In the late 1940s, following wartime-driven innovation, the mass production of inexpensive plastics revolutionized American life. For the first time, plastic toothbrushes, bottles, kitchenware, and furniture were widely available to the public. Yet soon after, a new question arose: what do we do with all this waste?
Today, that decades-long challenge remains unresolved. The OECD estimates that the U.S. generates more than 73 million metric tons of plastic waste annually, about 485 pounds per person. And while nearly everyone agrees that plastic waste in landfills and oceans is a problem, consensus on how to solve it remains elusive.
On one side, free-market advocates insist the issue can be fixed through voluntary corporate measures, not regulation. Yet, despite companies redesigning products and promoting reuse, these efforts have barely made a dent in total waste. On the other side, some environmental groups advocate blanket bans or drastic production limits, while downplaying the need for better collection, recycling, and infrastructure. They also often ignore that paper, glass, or metal alternatives can demand more energy, water, or emissions to produce and transport.
It is time for a pragmatic middle path that embraces innovation to make sustainability work. That’s where advanced recycling comes in.
The Empire State’s green energy push has been a pie-in-the-sky bust as politicians hit the brakes on their alternate energy goals — and New Yorkers get sticker shock from ever-soaring utility bills, a scathing new report found.
The analysis by the Democratic-leaning think tank the Progressive Policy Institute found a “clear and undeniable pattern of failure” across the most critical mandates of the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Act.
“New York set bold climate targets, but ignored the economic and technical realities required to achieve them,” said PPI’s report author Neel Brown.
“The result is an energy system that is less reliable, more expensive, and now politically unsustainable. Unless policymakers course correct, the state risks turning a climate leadership story into a cautionary tale,” he added.
WASHINGTON — Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new report warning that New York is entering a climate and energy cost crisis as the state falls far behind its statutory decarbonization mandates. The report, “New York’s Climate Crossroads: Assuring Affordable Energy,” finds that New York’s current energy strategy is driving up costs for families, constraining reliable supply, and jeopardizing the political viability of the state’s climate agenda. PPI produced the analysis to help lawmakers, regulators, and stakeholders chart a practical path that aligns climate ambition with affordability and reliability.
Authored by Neel Brown, Managing Director at PPI, and John Kemp, an internationally recognized expert on energy markets and systems, the report outlines how New York is off track on key goals ranging from emissions reduction to renewable generation to offshore wind deployment. Distributed solar is the only measure on pace to meet statutory targets. According to the state’s own data, offshore wind and energy storage are classified as severely behind schedule, underscoring systemic challenges in the state’s planning and execution.
“New York set bold climate targets, but ignored the economic and technical realities required to achieve them,” said Brown. “The result is an energy system that is less reliable, more expensive, and now politically unsustainable. Unless policymakers course correct, the state risks turning a climate leadership story into a cautionary tale.”
Key takeaways from the report include:
New York’s emissions per capita are already among the nation’s lowest at 8.4 tons, more than 40% below the U.S. average.
Electricity prices are 44% higher than the national average, and residential rates have risen 36% since 2019, nearly three times faster than the rest of the country.
New York is behind on nearly every major climate mandate, including offshore wind, which is 1% operational, and energy storage, which is 8% operational toward 2030 goals. Only distributed solar is on track.
Fossil fuels still supply nearly half of New York’s electricity, and the closure of Indian Point erased a major source of zero-emission power, slowing the state’s progress.
Utilities are pursuing additional rate hikes of roughly 20%, driven by aging infrastructure, storm repairs, and rising operating costs, adding further pressure on households already facing higher energy bills.
The report highlights a growing collision between shrinking dispatchable power supply, state-driven increases in electricity demand, and rising ratepayer costs. The closure of the Indian Point nuclear facility removed a major source of zero-emission electricity, while state policies have blocked upgrades to aging natural gas plants and restricted natural gas pipeline capacity. These decisions have tightened supply and added cost pressures.
According to the analysis, residential electricity prices in New York have risen at nearly three times the national average since 2019. Utilities have requested further rate hikes of roughly 20%, citing infrastructure needs, storm recovery, and rising operating costs.
The authors outline a set of pragmatic considerations for policymakers, including shifting from technology mandates to outcome-driven policies, modernizing existing natural gas infrastructure to preserve reliability, and prioritizing affordability to maintain public support.
