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Thread - Bold aspirational goals mobilize enthusiasm and political pressure. Properly framed, they do no harm. The Clean Water Act goal of eliminating discharges to waterways may never be achieved, but it probably helped rally support for the statute. 1/10
And as someone who grew up near the Great Lakes as the CWA transformed them for the better, I appreciate the good the statute has done. But if goals are misframed, they can do harm. The CWA did not banish particular technologies from the economy; it focused on discharges. 2/10
Most of the energy experts I know have criticized recent legislative proposals that would ostensibly seek zero carbon emissions by mandating the use of particular technologies, rather than by targeting emissions themselves. I agree with those criticisms. 3/10
There is an obvious potential expense associated with ruling out some competitor technologies that may otherwise find a way to bring social value in a zero carbon emissions future. So why do it? I suspect these proposals serve another mobilizing purpose. 4/10
When generating enthusiasm for a goal, it is helpful to have an enemy. I got interested in energy in college because I was living 30 miles away from Three Mile Island when the accident happened, and because my favorite musicians subsequently organized anti-nuclear concerts. 5/
Nuclear was the public enemy. I got interested in energy then, and was lucky enough to be able to be involved in energy policy ever since. My views on nuclear power became more complicated, but I might be doing something else right now if it weren’t for those rallies. 6/10
Today, only some environmental orgs retains this original view of nuclear power. They see fossil fuel as the bigger public enemy. Bill McKibben has been open about the mobilizing value of this frame, and it has attracted lots of young people to energy policy. 7/10
Today the social process of formulating and hardening belief happens in the digital world, faster and more continuously than ever. In some of these digital filter bubbles the goal of vanquishing hated technologies seems to have replaced the goal the zero-emission goal. 8/10
That is a problem. Not only for energy experts, but for a big swath of the political spectrum whose support is needed to move toward zero emissions as quickly and effectively as possible. This misplaced focus is doubly counterproductive: it is bad policy and bad politics. 9/10
So if you are part of one of these online communities, I hope you will do what you can to burst the bubble and get everybody’s eyes back on the prize. Calling it stupid probably won’t be persuasive. Instead, use your group membership cred and be persuasive. 10/10
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