Will Marshall compiled four positive economic stories for Real Clear Politics that President Obama should be making better use of in his campaign for re-election. From farming to exports there are positive signs in the economy according to Marshall.
Despite a string of doleful job and sales reports, there are signs that America is starting to get its productive mojo working again. The good news can’t come fast enough for President Obama, who needs some economic success stories he can point to.
So, at the risk of diverting readers from the cosmically important question of when, exactly, Mitt Romney stopped running Bain Capital, let’s examine four pinpricks of light that have begun to penetrate the economic gloom:
First, check out America’s phenomenally productive farmers; Monday’s Washington Post notes that the agriculture sector last year sold $136 billion worth of goods abroad, boosting farm income to a record $98 billion. When it comes to high quality and affordable food, America is still number one in the world.
But, in a perfect example of the disjuncture between what’s happening in the real world and Washington’s thralldom to entrenched interests, Congress is cooking up new justifications for costly federal subsidies for the thriving agricultural sector. The culprits include supposedly fiscally conservative Republicans, who added callousness to hypocrisy by also voting to slash food stamps for poor families.
The Washington Post covers Diana Carew’s and Michael Mandel’s Investment Heroes paper, focusing on the strong telecoms and energy presence amongst the leading companies.
AT&T, Exxon Mobil and Wal-Mart are leaders among a top 25 list of corporations still investing within U.S. borders, according to a new study from a progressive think tank.
These “Investment Heroes,” according to the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), continue to invest domestically in buildings, equipment and software — something most companies have slowed or stopped throughout the lackluster economic recovery. However, telecom and energy companies, which are ubiquitous on the list, are still building broadband infrastructure to keep up with demand and are investing in the discovery of new sources of oil and gas.
The report’s authors, PPI economists Diana Carew and Michael Mandel, have no misconceptions that these companies are doing everything right — they are often criticized for environmental issues, privacy concerns and low tax rates, among other things — but want to point out the positive impact these companies are having when it comes to creating jobs and growth through their domestic investment.
Advances in drilling and recovery technologies for shale gas have reshaped our assumptions about America’s natural gas resources and our future energy options. Expanded development of shale gas and its associated liquids offer the potential for turning energy scarcity into plenty, fostering a renaissance in our petrochemical and manufacturing sectors, and offering a cleaner option for power generation.
If shale gas production realizes its potential of providing reliable supplies of natural gas for decades at affordable prices, it will lower utility bills for households and, by driving down feedstock and production costs, boost American manufacturing. In addition, greater use of natural gas in electricity generation is already providing environmental and climate benefits as a cleaner, market-friendly substitute for coal and as a complement to intermittent renewable resources like wind and solar.
In his 2012 State of the Union address, President Obama gave his strongest endorsement yet to shale gas. “The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy,” he said, adding that his administration “will take every possible action to safely develop this energy.”
But as the president’s remarks suggest, safety, and sustainability are key. For as gas production rises, so too does controversy over the environmental impact of shale gas development. Amid claims and counterclaims about its dangers from environmentalists and gas producers, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has be-come a household word. The public is being bombarded with negative images of shale production, from media reports of an earthquake in Ohio attributed to hydraulic fracturing, to flaming water faucets in the movie Gasland.
In response to real and imagined dangers, there is growing political pressure to regulate production at both the state and federal levels. Some states, including New York, Maryland, and New Jersey, already have limited shale development. Environmental concerns also have inspired proposed legislation in Congress and prompted federal agencies to take tentative steps toward new regulations.
In the minds of many Americans, “government” is synonymous with “red tape,” “bureaucracy” and “paperwork.”
And no wonder.
According to the government’s own estimates, American people and businesses collectively spent 8.8billion hours dealing with federal paperwork requirements in 2010. That’s equal to nearly 367 million days and more than one million years.And while this figure is down from 2009, it’s still 1.4 billion hours more than what people and companies spent on government paperwork in 2000.
