vox--2020-10-31--How the polls look on the last weekend of the election

Going into the final weekend of the presidential campaign , a trove of new national polling shows Democratic nominee Joe Biden with a comfortable lead .
But , of course , the vote for president is not a national election .
It ’ s a series of state-by-state elections that determine the winner of the Electoral College .
Here , Biden ’ s edge is more muted , but still substantial .
And whether looked at nationally or statewide , there ’ s simply no sign of a late change in either direction .
Trump is not suffering from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is he gaining ground based on the final debate or his last-ditch efforts to attack Hunter Biden .
That stability is good news for Biden .
He had a solid lead in the polls four months ago , but there was still much uncertainty as to the ultimate outcome .
That the many subsequent events — conventions , protest and unrest , multiple debates , the president ’ s Covid-19 illness and recovery — left the race largely steady means that Biden ’ s odds of victory have grown substantially , even if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has a clear path to win , but it ’ s not especially probable .
On the other hand , the Economist ’ s super-bullish odds for Biden say that the likelihood of Trump winning is 4 percent , or about as likely as Steph Curry missing a free throw — a rare occurrence , but certainly something that happens .
FiveThirtyEight gives Biden about an 11 percent chance ; if someone told you a given restaurant gave food poisoning to 11 percent of its clients , you probably would not eat there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of odds Trump is facing would be understood as involving a fair amount of risk .
More than a dozen national surveys were released Thursday , all showing Biden in the lead and averaging to something in the high single digits .
His best result came from the USC Dornsife tracking poll ( which has a somewhat unorthodox methodology ) and registered a gigantic 12-point lead .
Trump ’ s best poll came from Rasmussen , which invariably delivers Republican-leaning results and still showed Biden up 1 point .
All in all , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up 7.8 points .
Crucially , in that average , Biden is over 50 percent — so even if every single undecided voter and third-party supporter decided to flock to Trump in a desperate pro-malarkey surge , Biden would still have the lead .
Remarkably , throughout the entire campaign there ’ s been essentially no shot of Trump actually winning more votes than his opponent , and that continues to be true on the eve of the election .
But it ’ s the states that matter , and in the states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most likely “ tipping point ” state — the one that could be decisive if the election is close — is Pennsylvania .
And the polling averages there are closer .
RealClearPolitics says Biden is up by 4.3 points , which is a healthy lead , but polling errors of that scale happen .
The final RCP average for Pennsylvania in 2016 , however , had Clinton up by 1.9 points .
Trump won by 0.7 points , for a total polling error of 2.6 points .
( FiveThirtyEight ’ s weighted polling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points . )
In other words , if you think that pollsters have done nothing at all to fix the methodological problems that plagued swing state polling four years ago and that an error of the same magnitude will recur , then Biden would still win Pennsylvania and thus almost certainly win the election .
And the two most recent polls for Biden — +7 from Quinnipiac University and +5 from a firm called Citizen Data that ’ s not well-known — were actually better for him .
Then there are a bunch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead , but generally a smaller one .
Biden has smaller leads in the other battlegrounds By the numbers , Biden unquestionably does not “ need ” to win Pennsylvania .
Polling averages show him with modest leads in North Carolina , Georgia , Florida , Arizona , and even Iowa , so taking even an important state like Pennsylvania off the board isn ’ t the end of the story .
But his leads in all these states are smaller — 1.4 in Florida , for example , and just 0.7 in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the polls are badly off in Pennsylvania , one likely scenario is that they were off everywhere , and Trump wins after all .
That ’ s because while polling errors are random , large polling errors can be correlated from place to place .
If you undersample white voters with no college degree , as many pollsters did in the 2016 cycle , you end up undersampling them everywhere , so every state where those voters are a large share of the population tips the same way .
But it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polling error could go one way in Pennsylvania and another way in a demographically dissimilar state like Arizona or North Carolina .
And in North Carolina , Biden did get late-breaking good news from the very well-regarded New York Times poll , which put him up 3 points , while Citizen Data had him up 7 .
In Arizona , by contrast , the most recent survey was a Rasmussen poll that had Trump up 4 , though on Wednesday , a well-regarded Latino Decisions poll had Biden up 5 .
The basic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve seen all year , is that you ’ d definitely prefer to be in Biden ’ s shoes .
But the odds of a Trump win , though not large , are also not large enough to dismiss out of hand .
On the other hand , liberal anxiety and conservative chest-thumping can obscure the fact that mistakes may happen in either direction .
Biden definitely doesn ’ t need to win Texas to win the election , which is good news for him because the latest polls all have him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points or by just 1 .
There was a Data for Progress poll on October 26 showing him up 1 point , but the same day the New York Times had him down 4 .
The larger significance of all this is that Trump ’ s polling lead in Texas is actually smaller than Biden ’ s lead in Pennsylvania .
In other words , while it ’ s definitely possible that Trump will defy the odds and win , it ’ s more possible that Biden will win a landslide victory that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This would almost certainly involve sweeping Florida , Georgia , and North Carolina , too , and likely involve Iowa and Ohio as well .
Indeed , FiveThirtyEight thinks it ’ s slightly more likely that Biden will win Alaska than that Trump will win the election .
That doesn ’ t mean either outcome is likely ( though the combined probabilities of one or the other happening are over 25 percent ) , but it ’ s a reminder that uncertainty exists in all directions .