INTRODUCTION: THE CHALLENGE OF BALANCING AMBITION WITH REALITY
New York has established some of the nation’s most ambitious decarbonization targets, positioning itself as a leader in climate policy. However, the immense economic burden and practical challenges of implementing these mandates threaten their political viability. As the costs of this transition fall heavily on ratepayers and working families, a critical tension emerges between state-level climate objectives and the everyday financial realities faced by New Yorkers. This paper analyzes the state’s progress toward its climate targets, diagnoses the underlying pressures on its energy system, and evaluates more pragmatic policy pathways that can align climate goals with economic sustainability for its residents.
New York’s historical success in reducing emissions was achieved largely through the cost-effective strategy of retiring coal-fired power plants and replacing them with natural gas generation. The state is now entering a much more difficult and expensive phase, focused on displacing firm, base-load energy sources like natural gas generation with intermittent renewables like wind and solar. This shift fundamentally alters the economic and political calculus of decarbonization, raising questions about the feasibility of the current strategy and its impact on consumers already facing high energy prices.
To fully understand the challenges ahead, it is essential to first appreciate New York’s unique high-cost and high-efficiency energy profile. The latter is not a story of a decarbonized grid won by environmental activism, but of remarkable, nation-leading energy efficiency resulting from urban density and a less energy-intensive economy.
Bill Gates dropped a truth bomb that has the potential to fundamentally reshape the climate conversation in our country. After years of aligning with the doomsday narrative that focuses exclusively on arbitrary, short-term emissions targets, he reversed course. Gates admitted what many of us in the heartland have known all along: While climate change poses serious challenges, our primary focus should be one thing — improving people’s lives.
Gates’s memo marked a significant shift in his climate narrative, reflecting his simple truth that doomerism of the past simply isn’t resonating. He is right. In the recent elections in New Jersey and Virginia, climate was not a top concern for voters or candidates. Govs.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) won by distancing themselves from the apocalyptic crisis language of the past and focusing on what matters most to Americans: energy affordability.
Our country is facing unprecedented energy demand with the buildout of new data centers and other energy-intensive technologies. And electricity costs are a simple function of supply and demand. What candidates such as Sherrill and Spanberger rightly recognize is that protecting everyday Americans struggling to keep their lights on and homes heated requires more power, and fast.
In the waning days of the Biden administration, Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and John Barrasso (R-Wy.) introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024. It represented the culmination of years of debate to streamline and modernize the approval process for infrastructure and energy projects by reducing the time and complexity of environmental reviews and litigation. The aim was to accelerate construction of critical projects — from transmission lines and renewable energy facilities to roads and public works — while still preserving essential environmental safeguards. But under pressure from some members of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, as well as hardline Republicans unwilling to assist Biden’s environmental agenda, the effort failed.
However, even with a new president and a Republican congressional majority, permitting reform hasn’t disappeared from the legislative agenda. Bipartisan proposals such as the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act, have emerged, designed to shorten review timelines, reduce litigation delays, and modernize the permitting pipeline.
Yet, Democratic hesitation remains a major obstacle to comprehensive, legislative permitting reform. Many congressional Democrats continue to view permitting reform with suspicion, worried that legislative changes could weaken basic environmental protections. Others warn that certain proposals risk benefiting fossil fuel development at the expense of clean energy.
But there is a strong case that Democrats have much to gain by engaging in the permitting debate. Permitting reform cannot be a rollback of environmental safeguards. Instead, it is an opportunity to find bipartisan compromise and advance core Democratic priorities: accelerating the clean energy transition, modernizing infrastructure, making energy more affordable, lowering costs for families, and strengthening resilience against climate threats. By engaging in the permitting reform debate, Democrats can ensure that reforms balance speed with environmental safeguards and deliver a cleaner, cheaper, and more affordable energy future.
WASHINGTON — Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new report outlining nine concrete reforms to fix America’s broken permitting system and accelerate the clean energy transition while preserving strong environmental protections. The report, “Bureaucracy Blocks Green Progress: 9 Ideas for Democratic Permitting Reform,” makes the case that modernizing federal permitting is essential to lowering energy costs, strengthening national security, and building the infrastructure required for long-term economic growth. The report is designed to help Democratic lawmakers identify practical reforms they can champion as part of a bipartisan permitting deal.
