> I’m haunted by the specter of what’s happened over the past decade with homelessness in Los Angeles. … There’s money for everything — but what will actually get built? There are still big questions on the regulatory side.
Exactly! This should be the nexus of chief concern from those of us that care about climate change.
I’d love it if the energy and outrage currently aimed at blocking pipelines and oil leases could be redirected to build green energy infrastructure.
* Every time a wind farm is blocked or delayed due to some zoning obstruction, there should be protests and outrage throughout twitter and progressive media.
* Local politicians should be named and shamed as if they were an Exxon CEO overseeing an oil spill.
* People and organizations lobbying those politicians for obstructions should be branded as shills funded by the fossil fuel industry.
* We should “cancel” them with the same rage we’d apply had we learned they were strident Trump supporters.
The climate left is smart enough to understand House Republicans will give them very little, but dumb enough to think executive actions will give them quite a bit. The problem is executive branch supply interdiction keeps relatively little oil in the ground and exposes the climate left as purists who are unconcerned with peoples’ everyday lives.
> Sarah Bloom Raskin wrote an op-ed supported by major climate groups calling on the Fed to deny normal emergency support to the fossil fuel sector in hopes of bankrupting the industry
I do think there are some interesting academic exercises in exploring the interaction of finance and climate. E.g., as we progress through the green transition, could fossil fuel infrastructure become stranded assets that no longer generate sufficient cash flow to pay off their debt financing? And could the resulting wave of defaults within the fossil fuel industry create stress on systemically important banks and other financial institutions?
Yet in practice I don’t think there is currently anything actionable from such academic work. Therefore I believe that the Raskin op-ed was academic malpractice in suggesting that there was. For that reason, Biden should not have nominated her to the Fed Board of Governors. Thankfully Manchin saved us yet again.
Further, I think there is a more general problem of searching for the “one clever” trick to achieve action on climate change when conventional politics fails. See also ESG investing. But for a problem as massive as climate change, there are no clever tricks. We instead need good policy that works within our current political reality; that includes considerations of constraints and tradeoffs.
Notably, we need to accept that the mass majority of voters care a lot about the price of energy. Even many Democratic voters who care about climate change would reject even a modest increase in the price of gasoline to reduce carbon emissions. There is no clever trick to work around that constraint. So if we are going to address climate change then our policies need to work within that political reality.
Matt, I wish you all the best in the battle to have rational analysis beat emotional activism for the heart of the Democratic Party. Just as we need a saner version of the GOP (the recent election went a long way toward that goal), we also need a saner version of the DEMs.
I am not generally conspiracy-minded, and whether it's actually *true* probably doesn't matter in the cold calculus, but the climate-left like Sunrise in particular behave indistinguishably from false-flag operations designed to kneecap achievable Democratic energy policy agendas. They should be seen and quietly treated as such.
When it comes to domestic oil production, I think it’s under appreciated that oil production in the US is less environmentally dangerous than in a lot of other countries. We have regulations and we enforce them. I think US natural gas burns cleaner than the stuff from Russia. Oil companies in the US are under pressure to do carbon offsets. That’s not happening in places like Russia or Saudi Arabia, which also happen to have terrible human rights records.
In an ideal world we woul stop using fossil fuels asap. That’s not possible so we’re stuck with picking the best of the non-ideal solutions.
I know you have been harshly critical of Sunrise in the past so maybe you don't want to dwell on it here, but you are actually being way too easy on them. Climate could be a productive bipartisan advocacy movement. There is plenty of space for policy change that would benefit the climate that conservatives would actually be enthusiastic about (stuff that you already mention). Then you're not even bargaining, you actually have both sides positively interested in policy change. The only thing the climate people would have to give up is their desire to pursue an ideal policy rollout as opposed to something that is incrementally better for global warming. But instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to make steady progress regardless of the balance of power in DC, these groups are working to insure that climate is a divisive political issue that hurts Dems leading to worse political outcomes for the country and worse climate policy outcomes. It is really infuriating how counter-productive these people are.
Great read. I just think that Democrats will have a better immune response to accusations from the climate left than from the "woke" left because Democrats are way more afraid of being called racists than being called bad on climate.
Could even be a useful foil for Biden/moderate Dems in '24 to have a group to punch left on a bit and firm up their moderate bonafides.
If the domestic oil producers were bankrupted and production fell to zero, to what extent would demand be destroyed (i.e people would no longer be able to drive to work) and to what extent would imports fill the gap? More realistically, what about things like permitting hold ups and so on? My strong suspicion is that every barrel of US oil that isn’t produced is replaced with almost a full barrel of foreign oil. If I am right, it is totally idiotic to try to end climate change by making US oil unproductive. You are simply destroying jobs and harming your economy without achieving anything in return.
