With last night's State of the Union address, President Obama has shifted the debate from the partisan climate wars to an expansive energy innovation policy which has the potential to draw support from across the political spectrum.
With last night's State of the Union address, President Obama has shifted the debate from the partisan climate wars to an expansive energy innovation policy which has the potential to draw support from across the political spectrum.
"In embracing breakthrough innovation for solar and nuclear power alike -- for economic competitiveness rather than climate reasons -- President Obama took a bold first step toward a national commitment to energy innovation that is in the long tradition of bi-partisan support for science and technology," wrote Breakthrough Institute co-founders Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus in a statement. "While the road forward will not be easy, at least it is one America has traveled before."
In a State of the Union speech framed centrally around restoring America's global economic leadership, President Obama argued forcefully for increasing federal investment in energy innovation, declaring that "breakthrough" technologies have driven decades of innovation that "created new industries and millions of new jobs."
Obama's speech was a rejection of proposals to cut federal spending across the board, as he finally made the case before the American people about why public support for innovation is critical for the country's long-term prosperity:
"Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it's not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That's what planted the seeds for the Internet. That's what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS. Just think of all the good jobs - from manufacturing to retail - that have come from those breakthroughs."
In its recent report, "Where Good Technologies Come From," Breakthrough Institute documents how America's blockbuster pharmaceutical drugs, high-yield agricultural crops, and revolutionary technologies like the iPhone were all due to the federal government's sustained, multi-decadal investments in innovation.
Obama also embraced a key element of the "Post-Partisan Power" proposal issued by scholars from the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Breakthrough Institute, which is to stop subsidizing the production of old technologies and start using competitive deployment and military procurement to purchase new ones.
"We're telling America's scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we'll fund the Apollo Projects of our time...instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's"
In a fact sheet sent out after the speech titled "President Obama's Plan to Win the Future by Investing in Clean Energy Research and Development," the White House detailed new clean energy investments expected in the President's FY 2012 budget proposal, which are expected to grow modestly to $8 billion.
They include:
- "More than doubling" the current $300 million budget for the Department of Energy's ARPA-E.
- Doubling the number of the Department of Energy's Energy Innovation Hubs, from three to six.
- Doubling the investment in applied R&D, including efficiency, vehicle technology R&D for advanced batteries, and building technology R&D.
Obama's plan includes investment in more than R&D, and embraces the tripartite clean energy competitiveness framework--R&D, manufacturing, and markets--that Breakthrough Institute and ITIF first advanced in "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant."
See Also:
SOTU: In the Face of Spending Cuts, Making the Case for Investment in Innovation
President Obama did his best (which can be pretty darn good) last night to elevate the hopes of Americans.
Two things struck me about the address. The first, rather trivial, was the series of inane expressions on the face of our new House Speaker John Boehner (seated right behind the President) during the speech. The second, rather more important, is that in the words of some eminent theologians, the "good news" (of the New Testament) can only follow the "bad news" (of the Old Testament prophets calling for justice). Or in the likely words of your friendly psychoanalyst, "healing can only come when one ceases denial" - in this case, thoughtlessly adhering to the notion of so-called "American exceptionalism".
All of which reminds me of a short op-ed I recently shopped unsuccessfully (probably because it's too much of a downer). I've attached it below for your reading pleasure or (more likely) displeasure. Read it at your own risk (of becoming depressed). But if you do, reflect on the need for all of us to play at least some small part in the run-up to the 2012 election to promote the centrist/progressive agenda outlined by Obama over the Republican/Tea Party agenda of "cut, cut, no taxes, avoid infrastructure investment and continue to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich."
WHAT “DREAM”?
The nation has definitely come off its axis. John Boehner, the new House Speaker recently touted, with tears no less, his chase and support for the “American Dream” on a CBS “60 Minutes” fluff piece. A laughable argument if it weren’t so tragically hypocritical. Truth is, Boehner is now champion of the movement that has eroded that dream for three decades, beginning with the Reagan revolution.
Some simple, but painful, numbers illustrate our resulting plight. Of every 30 American adults:
1 is in prison, jail, on parole or probation
2 are “officially” unemployed
2 have quit “looking” for employment or can’t find full-time employment
2 are under-employed, working at near-minimum wage
2 work two or more jobs just to get by
Thus, nearly one out of every three American adults has lost out on the “American Dream.” Incredible numbers for “the most-wealthy nation on earth.”
More numbers: one percent of Americans account for 25% of the nation’s income, the worst wealth inequality in modern history. (Fifty years ago, the top 1% accounted for 10%.) Of every five homeowners, one is now “under water” (a mortgage greater than the home’s value) and 100,000 homes are foreclosed every month. Or: one in every four (yes, 1/4) U.S. children live in poverty! And, despite healthcare reform, many Americans will continue to lack health insurance, joining a long queue at the nearest ER for urgent health care, entirely foregoing needed preventive care.
How did we get here? Repeal of the Glass-Steagill Act in 1999 has enabled banks, Hedge funds, and assorted scoundrels to market risky derivatives and other instruments, setting up the recent financial crisis. Wall Streeters pushed the no-regulation, free-market mantra of Ronald Reagan, supported by SEC “regulators” in a revolving-door employment dance with Street firms who paid them handsomely to “not-regulate.”
But the problems began much earlier. Over the past three decades unions lost the right to organize, employers finding ways to ignore the Wagner Act, the result: flat median hourly wages (the bottom one-fifth declining) while, astonishingly, worker output per hour nearly doubled and (equally astonishingly) executive salaries rose by five times.
At the same time, big employers found ways, through “reorganizations” (aka bankruptcies) to unload their health, severance and pension obligations to workers. (Note the recent irrational Gingrich proposal that states go bankrupt.) With flat or lost wages and disappearing “fringes,” workers traded their union cards for credit cards. And, unfortunately, usury has been simultaneously legalized. Examined your credit card interest rate and fees lately?
There you have it: higher productivity, but lost purchasing power; easy credit, easy debt; defaults; worthless derivative instruments (except for those insiders who sold short on the way down and now lazily drink their Coronas on a Cayman beach), firms like Lehman Bros. imploding, others like Goldmine Sachs bailed out by taxpayers only to now pay huge bonuses to the same staff who created the mess; problematic, never-ending wars pushing us ever more into debt – the American dream vanishing in large measure due to policies espoused by Boehner’s political party and (now, Tea Party) colleagues.
John Boehner can’t really expect Americans to take him seriously, can he? The scariest part: Boehner is poised to become second in the order of Presidential succession.
Chuck McIntyre
Posted by: Chuck McIntyre at January 26, 2011 12:38 PMSacramento CA economist, writer and small business owner