Authored by Colin Mortimer, PPI’s Senior Director of Partnerships, the report argues that outdated and duplicative review processes have become a major obstacle to building both clean energy projects and traditional infrastructure. From transmission lines to renewable power to wildfire mitigation efforts, years of delay and litigation are driving up costs for families, deterring investment, and slowing America’s ability to compete globally.
“Permitting reform is not about weakening environmental protections. It is about making sure the projects that cut emissions, lower costs, and strengthen our grid are no longer trapped in regulatory limbo,” said Mortimer. “Democrats in Congress have a strategic opportunity to lead, shape bipartisan outcomes, and ensure reforms deliver both climate progress and economic gains.”
The report highlights the significant national consequences of inaction. According to recent industry and economic analyses, permitting delays have cost the United States more than $100 billion in lost investment, delayed 150,000 jobs, and led to hundreds of millions of tons of additional carbon emissions this decade. With electricity demand expected to rise sharply due to AI, manufacturing growth, and electrification, the need for a modernized permitting framework has never been more urgent.
PPI’s nine recommendations include:
Establishing firm environmental review deadlines to prevent endless analysis
Codifying Supreme Court limits on overly expansive environmental reviews
Adopting a 150-day statute of limitations for lawsuits that challenge approved projects
Creating a true federal single front door to coordinate and accelerate multi-agency reviews
Reforming private right of action rules to curb abuse without silencing legitimate concerns
Expanding FERC’s authority to site critical transmission and modernize natural gas review processes
Providing agencies with the resources needed to conduct faster and more rigorous reviews
Encouraging revenue sharing to strengthen local support for clean energy and infrastructure
Limiting unilateral executive power to revoke major projects that have already met the required standards
“These ideas show that permitting reform can be both pro-environment and pro-growth,” added Mortimer. “If Democrats help shape the conversation, they can secure reforms that speed clean energy deployment, create jobs, and give communities a direct stake in America’s energy future.”
The report emphasizes that durable permitting reform must also be bipartisan. With Congress preparing for major legislative negotiations, PPI argues that Democrats in Congress have much to gain by putting forward solutions that align climate ambition with practical implementation and affordability.
Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us @PPI.
In today’s hyper-polarized political landscape, common sense often feels like a radical act. That’s why Governor Kathy Hochul’s (D-N.Y.) embrace of a balanced, all-of-the-above energy strategy deserves more than polite applause. Governor Hochul can create a model for Democrats across the country.
Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, a group I co-chair, conducted polling last month from showed a strong majority of New Yorkers want energy that is reliable and affordable. Sixty-six percent of New York voters, including 74 percent of state Democrats, oppose efforts to block natural gas. This isn’t a red or blue issue. It’s a kitchen table issue. It’s time Democrats leaned into it.
Energy policy doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s the backbone of everything we care about—economic growth, national security, public health, and affordability. Nowhere is this more apparent than in New York—a state whose infrastructure powers not just the local economy, but vital national assets.
The new momentum behind Constitution comes as Democrats reckon with voter defections in low-income communities grappling with high energy costs, as detailed in a February report by the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank. It highlighted how energy costs were a significant concern driving votes in poor, predominantly Black communities in the Boston area, where Trump notched gains in November.
“If you’re a poor resident of public housing in, say, Boston or Dorchester and Roxbury, it’s really hard for you to see the benefits of tax credits for heat pumps” or other policies aimed at curbing fossil fuel use, said Elan Sykes, the report’s author. “This is really something that we as Democrats need to recognize.”
In the scatter plots for each state, every panel reflects the relationship between Black population and energy burdens in one Congressional District in that state. Within each district’s panel, one dot represents each census tract in that district. The slope of each panel’s light blue line reflects the correlation between higher black population and higher energy burdens for that district, with its confidence interval shown in gray (so a wider gray shading represents a looser fit for that panel’s blue line). Then, each Congressional District in the states included in PPI’s report “Energy Costs Come First: a New Approach to Environmental Justice” is mapped such that the fill color of each census tract scales according to the energy burden as a percent of area median income or the proportion of Black households as share of the tract’s population.
