In a post yesterday I drew attention to an emerging battle over macroeconomics. To put it crudely: does the financial crisis mean the next president will need to trim his ambitions and focus on reducing the deficit? Or does it call for substantial public spending to get the economy moving again (deficit be damned, at least 'til better times)?
The Very Serious D.C. establishment thinks it's the former. Greens hoping for substantial climate or energy legislation better hope it's the latter. A great deal hinges on which becomes conventional wisdom.
If you want to see how the battle is playing out, check this AP article about the prospects for climate legislation next year. (Similar sentiments in this San Fran Chronicle piece.)
Republicans are taking a predictable tack: They'll argue that the economic downturn militates against climate policy. "As one Republican senator put it, the green bubble has burst." Their spokesman weighs in:
"The current economic crisis only reinforces the public's wariness about any climate bill that attempts to increase the costs of energy and jeopardizes jobs," [Sen. James] Inhofe said.
But Republicans are going to have a smaller minority next year, so what's more important is how the debate plays out among those purportedly in favor of climate legislation. There, the signs are even more worrying. Witness:
In an interview with The Associated Press, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., said that in light of the economic downturn, a bill that would give polluters permits free of charge would be preferable.
"The first way we can control program costs is by not charging industrial emitters," said Boucher, who released a first draft of a bill this past week with the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. Giving away right-to-pollute permits was one of the options.
Boucher will use any pretext to defend big coal utilities, but this one is particularly wrong-headed and pernicious. According to the Congressional Budget Office, giving the permits away to polluters would cost more than auctioning them off, all in. (See a much longer defense of permit auctions here.) The reason, in part, is that auctions raise substantial revenue, which can be spent productively -- more productively than padding utility shareholder pockets. The auction revenue is what pays for the green infrastructure spending.
This debate falls out of the way climate legislation has been framed. To quote myself, "as long as going green is viewed as an expensive and vaguely altruistic undertaking, it will never be a top priority." Anything -- economic downturn, high energy prices, competing priorities, elections, what have you -- will displace it.
Greens and economists need to be making the point that these green investments are not something we need to do in spite of economic woes, or in conjunction with measures to turn the economy around. They are the measures to turn the economy around. Kudos to Cathy Zoi of We for making the case, but she could use some backup.
There won't be much time to do something serious on climate. The news from scientists looks worse and worse every day. And politically speaking, progressive presidents make big, dramatic changes quickly or they don't make them at all. Read Rick Perlstein:
Progressive political change in American history is rarely incremental. With important exceptions, most of the reforms that have advanced our nation's status as a modern, liberalizing social democracy were pushed through during narrow windows of progressive opportunity -- which subsequently slammed shut with the work not yet complete. The post-Civil War reconstruction of the apartheid South, the Progressive Era remaking of the institutions of democratic deliberation, the New Deal, the Great Society: They were all blunt shocks. Then, before reformers knew what had happened, the seemingly sturdy reform mandate faded and Washington returned to its habits of stasis and reaction.
The Oval Office's most effective inhabitants have always understood this. Franklin D. Roosevelt hurled down executive orders and legislative proposals like thunderbolts during his First Hundred Days, hardly slowing down for another four years before his window slammed shut; Lyndon Johnson, aided by John F. Kennedy's martyrdom and the landslide of 1964, legislated at such a breakneck pace his aides were in awe. Both presidents understood that there are too many choke points -- our minority-enabling constitutional system, our national tendency toward individualism, and our concentration of vested interests -- to make change possible any other way.
The next president needs to enter the climate policy battle with a full head of steam and grand ambitions. The Villagers have already started nipping, trimming, eating away at those ambitions. It'd be nice if those in favor of dramatic action pushed back more effectively.
Counting Senate votes on climate and energy
The Climate Post: Has the political climate changed?
Climate-news poem: Breath-catching edition
Comments View as Flat
Tasermons Partner Posted 3:44 am
14 Oct 2008
The financial meltdown itself is climate regulator
...less industry + less construction + smaller economy = less waste, less pollution, less mass consumerism and less GHGs.
Permalink
WWAGD?! Posted 4:23 am
14 Oct 2008
Joe Sixpack becomes Joe Greenpack
That's the bad news...less regulation.
The good news is that the Fed is printing money night and day and they're telling the banks to "spend it" (well lend it, but at today's inflation and interest rates, it's basically the same thing).