Make no mistake: Paperwork is absolutely essential to the basic functions of government. It ensures compliance with health and safety regulations and the proper collection of taxes. It’s the only way for the government to gather information about its citizens and determine who is eligible for such crucial programs as Medicare and Social Security. It’s also an important avenue for Americans to get more information about the services and benefits government provides. As a consequence, policymakers should avoid the “meat cleaver” approach to reducing paperwork.
Nevertheless, there’s a difference between “smart” paperwork (paperwork that is as painless and efficient as possible) and plain old red tape. And too much of the latter still exists. The amount of time demanded from companies and citizens for paperwork compliance should be as precious to the government as the tax dollars it collects.
Modern technology can provide more effective, efficient and tree-friendly means for government to communicate with citizens or for companies to comply with regulatory requirements. As an example, allowing the “e-delivery” of just some annual retirement plan documents would conservatively save as much as $60 million in printing costs a year, in addition to 11,600 trees.
Fortunately, the Obama administration recognizes the problems posed by burdensome paperwork, and in January 2011, the president issued an executive order aimed at reviewing and pruning paperwork requirements.
To supplement that effort, this memo offers up five ideas for reforming paperwork—not only to save work and paper, but to improve the effectiveness of how government, people and companies interact with each other so that the public benefits.
Five ideas for a more modern government with less paper and less hassle:
Removing obstacles to small business success. Waive the first year of quarterly tax filing requirements for start-ups and small businesses.
Helping savers make better retirement decisions. Allow default e-delivery of 401(k) statements and retirement plan documents.
Helping taxpayers understand their benefits. Resume delivery of Social Security Statements by email and add a “Medicare Statement.”
Facilitating job creation. Fast-track paperwork reduction efforts with the best potential for job creation and require estimates of economic impact.
Building a more responsive government. Create a “silver scissors” challenge to solicit and reward citizens’ ideas for creative (and effective) paperwork reduction strategies.
America’s long nuclear energy drought is officially over. For the first time in 33 years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved a construction and operating license for a new nuclear reactor in the United States – actually two of them to expand Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle generating facility in Georgia.
This is good news for U.S. electricity consumers, companies, and workers. Since 1979, the last time NRC approved a construction permit, U.S. electricity use has risen more than 80 percent. An expansion of nuclear power – which has provided about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity for decades – shows that the United States is serious about meeting growing energy demand without pumping more carbon into the atmosphere. At a time when political support for some kind of carbon cap or tax has seemingly collapsed, that’s an important sign that Americans aren’t giving up on protecting the Earth’s climate.
The two reactors will generate thousands of badly needed construction and operating jobs. Their larger significance, however, may lie in symbolizing America’s commitment to rebuilding its productive base. In effect, the NRC’s action puts America back in the nuclear energy business, and not a moment too soon. Around the world, some 160 new nuclear reactors have either been ordered or are planned to be operational by 2030, according to the World Nuclear Organization. We need to rebuild our nuclear industrial infrastructure to be able to compete in the fast-growing global market for nuclear energy.
The NRC’s decision comes on the heels of another important development which bodes well for America’s “nuclear renaissance.” Last month, President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (BRC) issued its final report. It offers a new strategy for breaking the impasse on nuclear waste disposal, which has tied politicians in knots over the proposed Yucca Mountain facility for decades. Headed by Democrat Lee Hamilton and Republican Brent Scowcroft, the BRC calls for a resumption of the search for a second geological storage site, which it says we will need regardless of Yucca’s fate.
Nuclear energy still faces significant hurdles, especially the enormous upfront costs of siting and building a generating plant. But if the NRC can follow today’s action with a commitment to speeding up the approval process, some of those costs could be mitigated. In any case, it’s critical for the United States to recapture its technological leadership in energy, which includes the civilian nuclear power industry that was first invented here.