This appendix uses data from the Department of Energy’s Low-income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) tool collected through the Census Bureau. Importantly, these estimations are not causal and only reflect the statistical level of similarity between the two characteristics across the range of census tracts in each district. Additionally, the underlying data report values for energy burden calculated from area median income and average annual energy costs and so do not capture varying levels of energy burden within each tract or microdata like individual household burden. Even though this correlation does not allow for direct causal claims, the simplicity of this comparison provides significant insight when paired with the entire PPI report.
Each state listed below links to a PDF with this data:
WASHINGTON — Across the country, particularly in major cities, there is a stark disparity in energy infrastructure. Many predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods have older homes that lack energy-efficient, cost-effective appliances, further straining communities already disproportionately impacted by poverty, discrimination, and underinvestment.
Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new report, Energy Costs Come First: A New Approach to Environmental Justice, authored by Elan Sykes, examining the disproportionate energy burdens faced by low-income Black and Latino communities. The report provides a critical analysis of how current climate and energy policies exacerbate economic hardship for these communities and outlines a pragmatic path forward — one that prioritizes affordability, clean energy deployment, and regulatory reforms to enable rapid progress for all Americans in the energy transition.
“Too many communities of color in the U.S. are stuck with outdated energy infrastructure and sky-high energy bills,” said Elan Sykes, author of the report and Director of Energy and Climate Policy at PPI. “The clean energy transition represents an opportunity to fix this, but we must do it in a way that actually benefits the people who need it most — by lowering costs and emissions while ensuring a reliable, affordable supply of energy.”
The report focuses on Boston and the broader New England region as a case study, revealing how energy policies, infrastructure constraints, and regulatory barriers have compounded energy insecurity in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Key findings include:
Higher Energy Burdens for Black Households: Data shows that energy costs, as a share of household income, increase in proportion to the share of Black residents in a given Boston neighborhood.
Infrastructure Bottlenecks Driving Up Costs: Due to legal and regulatory hurdles, New England remains cut off from lower-cost energy sources, forcing vulnerable communities to rely on expensive and dirtier fuels like diesel and imported liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Flawed Climate Strategies Worsening Inequality: Activist-driven policies focused on blocking new energy infrastructure — without adequate replacement solutions—have made electricity and heating even less affordable for working-class families.
Lessons for National Policy: The dynamics seen in New England are not unique. Across the U.S., a failure to balance climate ambition with affordability is alienating working-class voters and exacerbating economic inequality.
The report highlights how federal, state, and local permitting laws — intended to protect the environment — are instead being weaponized to delay clean energy projects, prolong dependence on expensive fossil fuels, and drive up costs for the very communities that environmental justice advocates seek to protect.
PPI’s recommendations include:
Permitting Reform to Accelerate Clean Energy Deployment: Congress and state governments should streamline approval processes for renewable energy projects, grid expansion, and natural gas infrastructure to lower costs and improve reliability.
Targeted Energy Assistance for Low-Income Families: Expand and modernize programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) to better serve households struggling with high energy burdens.
Creation of Community Energy Hubs: Establishing local institutions to provide consumers with trusted information on energy efficiency, clean energy options, and financial assistance programs.
A Balanced, Technology-Neutral Approach: Instead of rigid fossil fuel bans, policymakers should support an energy mix that includes nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, and natural gas to ensure both emissions reductions and cost stability.
The report also warns that Republican efforts to dismantle clean energy policies, combined with Democratic policies that exacerbate affordability issues, risk deepening political alienation among working-class Black and Latino voters — a shift that was evident in the 2024 elections.
With the Biden administration’s historic clean energy investments now facing potential rollbacks under a second Trump presidency, PPI urges policymakers to adopt a pragmatic, affordability-first approach to the clean energy transition — one that accelerates progress while keeping energy bills manageable for working families.
PPI’s Energy and Climate Solutions Initiative links two vital and inseparable national goals: assuring abundant and affordable energy for Americans while lowering U.S. and global greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. These goals must be pursued in tandem because we won’t be able to build majority support for climate action if Americans fear it will lead to higher energy costs at home or free-riding by the world’s major carbon-emitters. Only by tackling both sides of the energy and climate equation can U.S. leaders break today’s political deadlock between climate deniers and fossil prohibitionists and create a politically sustainable strategy for America’s clean energy transition.
Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on X.