A lot of people are completely bamboozled by what they want the oil industry to do. Oil production is evil, but also it is costing me an arm and a leg to fill up my SUV. We must nationalise the US oil industry to end oil production, while also increasing production at the same time.
The correct answer is to drill baby drill while increasing research into sustainable energy production, to the point where the oil industry dies and nobody cares.
You touch on it briefly but the the implementation is what concerns me most. The hard and boring work of putting policy into practice is where all of this can still fall apart. My experience around workforce/labor laws indicates nobody cares. Obama admin helped pass WIOA law but years later we were still unable to get any clarification on rules and as such struggled to do the work the law said we were technically supposed to do. Out in limbo with money we could spend money more effectively but trapped in a situation where the law says SHOULD when it really wanted to say MUST.
A given law passes senate/house and the whole world moves on just when the real work begins. People out there fighting over who gets the most social media points when literally nothing has actually occurred.
This really just comes down to Manchinism vs. the climate left, a policy and messaging battle won so resoundingly by moderates in 2022 that I do have some hope that climate activists will see the light that Matt is shining.
Manchin is the undisputed MVP of Joe Biden's first term just on the IRA alone (much less his other anti-inflationary instincts), and he could have provided even more value, if Bernie Sanders and co. could have seen the forest for the trees on permitting reform.
My quick litmus test for dimwitted leftism is a quick scan of who continues to lump Sinema and Manchin together. One is a self-aggrandizing courtesan to the elite who should be jettisoned at first opportunity for a normie Democrat that can spell the word populism. The other is literally irreplaceable, cannily squeezing maximal value for the Dems in the face of the party's-and his own--tenuous grip on power.
One of the most interesting conclusions I've come to has been that Democratic Senate candidates losing in North Carolina, Iowa and Maine in 2020 was actually very good for Biden and the Democrats overall. Had Democrats won those races, its almost certain that the much more progressive legislation that Manchin (and Sinema to a lesser extent) blocked would have passed.
The filibuster would be dead, the original Build Back Better Plan would have passed with an additional 2 trillion dollars in spending. Sarah Bloom Raskin would be on the Fed. There likely would have been much more aggressive climate legislation passed, etc. All creating significant political thermostatic reaction.
I read the Slate article linked in this post, and I also listened to Matt and Lauren's podcast episode about Nate Silver and his "Both Sides has been replaced with something worse" take.
I feel like this is a great example proving Nate right. I know Slate isn't exactly an example of top-quality journalism these days, but the one-sided hagiography, loaded language and uncritical acceptance of activist statements is so much worse than early oughts articles about Climate Change that would present facts and figures from both Climate Scientists AND some industry-funded cranks that ultimately lets the reader draw their own conclusions. It's a perfect example of how journalism has degraded in the last decade or so.
Well…. I just posted a positive comment about your Tuesday article on giving because of the logical approach you advocated for (give, but do it as efficiently as you can). But I have a total opposite feeling about this one.
Leaving aside my opinion that the IRA was a misnamed political check that had nothing to do with inflation (as you basically admit, because it primarily was a funding bill for green energy and healthcare subsidies), IMO, you make a few illogical leaps today:
”meanwhile, the Biden administration took big steps with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down energy costs.”
Do you really believe that or are you just throwing Biden cheerleaders a bone? Can you point me to a credible source that could show the Biden’s political SPR releases lowered the price of gasoline more than, I will be generous, 20 cents? No matter what party is in the WH SPR releases are always smoke and mirror side shows that have little impact and an abuse of the original intent of the SPR.
“forcing the early retirement of existing fossil fuel infrastructure raised consumer prices a little bit but didn’t harm the overall macroeconomic situation.”
So, using government regulation to squeeze an existing proven energy source in the HOPES that it will increase investment in an unproven, poorly thought-out energy source is a good idea? (wind & solar are not always on, require huge land grants, and rely on foreign production and minerals) Advocate for wind and solar all you want, but please don’t cheer for knee capping our existing energy infrastructure without having a solution in place.
IMO, environmental groups should be pushing for nuclear, and possibly, geothermal initiatives and be honest about the fact that most of the emission reduction that has been accomplished in the US over the last 20 years is the result of the NG boom (still a carbon emitting source). Wind & solar will be a small (approx. 25%) part of the solution, stop pretending that the solution for zero-carbon is already on hand, we just have not slayed the oil companies yet.
I know that this might be a little harsh. You are not a green-eyed climate first and foremost guy. You want to improve climate while balancing the economic impact. But pretending the IRA had anything to do with its name, and the two points I mentioned above were a source of irritation this morning (if you couldn’t tell 😁).