For now , though , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mostly confirms what ’ s been true of this race all along — Biden is up , and the Electoral College helps Trump , but not enough to save him unless the polls are wrong .
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The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes .
It ’ s essential that all Americans are able to access clear , concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That is our mission at Vox .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
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Going into the final weekend of the presidential campaign, a trove of new national polling shows Democratic nominee Joe Biden with a comfortable lead.
But, of course, the vote for president is not a national election. It’s a series of state-by-state elections that determine the winner of the Electoral College. Here, Biden’s edge is more muted, but still substantial. And whether looked at nationally or statewide, there’s simply no sign of a late change in either direction. Trump is not suffering from the new spike in Covid-19 cases, nor is he gaining ground based on the final debate or his last-ditch efforts to attack Hunter Biden.
That stability is good news for Biden. He had a solid lead in the polls four months ago, but there was still much uncertainty as to the ultimate outcome. That the many subsequent events — conventions, protest and unrest, multiple debates, the president’s Covid-19 illness and recovery — left the race largely steady means that Biden’s odds of victory have grown substantially, even if his polling lead has not. Trump has a clear path to win, but it’s not especially probable.
On the other hand, the Economist’s super-bullish odds for Biden say that the likelihood of Trump winning is 4 percent, or about as likely as Steph Curry missing a free throw — a rare occurrence, but certainly something that happens. FiveThirtyEight gives Biden about an 11 percent chance; if someone told you a given restaurant gave food poisoning to 11 percent of its clients, you probably would not eat there. In non-election scenarios, the kind of odds Trump is facing would be understood as involving a fair amount of risk.
The national polls show a strong Biden lead
More than a dozen national surveys were released Thursday, all showing Biden in the lead and averaging to something in the high single digits.
His best result came from the USC Dornsife tracking poll (which has a somewhat unorthodox methodology) and registered a gigantic 12-point lead. Trump’s best poll came from Rasmussen, which invariably delivers Republican-leaning results and still showed Biden up 1 point.
All in all, the RealClearPolitics unweighted national average shows Biden up 7.8 points. Crucially, in that average, Biden is over 50 percent — so even if every single undecided voter and third-party supporter decided to flock to Trump in a desperate pro-malarkey surge, Biden would still have the lead.
Remarkably, throughout the entire campaign there’s been essentially no shot of Trump actually winning more votes than his opponent, and that continues to be true on the eve of the election. But it’s the states that matter, and in the states, the race is closer.
Biden has a healthy lead in Pennsylvania
The most likely “tipping point” state — the one that could be decisive if the election is close — is Pennsylvania. And the polling averages there are closer.
RealClearPolitics says Biden is up by 4.3 points, which is a healthy lead, but polling errors of that scale happen. The final RCP average for Pennsylvania in 2016, however, had Clinton up by 1.9 points. Trump won by 0.7 points, for a total polling error of 2.6 points. (FiveThirtyEight’s weighted polling average currently puts Biden up by 5.2 points.)
In other words, if you think that pollsters have done nothing at all to fix the methodological problems that plagued swing state polling four years ago and that an error of the same magnitude will recur, then Biden would still win Pennsylvania and thus almost certainly win the election.
And the two most recent polls for Biden — +7 from Quinnipiac University and +5 from a firm called Citizen Data that’s not well-known — were actually better for him.
Then there are a bunch of other states where Biden has a lead, but generally a smaller one.
Biden has smaller leads in the other battlegrounds
By the numbers, Biden unquestionably does not “need” to win Pennsylvania.
Polling averages show him with modest leads in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and even Iowa, so taking even an important state like Pennsylvania off the board isn’t the end of the story. But his leads in all these states are smaller — 1.4 in Florida, for example, and just 0.7 in North Carolina.
If it turns out the polls are badly off in Pennsylvania, one likely scenario is that they were off everywhere, and Trump wins after all. That’s because while polling errors are random, large polling errors can be correlated from place to place. If you undersample white voters with no college degree, as many pollsters did in the 2016 cycle, you end up undersampling them everywhere, so every state where those voters are a large share of the population tips the same way.
But it’s also not out of the question that polling error could go one way in Pennsylvania and another way in a demographically dissimilar state like Arizona or North Carolina.
And in North Carolina, Biden did get late-breaking good news from the very well-regarded New York Times poll, which put him up 3 points, while Citizen Data had him up 7. In Arizona, by contrast, the most recent survey was a Rasmussen poll that had Trump up 4, though on Wednesday, a well-regarded Latino Decisions poll had Biden up 5.
The basic picture, which is really what we’ve seen all year, is that you’d definitely prefer to be in Biden’s shoes. But the odds of a Trump win, though not large, are also not large enough to dismiss out of hand. On the other hand, liberal anxiety and conservative chest-thumping can obscure the fact that mistakes may happen in either direction.
Biden could win in a landslide
Biden definitely doesn’t need to win Texas to win the election, which is good news for him because the latest polls all have him losing the state — whether by 4 points or by just 1. There was a Data for Progress poll on October 26 showing him up 1 point, but the same day the New York Times had him down 4.
The larger significance of all this is that Trump’s polling lead in Texas is actually smaller than Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania.