Across the United States, too many communities of color lack access to reliable and affordable energy. Facing the dual problems of inadequate infrastructure serving their neighborhoods and being more likely to live in older, less energy-efficient housing on average, low-earning Black and Latino families are forced to spend higher shares of their smaller incomes on energy compared to wealthier and better-connected neighborhoods around them. As a consequence, they face painfully high energy bills and experience energy insecurity at double the level of white households. This burden is a woeful legacy of poverty, discrimination, and underinvestment in poor urban neighborhoods.
This legacy also includes aging energy and transportation systems like coal-fired power plants and highways that release disproportionate concentrations of harmful local pollution in disadvantaged communities, exacerbating health issues that compound with widespread financial and energy poverty. The clean energy transition offers a historic opportunity to relieve these burdens by replacing older and dirtier resources with new technologies and expanding electricity grids, transit systems, and dense urban housing to meet growing needs. Unfortunately, this opportunity has not yet been taken.
Instead, the green left has pursued a transition strategy that exposes vulnerable communities to higher, less predictable prices while obstructing reforms that would enable faster and wider deployment of clean energy projects. In the name of environmental justice and climate urgency, activists and decisionmakers have urged the abolition of all fossil fuels and used procedural barriers to obstruct new fossil infrastructure. But as explored in this paper, the strategy of procedural obstruction backfires when it adds interminable delays to clean energy projects and prolongs the life of coal- and oil-fired power plants.
Energy prices emerge from a complex mix of geography, markets, and policy choices, which are hard to isolate. This report focuses on Boston and the regional grid of New England more broadly as an initial case study of the special energy burdens of low-income communities. Connected to the rest of the continental U.S. by the state of New York, elected leaders and green activists have combined to lock Boston and New England into a status quo energy system that cuts off access to renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydropower as well as domestic natural gas capacity. By opposing local substation upgrades, transmission lines for hydropower imports from Quebec, and pipelines bringing Appalachian shale gas across Pennsylvania and New York, politically powerful elites in one of America’s most progressive regions are using federal laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act, and state laws like the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) to subject their lower-income neighbors to unnecessary price volatility and prolonging reliance on coal and oil. When global gas markets are disrupted, as in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, this import dependence exposes isolated New England to severe price spikes. To make up for the winter power shortfall, Boston and its surrounding areas are forced to use dirtier and more expensive energy resources, burning diesel and imported gas to power the grid and heating homes with fuel oil.
The cost of these spikes does not fall evenly on all New England communities. This paper tracks community impact using the metric of energy burden, or average monthly residential energy costs divided by median household income for a given location, to identify which people and places are hit hardest. According to data from the Census compiled by the Department of Energy’s LEAD (Low-income Energy Affordability Data) tool, the rate of energy burden in a given Boston census tract rises in clear proportion to the share of households identifying as Black. This paper includes an appendix with data for the energy burden in every district represented by a member of the Congressional Black Caucus for further examination. Future reports will examine energy burdens in other communities, starting with a study of congressional districts with significant Latino populations.
The statistical relationship between Black population share and higher energy burdens holds true for Black communities across the country. LEAD’s data definitively show that census tracts with high shares of Black households are more likely to experience higher energy burdens than their neighboring tracts even across states with wide variation in energy infrastructure, resource mix, and housing types in a remarkably strong pattern. These are the results when utopian demands of green activists and environmental groups for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels — which still supply 83 percent of America’s primary energy and vary in carbon intensity — take precedence over local families’ struggles to pay their electricity and heat bills.
Boston is exemplary, but not unique. National activist groups like the Sierra Club, 350.org, and the Center for Biological Diversity argue for the same policies regionally in New England as they do in policy debates across the country. This includes not just state and local fights over individual projects but also federal policy discussions in Washington, where they sent a joint letter to then-Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) opposing federal energy permitting reforms in June 2024. If these activist approaches continue to dominate the Democratic party’s environmental justice and climate policy conversations, low-income voters who do not share their priorities may continue their exodus from the party.
The main challenge facing Democrats is to build broader public support for a more pragmatic energy transition. To win a new hearing among working-class voters, Democrats must discard the utopian visions of Green New Dealers and their failed strategy of trying to scare working-class voters into supporting the premature abolition of fossil fuels. As PPI polling shows, most working-class voters are neither abolitionists nor climate deniers, with 54% majority support for a combination of old and new resources, including nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, and natural gas, to power our growing economy while reducing greenhouse gases.
