‘Unbelievably regressive’ climate policies, new podcasts, rural broadband
Happy Friday afternoon!
I hope the weather in your neighborhood is as beautiful as it has been lately here in Austin. Three items in this email blast:
My Forbes piece on the Latino backlash against California’s climate policies
Two new podcasts
My Health Affairs essay on rural broadband
Unbelievably regressive...
As I write this, it appears Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States. Biden’s energy plans are similar to the aggressive climate policies that are being implemented in California. Thus, my latest piece in Forbes has particular relevance. It explains that the fiercest opposition to California’s aggressive climate change policies isn’t coming from big business or the oil and gas sector, but from the state’s Latino community. I wrote:
Over the past two years, California’s Latino leaders have filed lawsuits that aim to halt several climate-focused regulations due to their negative effect on low- and middle-income Californians. Those same leaders are also calling out the Sierra Club and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for their support of regulations that are increasing the cost of energy, transportation, and housing in California, which has the highest poverty rate in America.
The Latino backlash against California’s climate policies — which has largely been ignored by state and national media outlets — exposes the growing chasm between the state’s powerful bureaucracy, which is closely aligned with California’s entrenched environmental groups, and the Latino and demographic realities of America’s most populous state. It also presages a potential clash at the national level if federal policymakers attempt to implement California’s stringent climate measures throughout the rest of the country.
In the piece, I also explain that United Latinos Vote, a group headed by longtime Latino activist Robert Apodaca, purchased an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times in which the group blasted the climate policies being promoted in the state by the Sierra Club. Last month, on the Power Hungry Podcast, Apodaca told me that California’s regulations are coming “at the expense of poor people.”
One of the newest climate regulations enacted by the California bureaucracy imposes what is, in effect, a tax on mobility. Jennifer Hernandez, the lawyer for the Latino groups who are suing the state, told me that the new rule is “an unbelievably regressive program.”
For decades, California has been a harbinger of things to come. The Latino backlash against regressive climate policies may provide another example of that.
New Podcasts: Eric Meyer of Generation Atomic and Meredith Angwin, the author of Shorting the Grid
Last week, we released an episode of The Power Hungry Podcast that features Eric Meyer, the founder and executive director of Generation Atomic, a non-profit based in Minneapolis that aims to “energize and empower today’s generations to advocate for a nuclear future.” I talked with Eric about how he went from aspiring professional opera singer (he’s a bass-baritone; his favorite composer is Puccini) to pro-nuclear activist as well as the “stigma” and “dogma” used by nuclear opponents to stifle the growth of nuclear energy. We also discussed the many problems with renewable energy and why the late nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg is among his personal heroes.
This week, we released an episode featuring Meredith Angwin, who recently released a new book: Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid. Meredith was trained as a chemist and worked for many years as a project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute. Meredith and I talked about why the electric grid is becoming less reliable at the same time that electric vehicles and bans on natural gas are likely to increase electricity demand. I particularly liked her description of what she calls the “fatal trifecta” which is what caused the recent blackouts in California. That trifecta is: over-reliance on imported electricity (California imports more power than any other state), over-reliance on renewables, and too much dependence on natural gas. In addition, we talked about the ongoing closures of nuclear power plants in the U.S., electricity reliability, and why we need to pay more attention to how the electric grid is managed.
Bringing rural America out of the digital dark
Over the past few years, I have spoken to many rural electric cooperatives. A continuing theme in those meetings has been the need for better broadband service. On October 28, I published an essay in Health Affairs, that I co-authored with my Freopp colleague, Mark Dornauer, on the need for more federal investment in rural broadband. We wrote “The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a surge in demand for everything from hand sanitizer and face masks to lumber and toilet paper. It has also led to the soaring use of telehealth services: Between April 2019 and April 2020, national privately insured telehealth claims’ increased by 8,336 percent.” The problem is that many rural Americans still don’t have access to high-speed internet access and therefore cannot use telehealth services in the same way that their urban counterparts can. We explained that “rural Americans are 10 times more likely to lack broadband access than their urban counterparts.”
The problems with rural broadband availability are very similar to the challenges that faced rural electrification back in the 1930s. As I explain in my new book, A Question of Power, that problem that was solved by massive federal investments in rural electrification. Mark and I concluded our essay by saying, “Now is the time for a new federal program that will energize rural broadband in the same way that the New Deal brought electricity to rural America and bring rural patients out of the digital dark.”
Have a great weekend.
What can you do?
1. Subscribe to the Power Hungry Podcast and give it a five-star rating here.
2. Rent or buy Juice on iTunes or Amazon Prime.
3. Buy my new book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations and give it a positive rating on Amazon.
4. Follow me and Juice on Twitter.
5. Forward this note to your friends/family/colleagues so I can add them to the email list.
Thanks!