In other words, while it’s definitely possible that Trump will defy the odds and win, it’s more possible that Biden will win a landslide victory that features a shocking blue Texas scenario. This would almost certainly involve sweeping Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, too, and likely involve Iowa and Ohio as well. Indeed, FiveThirtyEight thinks it’s slightly more likely that Biden will win Alaska than that Trump will win the election.
That doesn’t mean either outcome is likely (though the combined probabilities of one or the other happening are over 25 percent), but it’s a reminder that uncertainty exists in all directions. For now, though, the last week’s flurry of polling mostly confirms what’s been true of this race all along — Biden is up, and the Electoral College helps Trump, but not enough to save him unless the polls are wrong.


vox--2020-10-31--98,000 new Covid-19 cases. And the worst may be yet to come.

The United States has reached a new terrible milestone in the Covid-19 pandemic .
This past week , the country saw , on average , about 79,000 new cases per day — the highest on record in a pandemic full of atrocious records .
On Friday , more than 98,000 Americans received a positive test result .
From north to south , east to west , the virus is spreading uncontrolled again .
This is not a peak .
We ’ re in the midst of a climb .
Next week , we can expect yet another record : leaping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to 10 million cases in a matter of a few days .
The number of people in hospitals across the country is ascending , too , hitting 46,000 on Thursday .
And this will likely be followed by rising numbers of deaths in the coming weeks .
Why ?
Because this is the pattern we ’ ve seen in every Covid-19 surge during the pandemic .
It ’ s not going to change now .
There ’ s a momentum to this virus .
Cases incubate silently for days in a human body @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a person to be tested , and more to find out the results .
Next week ’ s record number of cases is already festering in the population now , waiting to be uncovered .
All the while , the infected can continue spreading this very contagious virus exponentially , especially in places that don ’ t have mask mandates or restrictions on bars and restaurants being open for indoor dining .
Yet the disconnect between this grim reality and President Donald Trump ’ s words has never been greater .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent spikes are something of a mirage , based solely on expanded testing .
“ We ’ re rounding the turn , ” Trump told his supports at a rally on Monday .
“ Our numbers are incredible.
” A rise in Covid-19 cases means we ’ ll see a spike in hospitalization .
Again .
While part of the increase in cases can indeed be explained by more testing , that ’ s far from the whole story .
Look no further than the test-positive rate to understand why .
The national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point over the past two weeks , reaching 6.3 percent .
That average obscures far higher test positive rates in states with some of the worst-controlled outbreaks : This means a growing number of Americans being tested have the virus — and health officials aren ’ t keeping up with the rising demand for testing , nor are they keeping on top of outbreaks .
Covid-19 hospitalizations are also rising again , following a sharp drop through August and early September .
Over the past month , the number of US patients in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than 50 percent , according to the COVID Tracking Project , surpassing 46,000 on October 29 .
As Vox ’ s Dylan Scott reports , this has already forced radical measures across the country : Wisconsin and Texas are building field hospitals ; Idaho is planning to transfer patients out of state ; Utah is ready to ration care .
“ Although we are not yet close to the hospitalization peaks of almost 60,000 that we observed in the spring and summer , ” the editors at the Covid Tracking Project observed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this week rose to 42,621 , a very substantial increase from the lows of about 30,000 that we saw just a month ago.
” If cases keep rising — as they ’ re expected to with the cold weather and more indoor gathering — this means we ’ re on track for a new hospitalization record .
And , again , that will be followed by a new surge in deaths .
People with the disease are more likely to survive today .
But the gains doctors have made treating critically ill patients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ become overwhelmed again .
“ Each hospital ’ s overwhelmed point is different now than it was in April , but there is a point that ’ s too much for any hospital , ” Theodore Iwashyna , a professor of critical care medicine at the University of Michigan who has been treating Covid-19 patients , told Vox .
“ There are only so many hands .
You can only be in so many rooms.
” This was not a surprise , nor was it inevitable What makes this moment so frustrating is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ warning for months that a fall and winter spike in Covid-19 cases was looming .
“ There ’ s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through , ” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield told the Washington Post in April .
“ And when I ’ ve said this to others , they kind of put their head back , they don ’ t understand what I mean.
” We were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that there would be no going back to normal life until community transmission of the virus had been suppressed .
We were warned that any successes achieved through business closures and social distancing would have to be replaced by equally effective public health measures if we were to take steps toward returning to life as normal .
In many parts of the country , those alternative strategies never came .
Scientists also told us that we ’ d be living with the pandemic for potentially years without a vaccine .
That ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were warned that state reopenings were coming too soon , and that case spikes , and later hospitalizations and deaths , would follow .
And they did .
Over the summer , we were warned that falling temperatures in the autumn , along with continued lax precautions , might lead to another surge .
And here we are .
Yet earlier this month , as it became more apparent that the United States was on track for a major increase in Covid-19 cases , states like Florida were relaxing restrictions , allowing bars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( A similar pattern emerged this summer as cities and states relaxed restrictions even as cases were rising , fueling a spike in new infections in June . )
The current rise in cases is starting from a much higher baseline , with the added element of increased transmission in winter conditions .
As people spend more time indoors in the cold weather , and as lower humidity makes it easier to transmit a respiratory virus , the air is fertile for viral spread .
That means the next Covid-19 surge could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t have to be this way .