On the other extreme, Trump’s so-called “energy dominance” agenda would devastate U.S. clean energy industries and dismantle crucial methane mitigation programs that incentivize oil and gas producers to prevent waste. Such an abrupt shift would not only cede ground to Chinese clean technology producers in global markets, counter to stated administration goals on trade and manufacturing, but would also hurt consumers by depriving them of access to the cheapest and cleanest resources available.
Instead, policymakers should embrace a pragmatic environmental justice vision that brings down costs and emissions by enabling wide and rapid deployment of clean energy technologies and the infrastructure needed to support them. This infrastructure push would include relieving regulatory bottlenecks on clean electricity development, transmission and distribution grid upgrades. It would also include the natural gas pipeline and generation capacity needed to support them, enabling the connection of significantly more clean energy resources to consumers and helping to bring down costs.
Pairing this shift with bolstered subsidies for low-income households and introducing innovative frameworks for community engagement hosted at newly established Community Energy Hubs (see PPI Policy Recommendations below) would ensure that disadvantaged Black households would stand to gain improved access, lower costs, and a more concrete sense that the energy transition is working for them. On top of changes to the federal energy policy landscape, state and local policies that remove barriers not just to the development of clean energy infrastructure but also restrictions on dense housing, mass transit, and multimodal streets would help ensure that Black communities that face concentrated poverty and generations of infrastructural discrimination are not left exposed to the elements by inadequate insulation, higher utility bills on lower incomes, or lack of policy support.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS IN BRIEF
Congress, State legislatures, and local governments should enact all-of-the above permitting reforms to accelerate the development of electricity grid expansion, clean energy generation, supply chains for clean energy technologies, low-carbon mass transit and dense housing construction, and the natural gas capacity needed to support the grid while displacing coal and fuel oil combustion.
Congress must also maintain and strengthen LIHEAP and WAP to ensure that households can afford energy services in acute crises and gain access to efficiency upgrades.
State governments should establish pilot Community Energy Hubs that serve as a consumer-facing resource to ease transaction costs and close information gaps on available resources and technologies for homeowners, renters, landlords, workers, and small business owners.
Last year’s presidential election was a demolition derby for a host of progressive causes and illusions. Democrats are the biggest casualties of this collision with political reality, but Green New Dealers aren’t far behind.
President Trump’s triumphant return to the White House puts climate science deniers back in charge of national policy, at best retarding and at worst reversing America’s clean energy transition for the next four years.
After declaring a bogus “national energy emergency” last week (is he really unaware that U.S. oil and gas production has surged in recent years?) Trump issued executive orders pulling America out of the Paris climate accord, expanding drilling on public lands, blocking offshore wind and gutting former President Joe Biden’s clean energy initiatives.
Climate change was far from the voters’ top issue last November. In fact, the outcome underscored the failure of environmental activists to convince voters that it should be. Nor have they come close to forging a national consensus behind their demands to swiftly phase out fossil fuels and rely exclusively on renewables.
Massive fires continue to rage across Southern California, exacting a terrible toll on its residents. At this writing, at least 27 lives have been lost, over 12,000 structures have been destroyed, and over 90,000 people remain under evacuation orders. The fires are estimated to have caused up to $275 billion in damage, making this the most expensive wildfire in modern American history, and one of the costliest natural disasters overall.
Normally when faced with an emergency like this, the nation’s political leaders set aside politics and offer aid and sympathy to the victims. Instead, Congressional Republicans are politicizing the catastrophe, threatening to withhold disaster aid unless Democrats cave to their partisan demands.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters this week that he thinks “there should probably be conditions on [the] aid.” Many Republicans agreed, though no consensus emerged on what those conditions should be. Some, such asCongressman Warren Davidson andSenator John Barrasso, chose this perilous moment to demand state officials change California’s allegedly bad forest management practices, which they claimed worsened the disaster.