March 11, 2011 was a day of calamity the Japanese people will never forget. According to the National Police Agency of Japanthe Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami left 15,841 dead, 5,890 injured and 3,490 people missing (as of December, 2011). Mother Nature’s freakish, one-two punch also triggered the partial meltdowns of four reactors in the Fukushima Daaichi complex, one of the worst commercial nuclear power plant disasters in history.
The Fukushima incident has stoked nuclear dread around the world and led some to conclude that nuclear power is too risky. Perhaps the most dramatic shift in public attitudes has been in Germany, where a conservative-led government recently unveiled a plan to close down all the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022.
Americans, however, should not endorse this knee-jerk anti-nuclear policy. For the foreseeable future, nuclear power will remain a vital part of a balanced and realistic national energy portfolio. Moreover, as champions of reason and science, U.S. progressives have a responsibility to avoid panicky overreactions and instead undertake a clear-eyed assessment of the actual risks of nuclear energy.
Generating electricity—like getting out of bed in the morning, or any other human activity—carries inherent risks. That’s true regardless of the fuel used to generate power. Instead of carefully weighing and comparing such risks, however, some environmental activists have tried to pose a false choice between “clean” and presumably safe renewable fuels like wind, solar and geothermal energy, and “dirty” fossil fuels or allegedly “unsafe” nuclear power. This dichotomy has nothing to do with science.
No sensible person is against renewable energy. But it will probably be a long time—likely decades, not years—before such sources have a realistic prospect of providing the base load needs of our national economy, let alone meeting the growing requirements of the entire globe. The Obama administration takes a more realistic approach in including nuclear energy along with other non-carbon emitting sources in its “Clean Energy Standard.” To understand why this is the case, we first need to review a few of the often overlooked, but important subtleties of electrical power generation.
Whether it’s 4G cell phones, light-as-a-feather laptops or the latest tablet, Americans are enjoying a wireless revolution. In 2010, Americans typed, tapped, texted, and called on an estimated 300 million mobile devices.
But all this increased connectivity is taking a toll on the nation’s increasingly crowded airwaves. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) warns of a “spectrum crunch” that could hit as early as 2013, given how quickly wireless traffic is growing.
Innovative companies are devising new ways to maximize spectrum efficiency so more users can take up less space. But while these advances deserve strong support, they’re also not cost-free. In some cases, existing “legacy” users must retrofit older and less efficient technologies to adjust to these new uses.
This brief proposes a “spectrum management mitigation fund” to help legacy users defray the inadvertent costs of adapting to innovations in the marketplace. This fund would involve no new federal money and instead would be financed from a portion of revenues from “voluntary incentive auctions”—a mechanism endorsed by the FCC to encourage more efficient spectrum allocation between current and prospective licensees.
Creating the fund would reconcile two goals: it would both encourage much-needed innovation while also acknowledging the legitimate concerns of users with older technologies. Moreover, it would obviate the politicization of spectrum management issues currently occurring in part due to the absence of a mitigation mechanism. For example, this fund could help re-solve the current controversy between the legacy GPS community and the wireless broadband start-up LightSquared—it could partially compensate legacy GPS users for the cost of retrofitting existing devices, thereby clearing the path for LightSquared to deploy its network.
With the benefits of spectrum innovation too great pass up, this fund could be an important next step to ensure Americans enjoy the next generation and beyond of new wireless technologies.
President Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan includes some constructive – literally – provisions for upgrading America’s economic infrastructure. These shouldn’t be controversial: Who could be against putting people to work rebuilding the rickety foundations of U.S. productivity and competitiveness?
Well, Republicans, that’s who. They have dismissed the president’s call for $50 billion in new infrastructure spending as nothing more than another jolt of fiscal “stimulus” masquerading as investment.
It’s hard to imagine a more myopic example of the right’s determination to impose premature austerity on our frail economy. From Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Eisenhower, the Republicans were once a party dedicated to internal nation building. Today’s GOP is gripped by a raging anti-government fever which fails to draw elementary distinctions between consumption and investment, viewing all public spending as equally wasteful.
