Climate
change and innovation
I went to the Rhode Island Senate hearing on the
Global Warming Solutions Act to make mandatory the emissions reductions offered
in the 2014 Resilient Rhode Island Act and a bill to create a carbon fee and
dividend program.
Neither bill is really up to the task we face, but they are a
start.
Nothing all that interesting happened at the
hearing. The environmental advocates, joined by a few business people
supporting doing something about climate change made our case, and the only
lobbyist testifying against both bills, the designated hitter for all of the
opposition who wanted to tell scary stories on paper but not in front of an
audience, told some very uninteresting scary stories.
The lies are interesting
if we are dissecting scary stories, but they are exactly the same stories, out
of the exact same playbook, lobbyists for industries that harm the public
health have been saying for years. In Rhode Island there is one particular
lobbyist who takes on that role of designated scary story teller.
Unlike most folks, I hardly prepare in the traditional sense to testify. I tend to rely on winging it, and this allows me to react to the speakers ahead of me. Occasionally it allows me to refute the scary story of the day. I did a bit of it at the hearing, this is a bit more fleshed out.
The lobbyist represents a number of
organizations, mostly business associations like the chamber of commerce, or
the convenience store (read gasoline sellers) lobby.
At a previous hearing this
lobbyist carped that if we had to buy electric cars then no one could go on a
long distance trip.
This time it was the price of gasoline will go up so much,
neglecting the fact that the price of gasoline went up by that exact amount
just in the last week and no one said anything. It is like this no matter what.
It will be much too hard to adapt to changes in regulation.
But what occurred to me this morning is that
these folks really undercut capitalism in their stories.
We have what is touted
as the most innovative system in the world, a capitalist system built on
innovation and meeting the needs of customers. And the businesses the lobbyist
represents are constantly innovating.
Every time the government has created a
system of regulations and fees on pollution to protect the public business have
adapted and created new sources of value that overwhelm the cost of compliance,
often creating whole new export industries that send American technology to fix
problems around the world.
But every issue that comes before the RI General
Assembly or any other legislative body that will require innovation to protect
the public health, it is as if innovation stops. The industries represented
will find it impossible to go on and civilization as we know it will grind to a
halt.
What crap.
Do you believe, for even one second, that if we
all switched to electric cars that a network of charging stations would NOT
sprout as fast as the phase in of the electric cars? And that the electric
companies would not figure out how to use those batteries to balance the grid?
There would be no entrepreneurs looking for investments in these new markets?
Or that if we instituted carbon fees that people and businesses would not
slightly switch their mobility strategy to use more efficient vehicles?
The record is very clear. Every time we the
people has demanded better environmental protections the lobbyists for the old
guard cry wolf, stating it will end civilization and create a horrific burden
on businesses, it has turned out the scary stories are not true.
The Clean Air
and Clean Water Acts did not crash the economy. Benefits are 40 times greater
than compliance.
Seat belts did not price cars out of the reach of consumers.
Creating National Parks benefits local communities with better job stability
than mining or timber booms that end in a few years.
Protecting fisheries does
keep fishers employed.
It is as if the lobbyists and the industries they
represent do not actually believe in the system they constantly tell us about,
the great American Entrepreneurial Innovation machine. Or rather they believe
in it except when it is being nudged towards the public good.
Considering their track record, you have to
wonder why legislators give such credence to their views. Actually we do know,
it is all about the Benjamins, the system where legislators very rarely are
swayed by the public but are always swayed by the money.
It is about time for
legislators to ask harder questions, to stop accepting the scary stories as
having any credence. The lobbyists should be laughed out of the room for their
big whoppers. Ask them for facts, ask them about the actual effects of the
progress they have tried to hold up. Ask them about the ability of business to
innovate. And then vote to get us well on the road to stopping climate change.