There’s no doubt that sound forest management techniques, such as controlled burns, can be a valuable tool for fire prevention. But what works in more heavily forested areas of the state isn’t necessarily applicable to the drier and more densely populated hillsides of Los Angeles County. These fires’ rapid spread has more to do with natural phenomena, such as the powerfulSanta Ana winds, and the region’s noticeablelack of rainfall this year, than the state’s forest management practices. Scientists believe California’s recent dry spell has been exacerbated byclimate change. If Republicans were truly serious about fire prevention, they’d be supporting rather than blocking policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Other Congressional Republicans seemed purely interested in scoring partisan points. Congressman Ralph Norman, for example, said, “[Republicans have] got to get a pound of flesh on any dollar spent on California” simply because it is a predominantly Democratic state. BothPresident-elect Donald Trump and Speaker Johnson have proposed to extract that pound of flesh by linking aid to a temporary suspension of the federal debt limit, which they know a narrow House GOP majority will struggle to pass on its own. Democrats have thus far refused to support any debt limit changes that merely serve to expedite Trump’s agenda without making broader reforms to the broken debt limit process that undermines future presidents of both parties. But Republicans believe that by taking wildfire aid as a hostage, Democrats — several of whom represent districts affected by the fires — can be pressured into giving up their leverage in budget negotiations.
This type of politicization is not the norm in Washington. When Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit heavily Republican areas of North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida only months ago, Democrats were quick to support emergency aid. The Biden administration and Congressional Democrats put no conditions on disaster funding, and when it was clear that FEMA’s budget would not be sufficient to cover recovery efforts, President Biden declared that more funding was “urgently needed.” Shortly thereafter, disaster aid was included on a bipartisan basis in December’s government funding bill.
Congressional Republicans are attempting to set a terrible precedent by attaching partisan strings to disaster aid. This callous ploy violates our government’s basic responsibility to come to the aid of U.S. citizens whose lives and property are threatened by natural forces beyond their control. Democrats have rightly rejected this blackmail attempt, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies calling GOP demands “unconscionable, unacceptable, [and] un-American.” He’s right, and Democrats should continue to stand firm as Republicans attempt to use this tragedy to extort purely political concessions.
Berkeley, California is arguably the most liberal city in the U.S. Tourist shops sell t-shirts touting its identity as a leftist hub. The city is overwhelmingly white and wealthy, with large Asian and small Black minority populations, a median household income over $100,000, and median home value of nearly $1.3 million. When we think of the liberal elite, we think of Berkeley. So when residents last week voted down a new fossil fuel tax, it came as a rude surprise to green activists across the country.
On the Berkeley ballot this November was a local initiative that would have imposed a heavy tax on large buildings that used natural gas for heating, cooking, and for other purposes. Proponents argued that the measure would help rid us of fossil fuel use, following a trend across the country in which climate activists look for every opportunity to shut down natural gas.
In a resounding rebuke, Berkeley voters rejected the ballot measure 68% to 32%, sending the message that they were not interested in sacrificing their use of natural gas for any climate benefit that they thought it would net. To soothe their nagging climate conscience, donations to environmental activists will surely flow forth from Berkeley. The ability to avoid any sacrifice in the name of climate change only to demand those sacrifices from other, less wealthy communities is an environmentalist privilege that does not go unnoticed by working class Americans.
TRADE FACT OF THE WEEK: Pennsylvania produces 1.5% of all world energy.
THE NUMBERS: World energy production, 2022, in BTUs* –
Area
Energy production
World
598 quadrillion BTUs
China
137 quadrillion
U.S.