But as the White House’s Gene Sperling said yesterday, Republicans can’t claim credit for fiscal discipline by blocking long overdue repairs of in the nation’s transport, energy and water systems. There’s nothing fiscally responsible about “deferring maintenance” on the U.S. economy.
Sperling, chairman of the president’s National Economic Council, spoke at a PPI forum on Capitol Hill on “Infrastructure and Jobs: A Productive Foundation for Economic Growth.” Other featured speakers included Sen. Mark Warner, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Dan DiMicco, CEO of Nucor Corporation, Daryl Dulaney, CEO of Siemens Industry and Ed Smith, CEO of Ullico Inc., a consortium of union pension funds.
Fiscal prudence means foregoing consumption of things you’d like but could do without if you can’t afford them – a cable TV package, in Sperling’s example. But if a water pipe breaks in your home, deferring maintenance can only lead to greater damage and higher repair costs down the road.
As speaker after speaker emphasized during yesterday’s forum, that’s precisely what’s happening to the U.S. economy. Thanks to a generation of underinvestment in roads, bridges, waterways, power grids, ports and railways, the United States faces a $2 trillion repair bill. Our inadequate, worn-out infrastructure costs us time and money, lowering the productivity of workers and firms, and discouraging capital investment in the U.S. economy.
Deficient infrastructure, Dulaney noted, has forced Siemens to build its own rail spurs to get goods to market. That’s something smaller companies can’t afford to do. They will go to countries – like China, India and Brazil – that are investing heavily in building world-class infrastructure.
As Nucor’s DiMicco noted, a large-scale U.S. infrastructure initiative would create lots of jobs while also abetting the revival of manufacturing in America. He urged the Obama administration to think bigger, noting that a $500 billion annual investment in infrastructure (much of the new money would come from private sources rather than government) could generate 15 million jobs.
The enormous opportunities to deploy more private capital were echoed from financial leaders in New York, including Jane Garvey, the North American chairman of Meridiam Infrastructure, a private equity fund specializing in infrastructure investment. Garvey warned that what investors need from government programs is more transparent and consistent decision making, based on clear, merit-based criteria, and noted that an independent national infrastructure bank would be the best way to achieve this. Bryan Grote, former head of the Department of Transportation’s TIFIA financing program, which many describe as a forerunner of the bank approach, added that having a dedicated staff of experts in an independent bank is the key to achieving the more rational, predictable project selection that investors need to see to view any government program as a credible partner.
Tom Osborne, the head of Americas Infrastructure at UBS Investment Bank, agreed that an independent infrastructure bank like the version proposed by Senators Kerry, Hutchison and Warner, would empower private investors to fund more projects. And contrary to arguments that a national bank would centralize more funding decisions in Washington, Osborne explained that states and local governments would also be more empowered by the bank to pursue new projects with flexible financing options, knowing that the bank will evaluate projects based on its economics, not on the politics of the next election cycle.
Adding urgency to the infrastructure push was Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s warning this week that the recovery is “close to faltering.” Unlike short-term stimulus spending, money invested in modernizing infrastructure would create lasting jobs by expanding our economy’s productive base.
Warning that America stands on the precipice of a “double dip” recession, Sperling said it would be “inexcusable” for Congress to fail to act on the president’s job plan. He cited estimates by independent economic experts that the plan would boost GDP growth in 2012 from 2.4 to 4.2 percent, and generate over three million more jobs.
The political battle over Obama’s jobs plan centers on how it’s paid for. Senate Democrats have proposed a surtax on millionaires. Unlike tax hikes in general, this idea is popular, and Democrats clearly hope to use it to crack the GOP’s monolithic opposition to raising taxes.
However that battle ends, Congress must salvage the plan’s infrastructure provisions, including its call for an independent infrastructure bank.
America has a serious oil deficit. We consume almost three times as much oil as we produce. As a result, we send more than $250 billion a year offshore (mostly to our enemies and other bad guys) to import oil so we can keep our trains, planes, and automobiles running.