“ Through comparative analysis and applying proportional mortality rates , we estimate that at least 130,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 210,000 could have been avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination and leadership , ” researchers at Columbia University reported this month .
Other parts of the world have also done a far better job of containing the spread of the virus .
Officials in Taiwan reported this week that the island has gone 200 days without local transmission @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confirmed its first Covid-19 case on the same day as the US , managed to keep its per capita infections far lower throughout the pandemic .
Even with a recent rise in cases , South Korea ’ s infection rate remains much lower .
The country also reported that its economy is even starting to grow .
These countries maintained much more aggressive restrictions on movement , while investing far more in testing for Covid-19 and tracing contacts of the infected .
They also embraced mandatory face masks .
These lessons have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the US and around the world .
But these are lessons the US has still failed to learn .
America is still struggling with basic pandemic control measures like social distancing .
And now , with the days getting shorter , the country is facing the darkest stretch of the pandemic yet .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

The United States has reached a new terrible milestone in the Covid-19 pandemic. This past week, the country saw, on average, about 79,000 new cases per day — the highest on record in a pandemic full of atrocious records. On Friday, more than 98,000 Americans received a positive test result.
From north to south, east to west, the virus is spreading uncontrolled again. This is not a peak. We’re in the midst of a climb. Next week, we can expect yet another record: leaping from more than 9 million total cases to 10 million cases in a matter of a few days.
The number of people in hospitals across the country is ascending, too, hitting 46,000 on Thursday. And this will likely be followed by rising numbers of deaths in the coming weeks.
Why? Because this is the pattern we’ve seen in every Covid-19 surge during the pandemic. It’s not going to change now. There’s a momentum to this virus.
Cases incubate silently for days in a human body, and it can take several days for a person to be tested, and more to find out the results. Next week’s record number of cases is already festering in the population now, waiting to be uncovered. All the while, the infected can continue spreading this very contagious virus exponentially, especially in places that don’t have mask mandates or restrictions on bars and restaurants being open for indoor dining.
Yet the disconnect between this grim reality and President Donald Trump’s words has never been greater. The president wants the public to believe the recent spikes are something of a mirage, based solely on expanded testing.
“We’re rounding the turn,” Trump told his supports at a rally on Monday. “Our numbers are incredible.”
A rise in Covid-19 cases means we’ll see a spike in hospitalization. Again.
While part of the increase in cases can indeed be explained by more testing, that’s far from the whole story. Look no further than the test-positive rate to understand why. The national rate has climbed more than a percentage point over the past two weeks, reaching 6.3 percent. That average obscures far higher test positive rates in states with some of the worst-controlled outbreaks:
Virus 49, US States 1
Off-the-chart test positivity extends beyond Midwest
South Dakota 46.3%
Idaho 34.0%
Wyoming 31.8% (down from 55%)
Iowa 30.6%
Kansas 27.6%
Alabama 25.9%
Nebraska 23.8%
Nevada 23.3%https://t.co/I9lw9nAtaQ pic.twitter.com/T3KQVXIUL2 — Eric Topol (@EricTopol) October 30, 2020
This means a growing number of Americans being tested have the virus — and health officials aren’t keeping up with the rising demand for testing, nor are they keeping on top of outbreaks.
Covid-19 hospitalizations are also rising again, following a sharp drop through August and early September. Over the past month, the number of US patients in hospitals with the disease increased by more than 50 percent, according to the COVID Tracking Project, surpassing 46,000 on October 29.
As Vox’s Dylan Scott reports, this has already forced radical measures across the country: Wisconsin and Texas are building field hospitals; Idaho is planning to transfer patients out of state; Utah is ready to ration care.
“Although we are not yet close to the hospitalization peaks of almost 60,000 that we observed in the spring and summer,” the editors at the Covid Tracking Project observed, “the average number of people hospitalized this week rose to 42,621, a very substantial increase from the lows of about 30,000 that we saw just a month ago.”
If cases keep rising — as they’re expected to with the cold weather and more indoor gathering — this means we’re on track for a new hospitalization record. And, again, that will be followed by a new surge in deaths.
.@IHME_UW now projects 399,000 #COVID19 cumulative deaths by February 1. If states do not react to rising
numbers by re-imposing mandates, cumulative deaths could reach 514,000 by the same date. pic.twitter.com/3XoIV9YOt7 — Ali H. Mokdad (@AliHMokdad) October 30, 2020
People with the disease are more likely to survive today. But the gains doctors have made treating critically ill patients could rapidly be undone as hospital wards become overwhelmed again.
“Each hospital’s overwhelmed point is different now than it was in April, but there is a point that’s too much for any hospital,” Theodore Iwashyna, a professor of critical care medicine at the University of Michigan who has been treating Covid-19 patients, told Vox. “There are only so many hands. You can only be in so many rooms.”
This was not a surprise, nor was it inevitable
What makes this moment so frustrating is that researchers and health officials have been warning for months that a fall and winter spike in Covid-19 cases was looming.
“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield told the Washington Post in April. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.”
We were warned, as early as March, that there would be no going back to normal life until community transmission of the virus had been suppressed. We were warned that any successes achieved through business closures and social distancing would have to be replaced by equally effective public health measures if we were to take steps toward returning to life as normal. In many parts of the country, those alternative strategies never came.
