The “agreement” supposedly reached between Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and his party leaders to pass a major permitting reform bill has fallen apart, as discussed last week. But it also highlighted one of the most consequential debates in modern politics.
Several media pundits were always skeptical about that agreement (which Democratic leaders used to convince Manchin to vote for a climate bill he didn’t otherwise support). Why would the leaders agree to such a deal, knowing most elected Democrats support the environmental protection laws Manchin wants amended. How could he assume they would suddenly support major limits to those protections?
The answer lies in their desire to eliminate fossil fuels. Consider the fast-track politicians propose for this fundamental shift. President Biden’s national goal is “100 percent carbon-free by 2035.” California has banned the sale of gas-powered cars after 2035, with 14 states poised to follow. Colorado Governor Jared Polis joined 15 other governors in setting a goal to get 100 percent of their states’ energy from renewables by 2040. The nation’s largest utilities have virtually all said they will be 100 percent carbon-free within a couple decades. But will they?
Skeptics argue that even if those goals are worthy, shifting the massive U.S. economy that quickly is impossible. They point out that all renewable sources went from 9 percent of total U.S. consumption in 2010 to barely 12 percent today, despite billions in subsidies designed to encourage additional infrastructure. They say that even California has only 73,000 public and shared electric vehicle chargers, a fraction of the millions that will be needed. The California Energy Commission says the state will need 1.2 million chargers by 2030 to meet a demand it estimates at 7.5 million electric vehicles. But that was before the legislature adopted its ban on new gas-powered vehicles. California doesn’t have just 7.5 million cars; it has nearly 30 million. The U.S. has 286.9 million cars.
No wonder the Washington Post published a lengthy feature story concluding, “To fight climate change, environmentalists may have to give up a core belief,” and “embrace big energy projects. Fast.” That’s because “For decades, environmentalists have made their mark by stopping things.”
The simple truth is that the same legal framework used for decades to delay and block infrastructure projects – power plants, pipelines, drill rigs, transmission lines, and others – can also be used to delay and block wind and solar power. Large projects of all kinds require the same kind of environmental studies and are subject to the same kinds of appeals and lawsuits. That’s why Manchin sought assurances that Congress will act to streamline the permitting process, and it’s why there is at least some support on both sides of the aisle. But despite Manchin’s “agreement,” there is virtually no chance Congress will pass the measure, because of the dogmatic opposition of the environmental industry, which has already thrown cold water on the deal.
Over 650 environmental groups signed a letter saying the bill would speed up approval of fossil fuel projects. “Prolonging the fossil fuel era perpetuates environmental racism, is wildly out of step with climate science, and hamstrings our nation’s ability to avert a climate disaster,” they wrote. Soon, dozens of congressmen and senators had announced their opposition to the deal, sealing its fate.
Meanwhile, new utility-scale energy projects, including powerlines, solar and wind farms, need permits from federal, state, and local governments, which almost always take years and cost millions. The Wall Street Journal says “The U.S. needs more power to meet rising energy needs… Building the infrastructure necessary to make that happen has proven difficult.” The article highlights that such projects face “local hurdles. It describes numerous infrastructure projects delayed by lawsuits, but all were delayed by legal action from environmental industry groups, not from “local” permitting hurdles.
That underscores the central dilemma of today’s environmental movement. A permitting process designed to delay and block projects now makes their own green agenda virtually impossible to achieve.
A Harvard professor who worked on the Obama climate agenda now says, “It is very hard to build infrastructure of any kind in the United States.” Yet he still misunderstands the cause, adding, “There are genuine tensions between the desire of one set of people to build stuff and the desire of the public to have a voice.” Wrong. It’s between people who want to build and interest groups who want to block. That old narrative works when you’re stopping things, but not when you’re trying to serve a genuine public purpose.
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