On the other hand, America now has a huge surplus of natural gas, enough to last us for 100 years or more. If we replaced the oil we import with domestic gas, we could end our energy dependence and stop enriching U.S. adversaries. But rather than convert from oil to gas, plans are afoot to export the gas!
The economics of importing oil and exporting gas make no sense. We currently pay about $100 to import a barrel of oil. We are exporting natural gas at a price that has the energy equivalence of about $25 a barrel. That’s right, we are buying energy as oil for $100, selling the same amount of energy as gas for $25.
Buying high and selling low – this is what passes for national energy policy today. Our leaders should be embarrassed.
In addition to the economics, the strategic implications of converting from oil to gas are huge.
About two-thirds of the oil we use is for transportation. Converting our transportation fleet to natural gas would almost eliminate the need to import oil. Our trade deficit would be cut in half, petro-despots would be deprived of their largest revenue source, and our economy would get a $250 billion shot in the arm – every year.
So why aren’t we doing it? Converting gasoline and diesel engines to gas is relatively easy and very safe. The challenge is the infrastructure – a national network of filling stations that need to be in place before people will convert their cars and trucks to gas. Building that infrastructure requires such a huge effort and coordination among so many actors that it is unlikely that the private sector can or will make the switch by itself. Among other things, investors will worry that OPEC will defensively collapse the price of oil as they did in the ’70s. Given these market realities, the only way this switch can possibly happen will be if the government steps up to catalyze and help underwrite the effort. 150 years ago the government made a similar commitment to enable the trans-continental railroad – which ushered in America’s great industrial expansion. Converting to natural gas could bring about a similar economic boom.
Installing the required new fueling infrastructure for gas-propelled vehicles would be a tremendous generator of new jobs. There are few other investments the nation could make with as large a payoff across so many areas of national concern.
For those interested in the math:
One barrel of oil = about 5.6 million BTU. One Mcf of natural gas = about 1.02 million BTU. (The actual energy content varies slightly depending on the grade of the oil or gas. These are industry averages.)
Energy equivalence: The BTUs in 1 bbl. oil = The BTUs in 5.6 Mcf natural gas.
1 bbl oil costs $96.75 and the same amount of energy in gas costs $25.59 (5.6Mcf x $4.57),
The energy cost ratio between oil and gas is roughly 4 ($100/$25).
That means we’re paying 4 times as much for an oil BTU as we get when we sell a gas BTU.
It also means that once we have completed the conversion, operating on gas instead of gasoline will reduce our transportation energy costs by almost 75 percent.
During the past few years, the United States has received an unexpected energy windfall: put simply, we have a lot more natural gas than we previously thought. This realization is altering America’s energy future in a fundamental way. For many years, the conventional wisdom was that natural gas would play an important role as a bridge fuel but then fade away as the U.S. and the world turned to renewable sources of energy later in the 21st century.
Recent discoveries of enormous gas reserves in the United States offer a very different vision for the future of natural gas. Expanding domestic production will resolve the primary issue that is presently keeping natural gas from becoming the dominant energy resource in the U.S.: the inadequacy of supplies to guarantee long-term availability at reasonable and predictable prices. Yet a recent report by the MIT Energy Initiative estimates that U.S. reservoirs may contain enough natural gas to meet the demand for 90 to 100 years at current consumption levels with much less price volatility.
New technology enabling the extraction of natural gas from shale has been called the most significant energy innovation this century; this discovery has spurred the expansion of U.S. natural gas production. Technology developed primarily in the United States has made the dramatic expansion of U.S. natural gas resources possible. Further technical improvements may enable an even larger expansion of our natural gas resources. ExxonMobil, a company nearly synonymous with oil, now predicts that natural gas will be the fastest growing major fuel source worldwide through 2030. Clearly, something very significant has happened in the world of energy.
Opening Remarks:
Heather Zichal
Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change
The Honorable Jason Altmire
U.S. Representative (D-Penn.)
