GREEN REGULATIONS….Josh Marshall wonders what kind of coalition is likely to arise to support green infrastructure spending:
In the avalanche of writing about a massive Stimulus Bill, the one proposition (though grandly general) that’s been of most interest to me is one that is heavy on infrastructure spending and spending and R&D geared toward developing a sustainable Green economy….But is there a constituency in Congress for that?….The key is that I don’t think it really lines up in traditional left-right terms. For instance, it’s not clear to me that the Progressive Caucus in the House is that constituency necessarily. I suspect it likely cuts across established factions among the Democrats, and likely brings in elements of the business community — not surprisingly, the ones who’d get the contracts.
I don’t know enough about this to say anything substantive, but I have the strong impression that a huge part of the answer to this is related to regulation. Right now, the energy industry is hemmed in by a vast web of state, local, regional, and federal regulation, and to get anything serious done you have to somehow either get all these various actors moving in the same direction or else cut completely through the mess via federal fiat. Which is much harder than it sounds. Even something relatively simple, like a carbon tax (simple from a policy perspective, anyway), has wildly varying consequences on different power generation plants depending on what kind of regulatory regime they operate under. Getting projects built and economic incentives right when they intersect with byzantine networks of regulation will turn you old and gray before your time.
This is something I should learn more about, but I haven’t done it yet. In the meantime, I just wanted to mention it. In the real world, a lot of the solutions we’d like to see happen are going to be harder on a micro scale than a macro scale, and the coalitions that support them could end up looking pretty peculiar depending on what local regulatory changes are needed. On the upside, it’s also a chance to bring in more supporters for green projects, since well-conceived regulatory changes could turn an erstwhile enemy into a newfound friend. More on this later.
