American Power

American Power: The Case for an Energetic New Progressive Politics

By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

Most progressives today are optimistic that, in 2008, Democrats will regain the White House and solidify their majority in Congress, largely on the basis of the country's anti-war sentiment alone. But down this path lies danger, for if Democrats fail to offer a vision for the future that is as large and positive as the war in Iraq is negative, we may take back the White House and Congress and fail to take back America.

A new politics should inspire Americans to grapple with certain existential questions: What kind of a country do we want? How can we achieve it? These questions implicitly contain a question about investment: how shall we invest our wealth and our labor?

With Iraq and the "war on terror," the conservative movement has defined American power as unilateral military force. Progressives have not yet offered a counter-argument and story about American greatness that is capable of challenging the (neo)conservative one.

A new story of American Power begins by acknowledging what our country is great at: imagining, experimenting, and inventing the future. First we dream -- and then we invent.

The time is ripe for progressives and environmentalists of all stripes to come together around American Power agenda for a major investment into clean energy. Not only is a large public investment crucial to bringing down the price of clean energy, an investment-centered agenda will serve the purpose of unifying Americans under a vision for energy independence and economic revitalization, one that will appeal to California and New England progressives and environmentalists and Midwestern Reagan Democrats alike.

Massive investments in clean energy offers a way of defining the source of American power around our capacity to dream better futures -- and invent our way out of crises. Oil-funded terrorism, global warming, economic insecurity -- these are challenges that America will overcome through our ingenuity and our capacity to reinvent ourselves every fifty years.

Given all this, it is more than a little ironic that one of the lobbies most standing in the way of this vision of investment-centered vision of American Power is the Washington, D.C.-based environmental establishment itself.

An Investment-Centered Approach

Our new book, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Limits, was born from an essay we wrote in 2004 about the politics of energy and global warming. Before we wrote that essay, "The Death of Environmentalism," the two of us had spent all of our professional careers, about thirty years between us, working for the country's largest environmental organizations and foundations, as well as many smaller grassroots ones. Like most of our colleagues, we tended to see global warming as a problem of pollution, whose solution would be found in pollution limits.

In 2003 we started to break away from the pollution and regulation framework. With a small group of others we created a proposal for a new Apollo project. We proposed a major investment in clean-energy jobs, research and development, infrastructure, and transit, with the goal of achieving energy independence. The political thinking was that this agenda would win over blue-collar and swing voters and Reagan Democrats in the presidential battleground states of the Midwest, and excite the high-tech creative class at the same time. And by putting serious public investment on the table--$300 billion over ten years--we hoped we could break through the logjam that had divided business, labor, and environmental groups for years.

But more than any short-term political calculation, Apollo, we hoped, would be the vehicle for telling a powerful new story about American greatness, invention, and moral purpose.

After we created the Apollo proposal, we did what new political coalitions on the left tend to do: round up endorsements from other groups. And while we succeeded in getting endorsements and letters of support for Apollo's principles from businesses, unions, and most of the large national environmental groups, we were baffled, and then angered, by what happened next.

Environmental lobbyists told us that while they supported Apollo's vision, they would do nothing to support it in concrete ways, either in Congress or during the 2004 elections. Those of us who had created Apollo had made the decision to focus on jobs and energy independence, because they were far higher priorities among voters than stopping global warming. In particular, we discovered that investment in clean-energy jobs, to get free of oil, was more popular with voters than talk of global warming, clean air, and regulation. But environmental leaders thought our nonenvironmental and nonregulatory focus was a vice, not a virtue.

Fearing that it would distract Democrats' attention away from stopping the George W. Bush administration's energy bill, which included billions in new subsidies for coal and oil, environmental leaders eventually asked us to keep Apollo legislation from being considered by Congress. Still the good soldiers, we did as we were asked, and Apollo was, briefly, withdrawn. But it hardly mattered: the Bush energy bill passed anyway.

Today, four years after we were told to withdraw legislation to invest $300 billion into a new Apollo project for clean energy, the demand for action on energy independence and global warming have only grown. And yet environmental leaders continue to deny the need for major new investments and insist that new pollution and efficiency regulations are all we need.

In September 2007, the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Breakthrough Institute conducted a nationwide poll of likely voters on global warming and energy. What we found was that global warming continues to rank dead last as a concern for voters. The poll also tested public support for a variety of global warming policy prescriptions. The investment-centered "New Apollo" program received substantially more support than the regulation-centered alternatives (cap-and-trade and Sky Trust). After voters were told of the negative consequences of each program, Apollo was the only program to maintain majority support of the electorate.

The Politics of Limits

The consensus today among climate scientists is that U.S. emissions must be reduced 80 percent by 2050 if we are stabilize emissions and avoid catastrophic climate change. But current regulatory approaches will result in modest, not deep, reductions in carbon emissions. That's because there simply do not yet exist the low cost, low carbon technologies that could be quickly brought to scale to replace carbon intensive energy sources. It is true that some strategies for reducing emissions, such as efficiency and conservation, can be scaled up immediately. But disruptive technologies like solar and carbon capture and storage -- mass quantities of which will be required to deal with global warming -- are still far more expensive than coal and gas.