Scientists also told us that we’d be living with the pandemic for potentially years without a vaccine. That’s still true.
In May, we were warned that state reopenings were coming too soon, and that case spikes, and later hospitalizations and deaths, would follow. And they did.
Over the summer, we were warned that falling temperatures in the autumn, along with continued lax precautions, might lead to another surge. And here we are.
Yet earlier this month, as it became more apparent that the United States was on track for a major increase in Covid-19 cases, states like Florida were relaxing restrictions, allowing bars and restaurants to reopen for indoor patrons. (A similar pattern emerged this summer as cities and states relaxed restrictions even as cases were rising, fueling a spike in new infections in June.)
The current rise in cases is starting from a much higher baseline, with the added element of increased transmission in winter conditions. As people spend more time indoors in the cold weather, and as lower humidity makes it easier to transmit a respiratory virus, the air is fertile for viral spread. That means the next Covid-19 surge could break more records.
Scientists say it didn’t have to be this way. “Through comparative analysis and applying proportional mortality rates, we estimate that at least 130,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 210,000 could have been avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination and leadership,” researchers at Columbia University reported this month.
Other parts of the world have also done a far better job of containing the spread of the virus. Officials in Taiwan reported this week that the island has gone 200 days without local transmission of Covid-19. South Korea, which confirmed its first Covid-19 case on the same day as the US, managed to keep its per capita infections far lower throughout the pandemic. Even with a recent rise in cases, South Korea’s infection rate remains much lower. The country also reported that its economy is even starting to grow.
These countries maintained much more aggressive restrictions on movement, while investing far more in testing for Covid-19 and tracing contacts of the infected. They also embraced mandatory face masks.
These lessons have been repeatedly emphasized throughout the pandemic, in the US and around the world. But these are lessons the US has still failed to learn. America is still struggling with basic pandemic control measures like social distancing. And now, with the days getting shorter, the country is facing the darkest stretch of the pandemic yet.


vox--2020-10-31--Who the Electoral College really benefits

In the 2000 US presidential election , the Democratic candidate got half a million more votes than the Republican .
The Democrat lost .
Sixteen years later , a similar thing happened again .
In the US , if you run for president , it does not actually matter how many people in the country vote for you .
What matters instead is an arcane system for selecting America ’ s head of state called the Electoral College .
The Electoral College is the reason the US has something called “ swing states , ” and it ’ s the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future of the country .
It ’ s the reason presidential candidates rarely campaign in the country ’ s biggest cities .
More recently , it ’ s also the reason that Republican candidates have been able to eke out victories in the presidential election without actually getting the most votes .
The Electoral College makes some Americans ’ votes more powerful than others .
In fact , that ’ s part of the reason we have it to begin with ; in the country ’ s early years , the Electoral College @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people more weight than the votes of Northerners .
The idea at its core — that certain votes simply matter more than others — is baked into the American tradition .
In the 2020 election , it may decide the winner .
The historian Alexander Keyssar ’ s book Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College ?
takes you through the history and function of the Electoral College : For the bite-size version of that history , Keyssar also wrote this piece in the New York Times .
The Times has a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidates actually spent money .
Pew has a breakdown of how democracies around the world elect their head of state , which really shows what an oddball the US is .
More on why today ’ s Electoral College gives Republican presidential candidates a structural advantage .
You can find this video and all of Vox ’ s videos on YouTube .
And if you ’ re interested in supporting our video journalism , you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube .
Help keep Vox free for all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

In the 2000 US presidential election, the Democratic candidate got half a million more votes than the Republican. The Democrat lost. Sixteen years later, a similar thing happened again. In the US, if you run for president, it does not actually matter how many people in the country vote for you. What matters instead is an arcane system for selecting America’s head of state called the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is the reason the US has something called “swing states,” and it’s the reason those places get to decide the future of the country. It’s the reason presidential candidates rarely campaign in the country’s biggest cities. More recently, it’s also the reason that Republican candidates have been able to eke out victories in the presidential election without actually getting the most votes.
The Electoral College makes some Americans’ votes more powerful than others. In fact, that’s part of the reason we have it to begin with; in the country’s early years, the Electoral College helped give the votes of Southern white people more weight than the votes of Northerners. The idea at its core — that certain votes simply matter more than others — is baked into the American tradition. In the 2020 election, it may decide the winner.
Further reading:
The historian Alexander Keyssar’s book Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? takes you through the history and function of the Electoral College:
For the bite-size version of that history, Keyssar also wrote this piece in the New York Times.
The Times has a great interactive feature on where the 2020 candidates actually spent money.
Pew has a breakdown of how democracies around the world elect their head of state, which really shows what an oddball the US is.
More on why today’s Electoral College gives Republican presidential candidates a structural advantage.
You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube. And if you’re interested in supporting our video journalism, you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube.


vox--2020-10-31--Trump’s “Sharpiegate” grudge may have cost NOAA’s acting chief scientist his job

It turns out that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA ) may still be reeling from that episode , when President Trump ’ s refusal to admit he was wrong ballooned into an actual scandal at one of the nation ’ s premier scientific institutions .
The New York Times reported this week that NOAA ’ s acting chief scientist , Craig McLean , who called out political interference during the ordeal , was removed from his post this month when he asked a new political appointee to acknowledge the agency ’ s scientific integrity guidelines .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ends .