> I’m haunted by the specter of what’s happened over the past decade with homelessness in Los Angeles. … There’s money for everything — but what will actually get built? There are still big questions on the regulatory side.
Exactly! This should be the nexus of chief concern from those of us that care about climate change.
I’d love it if the energy and outrage currently aimed at blocking pipelines and oil leases could be redirected to build green energy infrastructure.
* Every time a wind farm is blocked or delayed due to some zoning obstruction, there should be protests and outrage throughout twitter and progressive media.
* Local politicians should be named and shamed as if they were an Exxon CEO overseeing an oil spill.
* People and organizations lobbying those politicians for obstructions should be branded as shills funded by the fossil fuel industry.
* We should “cancel” them with the same rage we’d apply had we learned they were strident Trump supporters.
The climate left is smart enough to understand House Republicans will give them very little, but dumb enough to think executive actions will give them quite a bit. The problem is executive branch supply interdiction keeps relatively little oil in the ground and exposes the climate left as purists who are unconcerned with peoples’ everyday lives.
> Sarah Bloom Raskin wrote an op-ed supported by major climate groups calling on the Fed to deny normal emergency support to the fossil fuel sector in hopes of bankrupting the industry
I do think there are some interesting academic exercises in exploring the interaction of finance and climate. E.g., as we progress through the green transition, could fossil fuel infrastructure become stranded assets that no longer generate sufficient cash flow to pay off their debt financing? And could the resulting wave of defaults within the fossil fuel industry create stress on systemically important banks and other financial institutions?
Yet in practice I don’t think there is currently anything actionable from such academic work. Therefore I believe that the Raskin op-ed was academic malpractice in suggesting that there was. For that reason, Biden should not have nominated her to the Fed Board of Governors. Thankfully Manchin saved us yet again.
Further, I think there is a more general problem of searching for the “one clever” trick to achieve action on climate change when conventional politics fails. See also ESG investing. But for a problem as massive as climate change, there are no clever tricks. We instead need good policy that works within our current political reality; that includes considerations of constraints and tradeoffs.
Notably, we need to accept that the mass majority of voters care a lot about the price of energy. Even many Democratic voters who care about climate change would reject even a modest increase in the price of gasoline to reduce carbon emissions. There is no clever trick to work around that constraint. So if we are going to address climate change then our policies need to work within that political reality.
Matt, I wish you all the best in the battle to have rational analysis beat emotional activism for the heart of the Democratic Party. Just as we need a saner version of the GOP (the recent election went a long way toward that goal), we also need a saner version of the DEMs.
They say people at the White House read Yglesias. I sure as hell hope they read him this time.
I am not generally conspiracy-minded, and whether it's actually *true* probably doesn't matter in the cold calculus, but the climate-left like Sunrise in particular behave indistinguishably from false-flag operations designed to kneecap achievable Democratic energy policy agendas. They should be seen and quietly treated as such.
When it comes to domestic oil production, I think it’s under appreciated that oil production in the US is less environmentally dangerous than in a lot of other countries. We have regulations and we enforce them. I think US natural gas burns cleaner than the stuff from Russia. Oil companies in the US are under pressure to do carbon offsets. That’s not happening in places like Russia or Saudi Arabia, which also happen to have terrible human rights records.
In an ideal world we woul stop using fossil fuels asap. That’s not possible so we’re stuck with picking the best of the non-ideal solutions.
I know you have been harshly critical of Sunrise in the past so maybe you don't want to dwell on it here, but you are actually being way too easy on them. Climate could be a productive bipartisan advocacy movement. There is plenty of space for policy change that would benefit the climate that conservatives would actually be enthusiastic about (stuff that you already mention). Then you're not even bargaining, you actually have both sides positively interested in policy change. The only thing the climate people would have to give up is their desire to pursue an ideal policy rollout as opposed to something that is incrementally better for global warming. But instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to make steady progress regardless of the balance of power in DC, these groups are working to insure that climate is a divisive political issue that hurts Dems leading to worse political outcomes for the country and worse climate policy outcomes. It is really infuriating how counter-productive these people are.
Anyone aware of good groups out there working on permitting reform? I’m particularly interested in enhanced geothermal
Great read. I just think that Democrats will have a better immune response to accusations from the climate left than from the "woke" left because Democrats are way more afraid of being called racists than being called bad on climate.
Could even be a useful foil for Biden/moderate Dems in '24 to have a group to punch left on a bit and firm up their moderate bonafides.
If the domestic oil producers were bankrupted and production fell to zero, to what extent would demand be destroyed (i.e people would no longer be able to drive to work) and to what extent would imports fill the gap? More realistically, what about things like permitting hold ups and so on? My strong suspicion is that every barrel of US oil that isn’t produced is replaced with almost a full barrel of foreign oil. If I am right, it is totally idiotic to try to end climate change by making US oil unproductive. You are simply destroying jobs and harming your economy without achieving anything in return.