Environmentalists suggest that setting some pollution limits and a price for carbon will be enough to move gradually -- emissions reductions of just two percent per year -- to achieve 80 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But the price of carbon would have to be set at exorbitant levels for today's clean energy alternatives to become cost-competitive with coal, especially in China and the developing world, which will contribute 70 percent of new emissions between now and the middle of the century. And if action on global warming depends on voters and politicians accepting higher energy prices, there will -- as we have seen -- be very little action on global warming.

Recognizing that voters care more about the cost of energy than global warming, the policies under consideration in Congress would limit pollution so little that the price for carbon would be very low, around $7 to $10 per ton. At that price, firms required to reduce their emissions will invest in the least expensive emissions reductions possible, such as burning methane from landfills, purchasing forest land for carbon sequestration, shifting from coal to natural gas, or retrofitting power plants and buildings so they operate more efficiently. Private investment would not, for the most part, go to technologies like low-cost solar energy and carbon capture and storage, which are required to displace coal-based energy.

Meanwhile, China and India long ago rejected any approach to addressing climate change that would constrain their greenhouse gas emissions or their economic growth. For years, energy experts had expected that China would overtake the United States as the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter by 2025. It turns out that China will gain that distinction by the end of this year. The governments and the people of China and India are increasingly concerned about global warming, to be sure, but they are far more motivated by economic development, and to the extent that the battle against global warming is fought in terms of ecological limits rather than economic possibility, there's little doubt which path these countries will take.

The only way the Chinese government will be able to substantially reduce its emissions is if the price of clean energy and carbon capture technologies come down enough to get within striking distance of the price of fossil fuels.

The dramatic and rapid breakthroughs in price and performance that we need will not be primarily driven by the private sector. Private firms will play an important role in bringing new technologies to market -- and carbon pricing will play an important role in making market conditions more amenable to clean energy technologies. However, private firms will not make the large, long-term investments in R&D and deployment, nor can they create the public infrastructure (e.g., new transmission lines bringing wind power from rural areas to cities) needed for the new energy economy.

Given all of this, it's odd that environmentalists ever viewed global warming as fundamentally similar problem to things like smog in L.A., acid rain, and the hole in the ozone, much less one that won't be hard to fix. Granted, both problems are consequences of human pollution. But whereas dealing with the ozone hole required a simple, inexpensive chemical substitute, global warming demands a totally different way of producing energy. We were able to fight smog without replacing oil. We dealt with acid rain without dismantling our power plants. And we will phase out ozone-depleting chemicals without affecting any of our energy sources. But to deal with global warming, we will need an almost entirely new energy infrastructure -- one that will first require the creation of an almost entirely new politics.

American Power

In the dark depths of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt became a radical experimentalist, inventing various New Deal programs to overcome hunger and joblessness. During World War II, America defeated fascism as much through our ingenuity and manufacturing muscle as through our fighting GIs. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Defense Department made a series of large and strategic investments to create the Internet, and it guaranteed the market for microchips, thereby creating the conditions for the electronics and information revolutions.

Today we launch a new campaign called "American Power," one aimed at persuading Congress to generate the $30 billion annual investment we need to make clean energy as cheap as possible, as quickly as possible. American Power will provide a vital peacetime role for the military. Just as the Department of Defense guaranteed the nascent market for silicon microchips in the 1960s, bringing the price down from $1,000 to $20 per chip in just a few years, the Pentagon must today do the same with silicon solar panels.

There are no silver bullets when it comes to energy, but solar panels, like microchips, have their own kind of "Moore's Law": the price of solar comes down roughly 20 percent every time production capacity is doubled. Experts say that for a total cost of $50 to $200 billion, we could bring solar panels down to the price of natural gas or even goal. It might be the best $200 billion ever spent by the U.S. military.

Our new book, Break Through, is a call for a new positive politics, one that puts a vision of a better world -- not ecological apocalypse with its view of humankind's sins against nature -- at the center. At the very moment when we find ourselves facing new problems, new social and economic forces are emerging to confront them. Internet-empowered grassroots activists, high-tech entreprenuers, and the new creative class may become the force behind a new politics of possibility.

Policy-wise, we should make big investments into clean energy and take action to restrict greenhouse gases. But in our politics -- and our vision for the future -- we will be in a far stronger position if we put this energetic definition of American Power at the center.

Only time will tell whether Washington-based environmental groups will ever come around to this new, investment-centered agenda. The first test could arrive as early as next month. That's when Congress may take up global warming legislation. What matters most about the legislation under consideration is how much money it will raise for investments into clean energy.

But this isn't just about what we do over the next several months. It's about the politics we need for the next several decades. What's needed isn't so much a new policy or a new message but rather a new movement, one that embraces human power and ingenuity and public investment and puts these forces to work to creating a new energy economy and a more prosperous, secure world.