David McCurdy
President of the American Gas Association
Roundtable Participants: Roger Cooper
Principal, Cleveland Park Policy Consulting Vello Kuuskraa
President, Advanced Resources Inc. Amy Mall
Senior Policy Analyst, Natural Resources Defense Council Peter Molinaro
Vice President, Federal and State Government Affairs, The Dow Chemical Company Peter Robertson,
Senior Vice President, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, America’s Natural Gas Alliance
Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011
10 a.m.
Location: National Press Club Zenger Room 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC
Governor Chris Christie has decided to pull New Jersey out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the Northeast’s carbon cap-and-trade program. New Hampshire’s legislature has also voted to leave, though the governor may veto the bill. Other states are considering their positions. As states leave RGGI and its market gets smaller, the advantages of linking up diminish, eroding its economic and political viability. Meanwhile, California’s attempt to implement cap and trade is under attack from the left and, as a result, has hit procedural roadblocks. These events have come as a surprise to many who follow this sort of thing—but are they important? Maybe. Three reactions are possible.
1) Despair(Cap and trade gets a knife in the back to match the one in the front)
RGGI and California’s AB32 are reminders that once, not so long ago, climate change was politically relevant and the best policy for avoiding it—pricing carbon—appeared not only possible but inevitable. RGGI and Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) are the only carbon cap-and-trade programs of any size anywhere in the world. (New Zealand also has a nascent scheme.) RGGI, to date, has survived the political tides that turned cap and trade into “cap and tax” and likely make any new carbon policy impossible in this country. In short, the states would carry the torch until, one day, Washington wakes up. It would be depressing irony, this story goes, if those state programs should die not by outside political force but by suicide.
2) Indifference (“Wait…New Jersey had a carbon policy?”)
Another view is that you can talk all you want about “carrying the torch” without changing the fact that RGGI was and is a mere drop in the bucket. Its goals were always modest, and emissions caps were set so high that allowances never had any real value. If it weren’t for price floors, they would have been worthless. The program didn’t result in enough emissions cuts to be regionally relevant, much less have an effect on the climate problem. RGGI hasn’t had political success either. It’s chosen form—cap and trade—has become much less popular since the program started. If RGGI was supposed to show the country that cap and trade could work and wasn’t so scary after all, it’s either failed or nobody was paying attention in the first place. When and if pricing carbon becomes politically plausible again in Washington, it will be because politics and national public opinion have changed, not because New Jersey lit the way. The programs don’t seem to have had any effect internationally, either—they aren’t touted by U.S. climate negotiators and seem to have had no persuasive power during climate talks.
3)Optimism (Playing the long game)
Michael Levi argues that there may be more positives than negatives in Gov. Christie’s announcement:
…in the course of rejecting RGGI, Christie embraced the reality of the climate problem. Last fall, he said he was skeptical that human-caused climate change was a real problem. In his withdrawal announcement, though, he made it pretty clear that he thought climate change was a serious matter. This is no small thing for a rising star in a party that has increasingly made climate denial a litmus test for its leadership.
Christie’s about-face on this issue makes former Minnesota Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty’s recent turn in the opposite direction look like ham-handed pandering.
Just as with every other environmental issue, the U.S. will have a climate policy when the center-right accepts that one is necessary, and not before. RGGI is doing very little to change that. In other words, RGGI matters only if you care more about the tool (cap and trade) more than the problem (climate change). It is odd, though, that a deficit hawk like Christie would spike a revenue generator like RGGI. That does not bode well for those who think that a carbon tax is the key to a grand environmental-fiscal compromise.
Which of these three is right? Perhaps unsurprisingly, all three to some extent. Pricing carbon is the most effective climate policy—so it is troubling to see it lose ground. RGGI itself is largely irrelevant to both the science and politics of climate. And the long view matters most of all. If you want a meaningful federal climate policy, you are looking for one thing: a 60th vote in the Senate. Could that one day be Christie?
