In an increasingly polarized society, issues tend to be defined in partisan terms. In fact, many of our most important issues do not break on party lines. For instance, anti-Chinese attitudes are widely held in both political parties.
The NIMBY vs. YIMBY debate is also bipartisan. And this is not a minor political issue; it’s far more important for the future of America than are most of the culture war issues that people obsess over on Twitter. Here’s Ezra Klein:
The Biden administration is pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into decarbonization. And it wants to make sure it gets a return on that money. So it’s making states compete for federal grants, and one way it’s judging them is on whether the state has made it easy to build. That has become an issue for California.
Governor Newsom is pushing for an extremely modest set of measures to speed the permitting process, and is running into intense opposition from environmentalists:
Adding to Newsom’s problems is that California’s recent surpluses have turned to deficits. He needs federal money, and lots of it, to make good on his climate promises. If California falls shorts on those grants, it falls short of its goals. “We’re going to lose billions and billions of dollars in the status quo,” he told me. “The state can’t backfill that. And we’re losing some of it to red states! I’m indignant about that. The beneficiaries of a lot of these dollars are red states that don’t give a damn about these issues, and they’re getting the projects. We’re not getting the money because our rules are getting in the way.”
As a result, most of the federal dollars are going to states with less restrictive building rules, such as Texas.
Many people are locked into epistemic bubbles because they consume only one sort of media. Within these bubbles, the other side is demonized as loony environmentalists or rapacious corporate polluters. The reality is much more complex and much more interesting.
The right is split between free market proponents of deregulation and conservatives who wish to preserve the status quo (including zoning). The left is split between environmentalists who wish to construct clean infrastructure and environmentalists who favor regulations that make it almost impossible to build any new infrastructure.
Twitter is full of debates about questions like what sort of books should be provided in school libraries. I’m not suggesting that those debates are completely unimportant, but don’t let the shiny object distract you from the issues that will actually determine what sort of country we have in the year 2050.
READER COMMENTS
Warren Platts
Jun 19 2023 at 5:58am
I bet to differ: anti-Communist attitudes are widely held. As they **should** be…
Mark Brophy
Jun 20 2023 at 11:06am
The Democratic Party loves Communism, it’s their creed.
Jon Murphy
Jun 20 2023 at 11:44am
It’s more they love authoritarianism than communism. You won’t find many actual, real-life communists in the Democratic Party (they’re far more likely to be in the Communist Party of America).
MarkW
Jun 19 2023 at 7:37am
The Biden administration is pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into decarbonization. And it wants to make sure it gets a return on that money. So it’s making states compete for federal grants, and one way it’s judging them is on whether the state has made it easy to build.
This makes only a little sense. If de-carbonization is the goal, adding YIMBY arm-twisting is going to potentially slow progress toward the actual goal. YIMBY (eventually resulting more dense living patterns) may help slightly with de-carbonization, but it’s a minor effect compared to, for example, switching to WFH and elimination of daily commuting energy consumption. The Biden admin would be better served to add WFH inducements and try to discourage the return to the office. To that, the admin might also include some home-shopping sweeteners. And, in fact, it’s not even clear that in a work-from-home, shop-from-home world, dense living patterns are still particularly desirable or necessary (after all, congestion is not particularly good for CO2 emissions).
OTOH, if populations (and program dollars) continue to flow to (mostly southern) red states, maybe that is good for CO2, since summer air-conditioning is much less energy-intensive than winter heating. Not to mention that solar works a lot better in the sunny south. So arguably every family who moves from New York to Florida helps reduce CO2.
And this from Newsom is telling:
The beneficiaries of a lot of these dollars are red states that don’t give a damn about these issues, and they’re getting the projects.
For the purposes of reducing CO2 emissions it obviously doesn’t matter whether or not the states ‘getting the projects’ give a damn about CO2 or not — reductions are reductions. Newsom seems to think the point of these programs should be to reward allies rather than achieve the face-value goals. And I understand his confusion — that IS almost always the actual goal of government programs. I guess I agree with Newsome that it is strange, indeed, if this particular government program is really different.
Scott Sumner
Jun 19 2023 at 1:07pm
“since summer air-conditioning is much less energy-intensive than winter heating”
Also note that heating and cooling costs in California are far lower than in either the south or the north. The outflow of population from California is bad for the environment (and the economy.)
BTW, I think what Newsom views as “strange” is that people who call themselves “environmentalists” are hurting their own cause by blocking clean energy projects.
MarkW
Jun 19 2023 at 9:19pm
Also note that heating and cooling costs in California are far lower than in either the south or the north.
That’s true for coastal California. Away from the coast, its mountains and desert areas have pretty much the same climate as Nevada, Arizona, and Utah.
BTW, I think what Newsom views as “strange” is that people who call themselves “environmentalists” are hurting their own cause by blocking clean energy projects.
Well that’s not what the excerpt is about. But of course there are tradeoffs. I guess I’m no more surprised to see environmentalists opposed to massive solar and wind projects than I am to see them calling for the removal Glen Canyon and other hydroelectric dams.
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