So, what Green really needs is massive (private) capital infusion...translation: people (Joe Sixpack) needs to have enough money to buy green stuff like new cars, and solar panels for his deck and all the rest.
Permalink
Russ Posted 4:28 am
14 Oct 2008
A type of disaster capitalism
We can see with Boucher how those who believe carbon policy is inevitable but want to find a way to slough off the costs of it will cite the economic crisis as an excuse to get free permits to pollute, i.e. a free privatization of the atmosphere. That's what they always wanted to do; the perceived crisis gives them a pretext.
This should be seen as an attempted preemptive carbon bailout, since for the government to forego the auction revenues constitutes a de facto subsidy for the polluters.
(And that's not even getting into where the cap will be set, what the future emissions goals are... I have little doubt they'll also cite the general economic hardship as an excuse for anemic standards, safety valves, everything to ensure they don't actually have to do much.)
I don't know if Boucher himself is confused or nefarious; it's difficult to tell with these yahoos.
But all clear-sighted people know the way to tackle this is not through bailouts and ransom payments, which primarily benefit the malefactors who created the mess.
(Perhaps overwhelmingly benefits them. What's the whole Wall St.- Main St. conceptual dynamic but another version of trickle-down. If you don't bail them out, devastation will spread to you. But if you pay the ransom, the revival will spread.)
[BTW, I'm trying to figure out who in the DC establishment wants to "reduce the deficit" but I'm drawing a blank. Pretty much everyone's now on board with the bailout, which is poised to raise the projected 2009 deficit from $400 billion+ to $750 billion+, which is counting only part of the ransom. It could quickly ballon far higher than that.]
The solution is to "bail out" the energy system, bail out the atmosphere, bail out the money system. Bail out Main St directly. And the way to do this is by using the vast government expenditures which are going to be deployed in any event, to jump-start the big infrastructure and transformational projects we're going to have to undertake anyway, and soon, if we want any significant level of civilizational organization to long continue.
That's why this is disaster capitalism's last big gambit. By trying to misdirect the money, delay, hold out on every front, hunker in the bunker,
and keep the vermin mob chanting "Burn Baby Burn", they're trying to prevent once and for all any transformation to a higher, better, more equitable level of civilization.
Will they succeed? Is Obama the guy to "hurl down executive orders and legislative proposals like thunderbolts" over a new Hundred Days?
Permalink
racc Posted 4:48 am
14 Oct 2008
Invest in Rail and Transit
Massive investment in rail, rapid transit and cycling are needed. These are transportation solutions that are green, create jobs and provide people with better, more energy efficient transportation solutions.
Much better than overpriced, resource intensive hybrids which only serve to encourage people to drive even more.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 4:53 am
14 Oct 2008
Progressivism, Populism, New Deal
all had huge grassroots movements behind them that were directly challenging the status quo. In particular, they were threatening to upend the electoral system -- the Populists by trying to take over the Democratic Party, and the same with the Progressives, and in the 1930s, you had Socialists and Communists, as well as a very active labor movement.
In the 1960s, you had massive civil disobedience in the Civil Rights movement, as well as the anti-war movement and then -- the environmental movement! which wound up defeating many of the "dirty dozen" in Congress, which scared the hell out of that period's Bouchers. All of these movements made it much easier for the "doers" like FDR and LBJ to do something.
I'm not sure where this grassroots movement will come from. It looked like something was happening in Seattle 1999, but it's very amorphous right now.
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 5:19 am
14 Oct 2008
I've attended several protests over the last
two years. Mostly biofuel and critical mass.
Critical mass gets almost universal bad press, as any successful protest should. The test comes when the government attempts to shut down the protest, which is starting to happen now. The last critical mass was controlled by motorcycle police. However, I have noticed a lot of new bicycle lanes going up.
The biofuel protests may have had an impact as well. King County isn't using it and pressure is now being applied to the city. All too often politicians respond only when their job is threatened.
The critical mass protests are large because they consist mostly of young unemployed students or other barely employed youths. Once you enter the work force the fear of losing health benefits stifles massive protests. This is one major reason we need universal health care--to free the citizenry to protest the government.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 5:29 am
14 Oct 2008
Interesting article on politico.com
called "Can green jobs save us?. Jeanne Cummings even mentions efficiency!
Permalink