The appointee , Erik Noble , a former White House adviser , was not pleased , according to the Times : The request prompted a sharp response from Dr. Noble .
“ Respectfully , by what authority are you sending this to me ?
” he wrote , according to a person who received a copy of the exchange after it was circulated within NOAA .
Mr. McLean answered that his role as acting chief scientist made him responsible for ensuring that the agency ’ s rules on scientific integrity were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Noble responded .
“ You no longer serve as the acting chief scientist for NOAA , ” he informed Mr. McLean , adding that a new chief scientist had already been appointed .
“ Thank you for your service.
” McLean is still at NOAA , but he ’ s been replaced as chief scientist by Ryan Maue , a former research meteorologist at the Cato Institute .
It makes sense that scientific integrity was front of mind for McLean when dealing with a political appointee .
NOAA in general and McLean in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ line between science and politics ever since Hurricane Dorian in 2019 galloped toward the Gulf Coast .
Trump tweeted at the time that Alabama was one of several states “ most likely ” to be struck .
The National Weather Service ’ s Birmingham , Alabama , office quickly responded that the state was emphatically not in the path of the storm .
A few days later , McLean defended NOAA ’ s scientists , including researchers at the National Weather Service , and openly decried the interference from the White House in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a career employee at a government agency to publicly challenge political staff , which may be why a White House appointee at NOAA was so keen to remove him .
And while the whole affair may seem silly , it has consequences beyond bruising the president ’ s ego .
Political interference , or even the appearance thereof , undermines the credibility of an agency like NOAA whose research is used to make life-or-death decisions , like who needs to get out of the path of a dangerous storm .
Now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hurricane Zeta , the 27th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season , has left 2 million without power along the Gulf Coast , political staff are sidelining scientists at an agency tasked with staying ahead of natural disasters .
And it ’ s likely more manipulation of science is in store if Trump wins a second term in office .
When his words didn ’ t match reality , President Trump tried to make reality match his words .
He responded with multiple tweets defending his statement that Alabama was in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his Homeland Security adviser to release a statement validating him .
NOAA , the parent agency of the National Weather Service , issued a curt statement downplaying comments from its Birmingham station .
Then , in the Oval Office , President Trump infamously presented a map of Hurricane Dorian ’ s path , but the forecast was doctored with a black line to include Alabama .
Altering an official weather forecast is actually illegal for a government employee , though it ’ s not clear who actually drew the black line on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whether it was drawn with a Sharpie , either ) .
In a September 10 , 2019 , statement , McLean criticized the decision to use NOAA ’ s press office to echo Trump and undercut the National Weather Service .
“ My understanding is that this intervention to contradict the forecaster was not based on science but on external factors including reputation and appearance , or simply put , political , ” he wrote .
“ If the public can not trust our information , or we debase our forecaster ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arises.
” The inspector general of the US Department of Commerce , which oversees NOAA , agreed .
A report from the inspector general this summer found that NOAA ’ s credibility “ took a serious hit ” when top officials at the agency contradicted the National Weather Service ’ s Birmingham office : But the political pressure on NOAA was mounting before Sharpiegate and has been aimed at influencing the science that drives policy , particularly around climate change .
Since Trump took office , NOAA has not had a Senate-confirmed leader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere , is serving as NOAA ’ s interim administrator .
Meanwhile , Trump has repeatedly made his disdain for climate change science clear .
Shortly after taking office , federal agencies began removing references to climate change from their websites .
For the most part , scientists at NOAA continued doing their jobs but have collided with the White House at times .
NOAA is one of the contributing agencies to the National Climate Assessment , a report mandated by Congress to assess the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States .
After the last installment highlighted the economic costs of climate change , Trump said he didn ’ t believe the findings — likely because they undermined his administration ’ s policies to boost fossil fuels and relax greenhouse gas restrictions .
Since the report is foundational to how the government plans for the future , the Trump administration is aiming to alter it during a second term by “ removing longtime authors of the climate assessment and adding new ones who challenge the degree to which warming is occurring , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human activities and the danger it poses to human health , national security and the economy , ” according to the New York Times .
The Trump administration has already pursued a similar tack at the Environmental Protection Agency .
The EPA ousted numerous independent scientific advisers and instead brought in researchers from the industries it ’ s supposed to regulate .
The agency also placed additional restrictions on what kinds of research could be used to develop environmental regulations , making it easier to roll back restrictions and harder to come up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ air , water , and soil .
And now we ’ re also seeing this manipulation play out in the Covid-19 pandemic .
The White House has repeatedly interfered with and undermined guidance from public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
Because Trump talked them up , the FDA granted emergency use authorizations to therapies like hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma despite weak evidence for their effectiveness .
The net result of all this manipulation is a loss of public trust , making it less likely that people will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disease or environmental dangers .
And with the science itself being twisted to meet political ends , dirtier air and water due to weaker regulations , communities left more vulnerable in a disaster , as well as unready and risky approaches being deployed to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic may result .
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Remember Sharpiegate?
It turns out that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may still be reeling from that episode, when President Trump’s refusal to admit he was wrong ballooned into an actual scandal at one of the nation’s premier scientific institutions.
