We need technology solutions, not economic solutions

For a long time, the debate among environmentalists has not been if climate change needs to be countered, but how. Technological solutions like nuclear power plants or improving carbon capture from the atmosphere were controversial and downplayed in favor of political and economic solutions like cap and trade or carbon taxes. These policies demand a financial sacrifice on the altar of climate. Environmentalists argued that improved technology solutions would only give permission to pollute more; that if we could take more green house gases out of the atmosphere, fossil fuel companies would have permission to put more green house gases into the atmosphere. They thought political action could solve the problem as the Montreal Protocol had helped fix the hole in the ozone layer.

These economic policies were always doomed to fail. By definition, an economic policy would fix climate change by basically making dirty energy too expensive for the poor to use. In countries that tried cap and trade, it resulted in large market distortions and companies being created to pollute just to trade in the credits for stopping their pollution. The largest carbon credit resellers turned out to be engaged in wide-scale fraud. In other countries where climate taxes were tried, there was self-defeating societal backlash and rightly so. There is no such thing as a good political movement that requires people to accept a lower quality of life. Stricter Climate Tax policies were estimated to do more economic harm than climate change itself. The lack of that political insight has been the millstone around the neck of many environmentalists’ plans to deal with the climate.

The single issue in politics I have been the most wrong about in the last 5 years was Joe Manchin’s influence on the IRA. I did not expect the left to agree to drop the economic penalties to fossil fuels that Manchin opposed, and they did. Democrats dropping those penalties and instead heavily subsidizing clean energy like solar, wind, and nuclear energy as well as carbon capture and battery tech was my preferred policy, and the IRA was estimated to reduce our carbon emissions by 40%. These lower pollution while benefiting the economy instead, so the republicans gutting of these incentives is actually what hurts Americans’ wallets. These programs had created hundreds of thousands of jobs and were preventing rises in electricity prices by as much as 18% next year.

The chilling effect on the private market means the state must do it

A private subsidy program is no longer going to be enough on its own because Republicans have just signaled to the market that they will sabotage the industry when in power. State or local governments might even try to sabotage green industries in their jurisdictions as well to curry favor. The chilling effect of this action on the private sector means that to get the amount of green energy needed to solve climate change will now require very direct state action. That means funding a state project in researching a new generation of battery technology. We should also restore and dramatically increase investment in the Department of Energy's Carbon Negative Shot to research more cost-effective carbon capture.

However, just inventing the tech is not enough. It will be a massive industrial project on the same scale as rural electrification to build this infrastructure. The IRA was held up by the slow speed of upgrading transmission lines and expanding the electricity grid by private companies. They will be in no hurry to build up more under the chilling effect of republican interference with the green transition. The government must step in and increase the speed substantially. That means avoiding the overly burdensome processes that bog down policies like environmental studies of if green energy is good for the environment.

The most controversial element would be totally government owned projects to just build up solar and wind power. The public-private partnership and contracting model would slow things down with bidding and compliance requirements, and private partners will demand very favorable terms to offset the risk of republican sabotage later. Instead, the government should just build up solar, wind, powerlines, battery stations, and other assets until they can be privatized collectively as new power companies that are already proven and financially self-sustaining. Spinning them off ironically protects them from future Republican meddling on behalf of their overlords from the oil industry. So the government should just build up a huge portfolio of assets and then sell them off as new firms, and those IPOs will recover the cost of the program.

Now while it will be controversial, nothing I've suggested here would be outside the norm, let alone unprecedented. The first airline was operated by the US post office to establish the business model before building the infrastructure and selling contracts to private entrepreneurs. The internet was preceded by the government ARPANET in a similar manner. The government has even done this exact kind of work expanding the grid and power sources with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Not to mention that other countries like China have already demonstrated the ability to maintain a subsidized expansion of green energy. So there's no reason to doubt the government's ability to carry out such a project: the only risk of failure would be a failure of political will.