A lot of people are completely bamboozled by what they want the oil industry to do. Oil production is evil, but also it is costing me an arm and a leg to fill up my SUV. We must nationalise the US oil industry to end oil production, while also increasing production at the same time.
The correct answer is to drill baby drill while increasing research into sustainable energy production, to the point where the oil industry dies and nobody cares.
You touch on it briefly but the the implementation is what concerns me most. The hard and boring work of putting policy into practice is where all of this can still fall apart. My experience around workforce/labor laws indicates nobody cares. Obama admin helped pass WIOA law but years later we were still unable to get any clarification on rules and as such struggled to do the work the law said we were technically supposed to do. Out in limbo with money we could spend money more effectively but trapped in a situation where the law says SHOULD when it really wanted to say MUST.
A given law passes senate/house and the whole world moves on just when the real work begins. People out there fighting over who gets the most social media points when literally nothing has actually occurred.
This really just comes down to Manchinism vs. the climate left, a policy and messaging battle won so resoundingly by moderates in 2022 that I do have some hope that climate activists will see the light that Matt is shining.
Manchin is the undisputed MVP of Joe Biden's first term just on the IRA alone (much less his other anti-inflationary instincts), and he could have provided even more value, if Bernie Sanders and co. could have seen the forest for the trees on permitting reform.
My quick litmus test for dimwitted leftism is a quick scan of who continues to lump Sinema and Manchin together. One is a self-aggrandizing courtesan to the elite who should be jettisoned at first opportunity for a normie Democrat that can spell the word populism. The other is literally irreplaceable, cannily squeezing maximal value for the Dems in the face of the party's-and his own--tenuous grip on power.
One of the most interesting conclusions I've come to has been that Democratic Senate candidates losing in North Carolina, Iowa and Maine in 2020 was actually very good for Biden and the Democrats overall. Had Democrats won those races, its almost certain that the much more progressive legislation that Manchin (and Sinema to a lesser extent) blocked would have passed.
The filibuster would be dead, the original Build Back Better Plan would have passed with an additional 2 trillion dollars in spending. Sarah Bloom Raskin would be on the Fed. There likely would have been much more aggressive climate legislation passed, etc. All creating significant political thermostatic reaction.
I read the Slate article linked in this post, and I also listened to Matt and Lauren's podcast episode about Nate Silver and his "Both Sides has been replaced with something worse" take.
I feel like this is a great example proving Nate right. I know Slate isn't exactly an example of top-quality journalism these days, but the one-sided hagiography, loaded language and uncritical acceptance of activist statements is so much worse than early oughts articles about Climate Change that would present facts and figures from both Climate Scientists AND some industry-funded cranks that ultimately lets the reader draw their own conclusions. It's a perfect example of how journalism has degraded in the last decade or so.
Well…. I just posted a positive comment about your Tuesday article on giving because of the logical approach you advocated for (give, but do it as efficiently as you can). But I have a total opposite feeling about this one.
Leaving aside my opinion that the IRA was a misnamed political check that had nothing to do with inflation (as you basically admit, because it primarily was a funding bill for green energy and healthcare subsidies), IMO, you make a few illogical leaps today:
”meanwhile, the Biden administration took big steps with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down energy costs.”
Do you really believe that or are you just throwing Biden cheerleaders a bone? Can you point me to a credible source that could show the Biden’s political SPR releases lowered the price of gasoline more than, I will be generous, 20 cents? No matter what party is in the WH SPR releases are always smoke and mirror side shows that have little impact and an abuse of the original intent of the SPR.
“forcing the early retirement of existing fossil fuel infrastructure raised consumer prices a little bit but didn’t harm the overall macroeconomic situation.”
So, using government regulation to squeeze an existing proven energy source in the HOPES that it will increase investment in an unproven, poorly thought-out energy source is a good idea? (wind & solar are not always on, require huge land grants, and rely on foreign production and minerals) Advocate for wind and solar all you want, but please don’t cheer for knee capping our existing energy infrastructure without having a solution in place.
IMO, environmental groups should be pushing for nuclear, and possibly, geothermal initiatives and be honest about the fact that most of the emission reduction that has been accomplished in the US over the last 20 years is the result of the NG boom (still a carbon emitting source). Wind & solar will be a small (approx. 25%) part of the solution, stop pretending that the solution for zero-carbon is already on hand, we just have not slayed the oil companies yet.
I know that this might be a little harsh. You are not a green-eyed climate first and foremost guy. You want to improve climate while balancing the economic impact. But pretending the IRA had anything to do with its name, and the two points I mentioned above were a source of irritation this morning (if you couldn’t tell 😁).