Thomasson writes: “If environmentalists, clean energy advocates, and climate hawks of different feathers want voters to judge the president and members of Congress for their record on these issues, like their failure to pass energy and climate legislation, then they should take advantage of the visibility of Earth Day to demand an accounting from our officials. If there is any time when you can get the attention of the media and voters for five minutes to remind them that there is a lot of work left to do, today is the day.”
Richardson writes: “A better way to take stock of environmental progress is to look at the tools we are using. And unfortunately doing that leaves me profoundly depressed. For almost every environmental problem, the best, most cost-effective solutions are rejected in favor of second-bests, hopeful handouts, or inaction.”
Scorse writes: “The bottom line is that people are much more willing to support environmental policies that come with large risks and disruptions to their way of life when other policies are in place to shield them from excessive risk and instability. Progressive environmental policies must rest on a foundation of broader investments in social safety nets. One of the primary reasons that the U.S. has fallen behind the world on environmental policy is because we have fallen behind on virtually all measures of economic security; the two are intimately linked.”
Kilgore writes: “I can’t pinpoint the moment of total devolution of conservative opinion on the environment, although Al Gore’s Nobel Prize might have been the tipping point. Before you knew it, Fox News personalities were regularly greeting every blizzard as definitive proof that global warming was a hoax. A tempest-in-a-teapot leak of emails from a British research institute became “Climategate,” exposing a vast global socialist conspiracy to suppress clear evidence against climate change. And old, fringe arguments against environmentalism generally as “pagan” or anti-Western had a very big renaissance.”
Drutman writes: “It’s Earth Day, but as far as problems go, the environment now ranks last among 15 issues that the public thinks Congress and the President should deal with this year. Only 24 percent of Americans think the environment is an “extremely important” issue. On this score, the environment comes in behind “the situation in Iraq” (27 percent), “taxes” (27 percent), and “illegal immigration” (30 percent) and “gas and home heating prices” (31 percent).”
It’s almost universally understood that the sudden withdrawal of nearly the entire Republican Party from any significant interest in environmental protection has had and will continue to have a calamitous effect on the ability of public institutions to do anything about such challenges as global climate change. The speed with which this has happened, though, can induce whiplash, not least among Republican pols who are being forced to repudiate their own records (notably John McCain in 2008, and in the current presidential cycle, Tim Pawlenty, soon to be followed, I am sure, by Jon Huntsman if he decides to run). My personal favorite example of this phenomenon occurred in 2010, when Rep. Mark Kirk, who had voted for the administration-supported climate change bill in the House, promised to vote against it if elected to the Senate.
In part this development can be understood as simply a subset of the final conquest of the GOP by a conservative movement that’s been struggling to regain control ever since it briefly held it in 1964. It’s also, as many commentators have noted, a byproduct of partisan and ideological polarization: if Barack Obama is for climate change legislation, then, by God, no respectable conservative can come within miles of supporting it!
But something else is going on, too. Even within the conservative movement, hostility to environmentalism has recently morphed from a prejudice to a core belief. Until quite recently, conservative pols and opinion-leaders gave grudging lip service to environmental protection. EPA was viewed as a bureaucratic nuisance, but not as a fundamentally illegitimate menace to free enterprise. Conservatives favored “balanced” energy development, including nuclear energy and expanded exploitation of domestic oil and coal, but didn’t, until 2008, become the “drill baby drill!” fossil-fuel-o-maniacs they appear to be today. They were climate-change “skeptics,” but not, by and large, climate-change deniers.
I can’t pinpoint the moment of total devolution of conservative opinion on the environment, although Al Gore’s Nobel Prize might have been the tipping point. Before you knew it, Fox News personalities were regularly greeting every blizzard as definitive proof that global warming was a hoax. A tempest-in-a-teapot leak of emails from a British research institute became “Climategate,” exposing a vast global socialist conspiracy to suppress clear evidence against climate change. And old, fringe arguments against environmentalism generally as “pagan” or anti-Western had a very big renaissance.