The good news is that, at the very moment when we find ourselves facing new problems, from global warming to the insecurity born from globalization, new social and economic forces are emerging to overcome them. High-tech businesses and creative "knowledge workers" may become a political force for big clean energy investments. And Democrats and progressives, looking for a positive vision every bit as big and bold as the war in Iraq is negative and awful, could put this new vision of American power to work for the good of the world.


Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are authors of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, and founders of American Environics and the Breakthrough Institute.


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Comments

The employees at Trading Forex Review.Com
believe the president knows what he is doing. In addition, he has assembled one of the strongest economic advisor teams ever and is listening to them. We wish the country would give him a chance and that the Republicans that got us into to this mess in the first place would do little more than fighting his every move to get us out of this situation that they themselves created.

By FX on 2009 05 01

The other issue is that Rust Belt money would be largely sent to states that need it much less. Finding a way not to hurt Rust Belt residents and industries by funneling money from the cap into green jobs, for example, would bring votes to this bill.

By Pat on 2009 04 30

Big Oil and Big Coal sure do have a lot of influence.

By libhomo on 2009 03 22

wow, that is interesting...but we're in for a very long and depression like long hual. ehhh this sucks =[ time to move to canada...at least if the socialism is a little relaxed I'll be ok without insurance.

By samantha on 2009 02 11

The President elect unveiled his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan recently, and it has been thus far approved by Republicans, who only disagreed with the idea of giving a payday loan of sorts to the states in handouts to cover their budget gaps. The economic plan has been criticized by Congressional Democrats because part of the package of tax breaks allows for more of a tax break through means of less withholdings. They claim that the economic stimulus that George Bush sent through as President did the same thing, and it didn't encourage spending nearly as much as they would have liked it to.

By Payday Loan on 2009 01 23

As I watched him speaking, I was the courage on his face. Obama truly wants us to get over from this economic turmoil, through the basic goals and guidelines for an economic stimulus package. The tax plan that Obama is putting forward is getting even less popular with other Democrats in Congress. Republicans agreed with his proposed plan, by and large, but disagreed about giving handouts to states to bolster revenue. Democratic leaders disagreed with the economic stimulus by saying that the tax breaks and tax incentives in the plan won't encourage spending, even if it does get cash into the hands of working Americans and possibly keep them from getting a payday loan. President Bush's tax stimulus last year didn't have a great effect either, and they claim that the new stimulus plan will probably make about the same impact. To read more about reaction to Obama

By Dangelo H on 2009 01 23

The high cost of fuel this past year did serious damage to our economy and society. After a brief reprieve gas prices are inching back up again. Our nation should not allow other nations to have such power over us and our economy . We have so much available to us in the way of technology and free sources of energy. WE seriously need to get on with becoming an energy independent nation. We are spending billions upon billions in bail out dollars. Why not spend some of those billions in getting alternative energy projects set up. We could create clean cheap energy, millions of badly needed new green jobs and lessen our dependence on foreign oil all in one fell swoop. I just read an eye opening book by Jeff Wilson called The Manhattan Project of 2009. It would cost the equivalent of 60 cents per gallon to drive and charge an electric car.If all gasoline cars, trucks, and SUV's instead had plug-in electric drive trains, the amount of electricity needed to replace gasoline is about equal to the estimated wind energy potential of the state of North Dakota. Why don't we use some of the billions in bail out money to bail us out of our dependence on foreign oil? This past year the high cost of fuel so seriously damaged our economy and society that the ripple effects will be felt for years to come.

By Brian on 2009 01 09

Brian,
Thanks. We all like to read Friedman's writing in the office. If you like that quote, you might enjoy some of our coverage of the financial crisis (http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/financial_crisis/) or are analysis of the changing political landscape surrounding energy issues (http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/new_energy_politics/). Keep reading, and enjoy,
Adam

By Adam Zemel on 2008 10 23

This is so dead on the mark! Thank you for sharing.

By Brian on 2008 10 22

Dan,
You raise some interesting points. I don't believe in the viability of a cap-and-trade system as a means of curbing carbon emissions. I do believe in a modest price on carbon emissions. Here is a good way to think about it: a ton of carbon is 2000 pounds. One gallon of gas creates 20 pounds of carbon, which means you would need to burn 100 gallons of gas to create one ton of carbon emissions. This means that every dollar a ton of carbon costs in any carbon pricing scheme translates to one cent at the pump, because gas companies will pass the cost to consumers.

Carbon pricing is a good way to, in your words, "provide essential revenue for the RD&D support." However, given that every dollar carbon is worth translates to one cent at the pump, it is unimaginable that a price beyond eight or ten dollars per ton is politically feasible given the current concerns of the electorate. We should only price carbon to the extent that the revenue raised is being invested in driving down the cost of clean energy.

It is politically impossible to internalize carbon to the point where clean energy is cost competitive, and attempts to do so only serve to marginalize those advocating this strategy, as we have seen in recent months with the greens.

On the other hand, investment in clean energy is incredibly popular with voters/consumers. It is a political winner that could produce real results. Thanks for reading!