The New York Times reported this week that NOAA’s acting chief scientist, Craig McLean, who called out political interference during the ordeal, was removed from his post this month when he asked a new political appointee to acknowledge the agency’s scientific integrity guidelines. The guidelines prohibit manipulating scientific research for political ends.
The appointee, Erik Noble, a former White House adviser, was not pleased, according to the Times:
The request prompted a sharp response from Dr. Noble. “Respectfully, by what authority are you sending this to me?” he wrote, according to a person who received a copy of the exchange after it was circulated within NOAA. Mr. McLean answered that his role as acting chief scientist made him responsible for ensuring that the agency’s rules on scientific integrity were followed. The following morning, Dr. Noble responded. “You no longer serve as the acting chief scientist for NOAA,” he informed Mr. McLean, adding that a new chief scientist had already been appointed. “Thank you for your service.”
McLean is still at NOAA, but he’s been replaced as chief scientist by Ryan Maue, a former research meteorologist at the Cato Institute.
It makes sense that scientific integrity was front of mind for McLean when dealing with a political appointee. NOAA in general and McLean in particular have been forced to police the line between science and politics ever since Hurricane Dorian in 2019 galloped toward the Gulf Coast. Trump tweeted at the time that Alabama was one of several states “most likely” to be struck. The National Weather Service’s Birmingham, Alabama, office quickly responded that the state was emphatically not in the path of the storm.
In addition to Florida - South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated. Looking like one of the largest hurricanes ever. Already category 5. BE CAREFUL! GOD BLESS EVERYONE! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 1, 2019
Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east. #alwx — NWS Birmingham (@NWSBirmingham) September 1, 2019
A few days later, McLean defended NOAA’s scientists, including researchers at the National Weather Service, and openly decried the interference from the White House in a statement.
It’s rare for a career employee at a government agency to publicly challenge political staff, which may be why a White House appointee at NOAA was so keen to remove him. And while the whole affair may seem silly, it has consequences beyond bruising the president’s ego.
Political interference, or even the appearance thereof, undermines the credibility of an agency like NOAA whose research is used to make life-or-death decisions, like who needs to get out of the path of a dangerous storm.
Now, even before an election, just as Hurricane Zeta, the 27th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, has left 2 million without power along the Gulf Coast, political staff are sidelining scientists at an agency tasked with staying ahead of natural disasters. And it’s likely more manipulation of science is in store if Trump wins a second term in office.
The Trump administration’s repeated attacks on scientific agencies weaken public trust
When his words didn’t match reality, President Trump tried to make reality match his words.
He responded with multiple tweets defending his statement that Alabama was in the path of Hurricane Dorian. He pressured his Homeland Security adviser to release a statement validating him. NOAA, the parent agency of the National Weather Service, issued a curt statement downplaying comments from its Birmingham station. Then, in the Oval Office, President Trump infamously presented a map of Hurricane Dorian’s path, but the forecast was doctored with a black line to include Alabama.
Altering an official weather forecast is actually illegal for a government employee, though it’s not clear who actually drew the black line on the map (it’s not clear whether it was drawn with a Sharpie, either).
In a September 10, 2019, statement, McLean criticized the decision to use NOAA’s press office to echo Trump and undercut the National Weather Service. “My understanding is that this intervention to contradict the forecaster was not based on science but on external factors including reputation and appearance, or simply put, political,” he wrote. “If the public cannot trust our information, or we debase our forecaster’s warnings and products, that specific danger arises.”
The inspector general of the US Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA, agreed. A report from the inspector general this summer found that NOAA’s credibility “took a serious hit” when top officials at the agency contradicted the National Weather Service’s Birmingham office:
The Statement undercut the NWS’s forecasts and potentially undercut public trust in NOAA’s and the NWS’s science and the apolitical nature of that science. By requiring NOAA to issue an unattributed statement related to a then-5-day-old tweet, while an active hurricane continued to exist off the east coast of the United States, the Department displayed poor judgment in exercising its authority over NOAA.
But the political pressure on NOAA was mounting before Sharpiegate and has been aimed at influencing the science that drives policy, particularly around climate change.
Since Trump took office, NOAA has not had a Senate-confirmed leader. Currently, Neil Jacobs, the acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, is serving as NOAA’s interim administrator. Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly made his disdain for climate change science clear. Shortly after taking office, federal agencies began removing references to climate change from their websites.
For the most part, scientists at NOAA continued doing their jobs but have collided with the White House at times. NOAA is one of the contributing agencies to the National Climate Assessment, a report mandated by Congress to assess the impacts of climate change on the United States. After the last installment highlighted the economic costs of climate change, Trump said he didn’t believe the findings — likely because they undermined his administration’s policies to boost fossil fuels and relax greenhouse gas restrictions.
Since the report is foundational to how the government plans for the future, the Trump administration is aiming to alter it during a second term by “removing longtime authors of the climate assessment and adding new ones who challenge the degree to which warming is occurring, the extent to which it is caused by human activities and the danger it poses to human health, national security and the economy,” according to the New York Times.
The Trump administration has already pursued a similar tack at the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA ousted numerous independent scientific advisers and instead brought in researchers from the industries it’s supposed to regulate. The agency also placed additional restrictions on what kinds of research could be used to develop environmental regulations, making it easier to roll back restrictions and harder to come up with new rules to govern hazards to air, water, and soil.