99 quadrillion
(Texas)
25 quadrillion
(Pennsylvania)
10 quadrillion
(New Mexico)
7 quadrillion
Russia
60 quadrillion
Saudi Arabia
30 quadrillion
India
22 quadrillion
Canada
22 quadrillion
All other
228 quadrillion
* Energy Information Administration. A “BTU” (British Thermal Unit) is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of a pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
From the “oil shocks” of the 1970s until recently, energy policy arguments featured mostly moaning, grim charts illustrating the consequences of “energy dependence” on unstable parts of the world, and predictions that things would get worse. Here’s what’s actually happened, using the year 2003 — 20 years ago — as a point of departure:
Starting point: According to the Energy Information Administration (the Department of Energy’s data and research arm), in 2003, Americans produced 67.3 quadrillion “BTUs” worth of energy, and used 95.8 quadrillion BTUs. This meant Americans bought, on net, about 28.5 quadrillion BTUs from foreigners, mostly in the form of crude oil. The resulting economy (a) employed 130 million people, (b) produced $11.7 trillion worth of farm products, manufactured goods, movies, government programs, and other goods and services (which, converted to the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ “constant 2017 dollar” figures to allow for meaningful comparisons with today’s economy, would be $14.9 trillion), and (c) released 5.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
Since then, two big changes in the energy figures:
More production: Scarcity and price instability produced curiosity about whether we might find more at home. With heavy deployment of solar panels and wind turbines, drilling for natural gas, and so forth, the BTU count of domestically produced energy has grown from 67.3 quadrillion in 2003 to 91.9 quadrillion in 2020, and 102.8 quadrillion in 2023. In other words, domestic energy production has jumped by 40% since 2003, and by 10% since 2020. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Pennsylvania — the site of the world’s first oil well in 1859 — has seen energy income rise like this:
Year
Energy Income
2023
$8.1 billion
2019
$5.3 billion
2003
$0.3 billion
More Efficiency: Likewise, scarcity and price instability produce caution, efficiency, and savings. As America’s energy production has grown, use has dropped from 95.8 quadrillion BTUs in 2003 to 93.6 quadrillion in 2023. To put this 2.2 quadrillion BTU drop in perspective, total annual energy “consumption” figures are 10.8 quadrillion BTUs in Brazil, 1.6 quadrillion in Sweden, and 4.9 quadrillion in Taiwan. Carbon dioxide emissions, meanwhile, have dropped by about 25%, from 6 billion tons a year in the mid-2000s to 4.5 billion as of 2023.
Endpoint: As of 2023, the $28 trillion U.S. economy – $22.7 trillion in BEA’s constant 2017 dollars — employed 156 million people. Converting all this into BEA’s inflation-adjusted “constant 2017 dollars,” the 2% decline in energy use, and the accompanying 25% drop in carbon dioxide emissions, have accompanied the following big-picture changes:
2003
2023
Change
‘Real’ GDP
$14.9 trillion
$22.7 trillion
+52%
Manufacturing
$1.7 trillion
$2.3 trillion
+36%
Mining
$0.16 trillion
$0.34 trillion
+111%
Agriculture
$0.14 trillion
$0.19 trillion
+36%
Employment
130 million
156 million
+26 million
With respect to trade, meanwhile, the “dependence” of the 1970s through 2000s has not totally vanished — Americans still buy lots of crude oil from the Middle East, lots of solar panels from Southeast Asia, and lots of electricity from Canada. But fundamentally, the world depends on the U.S. to sell energy, not the other way around. Trade balance data, converted into BTUs, look like this:
What can we expect next? Energy trading will likely change sharply in the next decade, as fossil fuel use falls and countries rely more frequently on materials and machines used to generate and convert electricity, and thus use electricity in ways that look like “stocks” than “flows.” Neither renewable technologies like wind turbines nor electrified end-use technologies like heat pumps and batteries, for example, use fuels to operate. So perhaps “trade” will include fewer BTUs overall, and more materials and machines used to generate and convert electricity. Having surprised everyone by evolving into the world’s top source of energy since 2003, the U.S. now likely needs more powerful domestic clean energy supply chains to stay in the role.
* The “British Thermal Unit,” like the 159-liter/42-gallon “barrel” of oil, is a defiantly non-metric energy unit. The BTU and the annual amount of dollar-trading on forex exchanges are the only indexes of human activity measured in quadrillions, and BTUs will likely soon hit the 1 quintillion — 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 — plane. As a comparison, the mass of the moon is about 78 quintillion tons.
Note on this: China is the world’s top energy producer, but rankings look different depending on the type. Of China’s 138 quadrillion BTUs, 106 quadrillion come from coal. India is the No. 2 coal producer at 17 quadrillion BTU, and Indonesia is third at 12 quadrillion; together with China, this is 80% of world energy from coal. The U.S. however edges China by 15 quadrillion to 14 quadrillion in “nuclear, renewables, and other”; the U.S. is also first in both natural gas at 37 quadrillion BTU (above Russia’s 23 quadrillion and Iran’s 10 quadrillion), and petroleum at 32 quadrillion as against Saudi Arabia’s 25 and Russia’s 23.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
