When it rains it pours.There's always been a tension in U.S. culture between two competing narratives. On one hand, Americans like to think of themselves as pioneers, innovators, forward thinkers -- the country that invests blood, sweat, and treasure today to create a better future for the next generation. We tell ourselves stories about building the cross-country rail and highway systems, gearing up to defeat Hitler, going to the moon, inventing the internet.
On the other hand, the national psyche has always contained a deep and enduring streak of ornery individualism. Americans have always been suspicious of elites and government. We tell ourselves stories about crippling taxes and regulations, meddling bureaucrats, wasted taxpayer money, and liberty lost.
This tension, reflected in both public opinion polls and policy battles, makes the country's political life somewhat schizophrenic. Depending on which of the frames above is invoked, Americans either support bold public investment or want to cut taxes and slash government spending. Often they want to do both!
Around 2007, it seemed that, in the case of clean energy, the national-purpose frame was finally winning. America was going to innovate, create new jobs and industries, leave behind the dirty fuels of the past, and prevent catastrophic climate change.
Since then, the anti-government frame has come roaring back, for two reasons. First, obviously, is the Great Recession. When the economy's in the dumps and unemployment is high -- ironically, the very time bold public investments are most needed -- public opinion tends to shift against "government spending."
And second, the purveyors of the anti-government frame are much more adept at manipulating conventional wisdom and the mainstream media, Al Gore's brief ascendancy notwithstanding. Their tropes -- waste, fraud, "picking winners" -- are old, well-established, and easy to understand, whereas the details of the energy industry and what's needed for innovation are context-specific and complicated. Also, the anti-government frame serves the interests of the wealthy, and the wealthy dominate D.C., in terms of both formal lobbying and social influence.
Which brings us to a couple of recent MSM pieces. (Bryan Walsh, damn his eyes, wrote the exact piece you're reading right now already; feel free to read his version instead.)
First, this past weekend, the usually excellent Washington Post reporter Steven Mufson wrote a truly disappointing and distorted piece, cherry-picking failures (and "failures") from the history of government energy investment to imply that government should stop making such investments entirely. I say "imply" because Mufson never actually makes the argument, but the piece is obviously designed to lead the reader to the conclusion that the government is a hopeless bumbler.
Please read on and comment on David Roberts article: http://www.grist.org/politics/2011-11-16-the-push-is-on-to-discredit-clean-energy-investment#
