 2018. However, the situation varied by state. From 2005 to 2018, 38 states and Washington, D.C., reduced their emissions, with Maine reducing emissions , New Hampshire, and Alabama lead the way. Maine benefits from vast woodlands that act as carbon sinks, absorbing more carbon dioxide than it releases. The industrial sector also saw emissions reductions due to traditional energy-intensive The decline in industry share and growth in services such as finance, insurance, real estate, health care, and tourism. In contrast, emissions reductions in New Hampshire and Alabama came mainly from the clean power and heat sectors. Twelve states increased emissions, with Mississippi, North Dakota and Idaho leading the way. North Dakota’s growth was driven by a surge in shale gas production and Lack of standards requiring operators to take all cost-effective measures to control methane emissions. During almost the same time period, 41 states Reducing carbon dioxide emissions while growing the economy proves that climate action and economic prosperity go hand in hand. “
Both California and New York have significant greenhouse gas reduction goals and are showing signs of seriousness toward achieving them. In addition to infrastructure and procurement, the federal government reserves the right to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles and power plants. They have to set power plant and vehicle emission standards and use old-fashioned command and control regulations. This could boost the use of electric vehicles and indirectly eliminate coal as a power source, as emissions control charges would make natural gas a more cost-effective bridge fuel for renewables.
Modernizing the U.S. energy system will come faster under the federal government, but modernization will happen anyway. The question is will energy modernization be so slow that it hurts America’s economic competitiveness? If Europe and China modernize their energy systems with smart grid technology, high-capacity transmission lines, and low-cost solar and wind power, their economies will ultimately benefit from lower energy costs than the United States. The inability of the United States to subsidize renewable energy and electric vehicles is compounded by the inability to install large-capacity energy transmission lines.Catherine Clifford has written an excellent article on transmission issues NBC Finance Channelwebsite in late June. In an article titled “Intense local warfare over power lines is a bottleneck for clean energy,” she reports:
“The existing transmission line system is insufficient for the large-scale deployment of clean energy to meet the nation’s decarbonization goals to combat global warming…However, building transmission lines is a complex task that can be mired in intense local siting battles. A study published in June in the magazine Energy policy Discover 53 utility-scale wind, solar and Geothermal Energy Projects that were ultimately delayed or blocked between 2008 and 2021 due to local opposition. These projects represent approximately 9,586 megawatts of potential energy generation capacity…Building transmission lines is more important for distributing renewable energy than using fossil fuels, because with coal, natural gas or nuclear baseload energy, energy can be moved to where it is needed of. “
While Biden’s infrastructure law includes $20 billion for grid modernization, full expansion and repairs will be more expensive and difficult to achieve without federal leadership. More likely are state-level grid modernization efforts by states to reduce greenhouse gases. This may not be optimal from a national or global perspective, but will enable those (mostly blue) countries to reduce their energy costs.
An uncertain element in decarbonization efforts is the development of new technologies. We assume that subsidies are needed to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles based on existing technologies. But breakthroughs in battery technology and solar cell technology could reduce the cost of distributed energy and electric vehicles. Just as people are disconnected from cable TV and cable internet, it is also possible to disconnect from the grid itself. The inventors who create the low-cost home energy kit and the companies that manufacture and distribute it will make a lot of money. While there is a real economic incentive to develop this technology, there is no guarantee it will happen.
While technology and the free market may save us, it makes no sense to rely on science fiction and fantasy to deal with the floods, droughts, rising seas, famines and extreme weather that are happening now. We need to mobilize the technology we have now, while investing in R&D to build the technology of the future. The dysfunctional American politics in Washington, D.C. and many states make this even more difficult.
Despite numerous political issues and the abdication of national leadership, the transition to renewable energy is still underway, and eventually fossil fuels will be eliminated from the market. The U.S. Supreme Court, Republicans, Joe Manchin, and the fossil fuel industry all lack a sense of urgency about the climate crisis. Globally, this is less ideologically obvious, but the political self-interest of dictators like Vladimir Putin has led to decisions prioritizing the use of fossil fuels. Nonetheless, many people with economic and political power around the world understand the nature of our environmental crisis and are willing to act. This shift, which I believe is unstoppable, is being driven by the actions of institutional leaders in governments and businesses around the world. Less clear is the damage due to delays. Joe Manchin, like Donald Trump before him, has challenged us all about how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without American national leadership. Either way, it has to be done.