On this last note, it’s almost been forgotten that just a few years ago “creation care” was the hottest topic around for evangelical theologians. And this was an ecumenical trend, too, and not just within Protestantism: Pope Benedict XVI sponsored a Vatican Conference on Climate Change in 2007. Even outspoken critics of “creation care” activism (e.g., the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land) were urging caution in the advocacy of climate change action, not abandonment of the environment altogether.
More recently, though, the idea of environmentalism representing fundamentally anti-Christian values is back with a vengeance. A Washington Timeseditorial yesterday mocked Earth Day as “The Hippie Holiday” celebrated by “humanity haters” who were defying God’s direct command to subdue and exploit nature. And here’s what was posted at the top of the influential Red State blog site this morning:
This year, the anniversary of our Lord’s crucifixion falls on the anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, which is also Earth Day. Some will choose to worship creation today. We choose to worship our Creator.
Wow. I hadn’t read the Earth Day = Lenin’s Birthday meme since the original Earth Day, when a Republican candidate for governor of my home of Georgia used it and then had to backtrack in considerable embarrassment.
The greatest irony of Earth Day is that it has become a yearly event that is almost ignored by environmentalists and celebrated mostly by politicians and businesses with green products or PR campaigns. The reason for this is probably best understood by florists, card shops, and restaurants on Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day: it is a day for symbolic gestures, taken most advantage of by those who aren’t doing enough the rest of the year but know they should be.
Boycotting the empty gestures is certainly understandable for those who “make every day Earth Day.” A quick visit to a half dozen or so websites of environmental groups this morning found almost no mention whatsoever of Earth Day, but there was a consistent focus on the one-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon gulf oil spill. That’s probably for the best, because if people who normally wouldn’t visit these sites are inspired to do so today, they are better off being met with substance than feel-good window dressing.
On the other hand, I’m not sure any of our politicians deserve to get a pass for running silent on environmental symbolism today. Just because it’s okay that Greenpeace chooses not to acknowledge Earth Day on its homepage today doesn’t make it okay for President Obama, Harry Reid, and John Boehner to do the same (they did, by the way—no mention of it whatsoever as of 9:30 am this morning, even on Obama’s now famous Facebook page).
Here’s why: for a lot of Americans, Earth Day may be the one day of the year when they decide to go hunting for information about what kind of progress we have made as a nation on environmental and energy issues, and elected officials ought to be accountable at exactly that moment for their positions on those issues. The White House gets this concept for taxes: Tax Day was this past Monday, and whitehouse.gov still has the new “taxpayer receipt” feature splashed across its main page so people can see where their money went while the question is fresh in their mind. Voters deserve a similar accounting for the environment on the day when they are most likely to be looking for it.
I understand the cynicism about what Earth Day has become, but the problem with that cynicism is one that has all-too-often plagued the environmental movement: it allows condescending moralism to undermine efforts for political accountability. If environmentalists, clean energy advocates, and climate hawks of different feathers want voters to judge the president and members of Congress for their record on these issues, like their failure to pass energy and climate legislation, then they should take advantage of the visibility of Earth Day to demand an accounting from our officials. If there is any time when you can get the attention of the media and voters for five minutes to remind them that there is a lot of work left to do, today is the day.
Will Marshall compiled four positive economic stories for Real Clear Politics that President Obama should be making better use of in his campaign for re-election. From farming to exports there are positive signs in the economy according to Marshall.
President Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan includes some constructive – literally – provisions for upgrading America’s economic infrastructure. These shouldn’t be controversial: Who could be against putting people to work rebuilding the rickety foundations of U.S. productivity and competitiveness?
America has a serious oil deficit. We consume almost three times as much oil as we produce. As a result, we send more than $250 billion a year offshore (mostly to our enemies and other bad guys) to import oil so we can keep our trains, planes, and automobiles running.
It’s been a bad month for cap and trade.
Friday, April 22 was Earth Day. We put together five great pieces to celebrate: