The environmental movement needs a reboot

When it comes to climate change, the modern environmental movement is just not cut out to deal with it. The problems that it was created to address are very different from carbon emissions. When the modern environmental movement was getting started 50 years ago, environmental issues were mostly local. Issues like climate change were not even thought of.

A major premise behind environmental concerns during the 1960s and 1970s was that there was too much development and not enough priority was being given to other considerations. The main goal was to try to impose as many checks on development as possible. This meant enacting laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that required environmental reviews for any projects involving the federal government. California enacted its own version of it, known as the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).*

The intentions behind requiring environmental reviews were good. In practice, though, it has often meant endless paperwork and the dramatic slowdown or prevention of new projects involving the federal government in any way. The typical environmental review under NEPA takes roughly 4.5 years. That is just to get an environmental review so the project can go forward. CEQA was designed to address statewide environmental problems. In practice, it has been used by local NIMBYs to block the building of housing and anything that would allow more people to live in cities even though those are not statewide issues.

Laws like NEPA and CEQA were supposed to empower individual citizens to have a voice in government. In practice, very few people actually take that up. The few who do tend to be those who want to keep things as they are. The result is that a small number of people can prevent or delay any project covered by those laws.  

A central idea that the modern environmental movement was founded on was scarcity. Resources were limited and there was only so much to go around. The only way some people can enjoy things is for others to be deprived of them. You can see that in the opposition of environmentalists and environmental groups to building anything that would interfere with their scenic views, i.e., Cape Wind, even though some of those things would reduce carbon emissions.

To be sure, there is an argument to be made that during the 1960s and 1970s, the pendulum had swung too far in favor of development at the expense of the environment. There was strong economic growth during the 3^rd quarter of the 20^th century, but there were also serious environmental problems that got short shrift. Laws like NEPA and CEQA were enacted in response to legitimate problems. Today, however, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. If we are going to transform our energy sector, it is going to require substantial amounts of building. That includes everything from transmission lines to nuclear reactors to much more housing. Laws like NEPA and CEQA will need to be substantially reformed, likely by reducing their scope and preventing individuals from invoking those laws whenever they want.

Deregulation is good for the environment

As counterintuitive as it may seem, deregulation is absolutely necessary for the energy sector to move away from being dominated by fossil fuels. Laws like NEPA and CEQA that were passed intending to protect the environment are now having the opposite effect. They are now being used to prevent environmentally friendly projects from going forward, everything from geothermal plants to solar projects.

The single biggest barrier to deploying carbon-free technology is not a lack of subsidies. It is not a lack of regulation or taxes on fossil fuels. It is not greedy oil companies or Koch Industries. It is red tape. The same regulations that the modern environmental movement promoted are now being used by all kinds of NIMBYs, environmental or not, to stop carbon-free projects from going forward.

Why is it that we have not built any new nuclear reactors in more than 40 years? Red tape. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission just rejected a permit request to begin operating from a company working on a smaller, more advanced reactor. In its entire existence since the 1970s, the commission has never approved a single reactor. Nuclear is by far the biggest source of carbon free electricity that exists today. It does not depend on the wind blowing or the sun shining. Despite efforts by environmental groups to kill it, nuclear power still provides roughly the same amount of electricity in the US as it did 30 years ago. Nuclear power plants that exist today may need subsidies to keep operating, but it is 100% necessary to meet any realistic climate goals. For newer reactors, what is needed most is not subsidies, but for them to be given approval to begin operating.

Wind and solar are great, but they have limits like being weather dependent. The other major limit they have is that there are only some parts of the country where the wind and sun are most available. In the case of wind, that is the plains states. Not many people live in those areas so to get the electricity wind mills produce to major cities, transmission lines have to be built. Why is that hard? Red tape. This often comes from non-environmental NIMBYs, but environmental groups have opposed the building of transmission lines on many occasions. That opposition has extended to solar projects and hydropower, too. The biggest solar project in the US was cancelled last year by a coalition that included environmentalists.

The biggest barrier to expanding the reach of wind, solar and hydropower is not greedy oil companies or other environmentalist boogeymen, but many environmentalists themselves. To give a concrete example, let me tell you about an environmental group in New York called Riverkeeper. This group had long pushed for the closing down of the Indian Point Nuclear Plant, which provided a substantial amount of carbon-free electricity to New York. The plant was closed down last year, to the celebration of Riverkeeper and other environmental groups. The promise was that wind and solar would make up for it. The result? Gas has made up for it because wind and solar could not and carbon emissions have surged.

The governor of New York has proposed building a transmission line from a hydropower plant in Quebec to bring the electricity it generates to New York. Riverkeeper opposes it and claims that hydropower produces more methane than gas. That is a more pseudo-scientific claim than anything any climate change denier has ever said. Just think about that for one second and it should be very obvious why that claim does not hold up (hint: gas is methane). What will happen with the transmission line is unclear, but if elected officials in New York care anywhere near as much about carbon emissions as they claim to, they will ignore the Riverkeepers of the world and go forward with it. It would be nice, too, if they could reopen Indian Point.

Environmental groups have also been active in opposing the building of more housing in cities, particularly in places like California. It might seem that allowing more construction of housing would be bad for the environment, but in fact it is just the opposite. Building more housing in cities will mean denser living. Denser living means smaller units, shorter work commutes and less energy usage overall. As a bonus, because coastal California cities tend to have very temperate weather, many houses there do not have air conditioning or heating. Allowing millions more people to live there would mean a substantial reduction in carbon emissions.

When people are priced out of major cities, they do not disappear. They live in other cities where they probably use much more energy than they would in, say, San Francisco. They almost certainly drive a car and for much longer than they would if they could afford to live in a place like San Francisco. Even if they work in San Francisco or another coastal city, they may live hours away and have to commute by car, causing more pollution and traffic along the way.

NIMBYism is not helping to reduce carbon emissions. At best, it is moving them somewhere else. Otherwise, it is making them worse by forcing people to drive more and live in places where they use more energy.

The modern environmental movement’s initial focus on local environmental problems has blinded it to those facts. Banishing what you think is a problem from your area does not make it go away. If your goal is to just keep everything you do not like away from where you live, that approach works. If you want to reduce carbon emissions, you will need a whole new strategy.

What do environmentalists want?

I mentioned the example of Riverkeeper because groups like that are not interested in reducing carbon emissions. They just want to keep everything as it is without any changes ever being made. They are the opposite of progressive. They are small c conservative in the most literal and extreme sense of the word. That mindset is not going to work for dealing with climate change.

Environmentalists have to decide what they really want. Do they want to reduce and maybe at some point eliminate carbon emissions or do they want to keep everything exactly as it is and oppose all changes? It will not be both.

The good news is there are environmental groups who do care about reducing carbon emissions and are serious about it. The split among environmentalists today is largely between  groups that were formed decades ago to stop development and groups that are newer. The former are stuck in their mentality of scarcity and trying to stop things. The latter have a much wider perspective.

Having a wider perspective will be key to the environmental movement succeeding in the goal of tackling carbon emissions. The modern environmental movement is often about opposing changes and preserving the status quo. The environmental movement of today must be the opposite. Preserving the status quo and opposing the building of anything is not going to reduce carbon emissions. Far from it, resisting all changes will ensure carbon emissions continue to rise and fossil fuels dominate.

The reduction and maybe eventual elimination of carbon emissions will require substantial changes from where things are today. We will need many more nuclear plants, particularly much smaller reactors. We will need to build many more transmission lines so wind, solar and hydropower can reach more people. We will need to cut any red tape preventing geothermal power from taking off. The modern environmental movement was about putting up barriers. Today’s environmental movement will have to be about taking them down.

Taking down those barriers will result in large amounts of construction. Inevitably, it will have costs. Construction is disruptive to the areas it is taking place in. Transmission lines will have to go through forests, which will mean trees will have to be cut down and wildlife will be disturbed. Wind turbines and solar panels will take up a ton of space and will change the scenic views of the areas they are in. Environmentalists will have to decide if that is worth the reduction in carbon emissions.

Risk tolerance and tradeoffs

When it comes to nuclear power, the fears about it are completely unfounded. In their entire history of operating in the US, 13 people have died in nuclear plants and none of them died because of the reactor, i.e., one worker died because a machine fell on him. Nobody in the US has ever died from nuclear radiation. No place in the US is uninhabitable because of nuclear reactors. Looking abroad, France gets about 70% of its electricity from nuclear power. It has been a long time since I was there, but I do not recall Paris being a radioactive wasteland.

Those environmentalists who think nuclear power is dangerous have to ask themselves how much emphasis they want to put on safety. Safety is obviously a valid concern in general, but everyone has limits as to how far they are willing to go. Everything has risks. Nuclear power has risks. So does oil, gas, coal, wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower. Every source of energy has tradeoffs. The question is whether the benefits provided by things like nuclear power outweigh the costs. By any measure, nuclear power’s benefits are galaxies greater than any costs it imposes.

What are the tradeoffs of wind and solar? Both take up a ton of land and are weather dependent, which limits their reach. Batteries could certainly help and I want that to happen. Being able to store electricity would be a godsend on so many levels. But how do you think batteries get made? Producing batteries requires a ton of mining to get the materials they are made from, which is often very disruptive to the surrounding areas. As battery mining becomes more common, it will encounter the same NIMBYism that has plagued every other source of energy. EVERY. SOURCE. OF. ENERGY. HAS. COSTS. Say that over and over again until you go hoarse.

I welcome the mining of materials used for batteries. I think the benefits it will produce in reducing carbon emissions alone are worthwhile. Economically, I think the ability to store electricity will be great in making wind and solar reliable sources of electricity and will reduce electricity’s cost, which will in turn spur more growth and prosperity. Geopolitically, batteries will help electrify cars and industry, which will mean no longer having to care about oil and the terrible governments it props up. Just as oil has reshaped international relations, the quest to acquire battery materials will probably do the same. We will be swapping dependence on one group of places for dependence on another. So goes the circle of life. We just have to hope the new places we are dependent on are better than old ones.

There is no free lunch here. Everything has costs and risks. There is no such thing as magic. Solving one set of problems, as laws like NEPA and CEQA were intended to do and arguably were successful at, invariably creates a new set of problems. It is the job of the environmental movement today to embrace change to solve the problems we are facing. The environmental problems of today are very different from the environmental problems of the 1960s and 1970s so the same approach taken then will not work. Decades from now, my hope is we will look back on today as the time when technological innovation was embraced and the transition towards clean energy began in earnest. The 2020s, I hope, will be remembered as the decade when nuclear power made a comeback, geothermal power became a dominant source of energy, battery storage became widely available and the problem of carbon emissions was solved.

*NEPA was signed by Nixon and CEQA was signed by Reagan so they were hardly communist plots.