And now we’re also seeing this manipulation play out in the Covid-19 pandemic. The White House has repeatedly interfered with and undermined guidance from public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because Trump talked them up, the FDA granted emergency use authorizations to therapies like hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma despite weak evidence for their effectiveness.
The net result of all this manipulation is a loss of public trust, making it less likely that people will adhere to guidelines to protect them from disease or environmental dangers. And with the science itself being twisted to meet political ends, dirtier air and water due to weaker regulations, communities left more vulnerable in a disaster, as well as unready and risky approaches being deployed to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic may result.


vox--2020-10-31--We have to accelerate clean energy innovation to curb the climate crisis. Here’s how.

“ Innovation ” is a fraught concept in climate politics .
For years , it was used as a kind of fig leaf to cover for delaying tactics , as though climate progress must wait on some kind of technological breakthrough or miracle .
That left climate advocates with an enduring suspicion toward the notion , and hostility toward those championing it .
Lately , though , that has changed .
Arguably , some Republicans in Congress are still using innovation as a way to create the illusion of climate concern ( without any conflict with fossil fuel companies ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate crisis , it is now widely acknowledged that hitting the world ’ s ambitious emissions targets will require decreasing resource consumption , aggressively deploying existing technologies , and an equally aggressive push to improve those technologies and develop nascent ones .
There is legitimate disagreement about the ratio — about how far and how fast existing , mature technologies can go — but there is virtually no analyst who thinks the current energy innovation system in the US is adequate to decarbonize the country by midcentury .
It needs reform .
What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in other areas of climate policy , there is increasing alignment across the left-of-center spectrum .
Two recent reports illustrate this .
The first — a report so long they ’ re calling it a book — is from a group of scholars at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy ( CGEP ) , led by energy scholar Varun Sivaram ; it is the first in what will be three volumes on what CGEP is calling a “ National Energy Innovation Mission.
” The second is from the progressive think tank @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Progressive Climate Innovation Agenda , ” accompanied by a policy brief and some polling .
Both reports accept the International Energy Agency ( IEA ) conclusion that “ roughly half of the reductions that the world needs to swiftly achieve net-zero emissions in the coming decades must come from technologies that have not yet reached the market today.
” There are reasons to think this might be an overly gloomy assessment , but whether it ’ s 20 percent or 50 percent , aggressive innovation will be required to pull it off .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ meat on the bones of a clean energy innovation agenda .
And they both end up in roughly the same place , with roughly the same set of policy recommendations .
With a bigger team and more resources , the CGEP report is inevitably bulkier and more comprehensive , so I ’ ll mostly follow along with it , but the Data for Progress report adds a few key elements that we ’ ll touch on below .
There are five basic reforms involved in developing an innovation system that can decarbonize the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be bigger , better targeted , broader , more stable , and more equitable .
But the politics of clean energy innovation matter too , and so we ’ ll also look at the prospects for a potential President Joe Biden administration .
US public spending on energy innovation is paltry Today , the federal government spends less than $ 9 billion annually on energy innovation , “ less than a quarter of what it invests in health innovation and less than a tenth of what it invests in defense innovation , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the money goes to the Department of Energy ; the rest goes to a grab bag of agencies including the Department of Agriculture and NASA .
US energy research and development ( R & D ) spending spiked after the 1970s oil crisis , but when oil prices fell and President Reagan came along , it plunged , and as a percentage of US GDP , it has never recovered .
And just as public R & D spending “ crowds in ” private investment in a virtuous cycle , the loss of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Starting in 1984 , ” CGEP writes , “ private funding for energy RD & D [ research , design , and development ] and US energy patents declined for the next two decades.
” Still today , what private investment there is in clean energy is overwhelmingly focused on mature technologies that are market competitive .
In 2019 , just 10 percent of private investment in clean energy went to innovative companies ; the bulk was financing for projects like wind and solar farms , from established market players .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either .
“ In 2019 , VCs invested just $ 1 billion into US energy companies , ” CGEP writes , “ compared with about $ 20 billion for health care deals and $ 70 billion for information technology firms.
” In 2015 , the US made a promise to the world , as part of the international Mission Innovation compact , to raise energy R & D spending to $ 12.8 billion annually by 2021 .
It remains billions of dollars short .
As IEA ’ s report makes clear , even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the task .
The US is only about 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions .
One of its primary roles in the climate fight must be putting its incredible intellectual and engineering might behind innovation , to drive down the costs of technologies other countries need to get on a sustainable path .
“ The single most important thing that the United States can do to advance progress on climate change , ” Sivaram says , “ is launch a national energy innovation mission.
” The US energy innovation budget should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lessons CGEP draws from historical examples of government R & D is that “ scale matters.
” It cites defense and health spending , which have created expansive innovation ecosystems that encompass the entire development process , from lab to market , and are at least somewhat self-sustaining and insulated from ongoing political interference .
“ Federal support for energy innovation has not attained this scale , ” CGEP writes , “ and as a result , enjoys neither a thriving and self-sustaining innovation ecosystem nor sufficient political independence to tolerate failures in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health system would look if every failed drug were treated like Solyndra . )
The first order of business in creating an adequate innovation ecosystem is simply spending more money on it .
Data for Progress recommends “ slightly more than a three-fold increase in R & D spending and a four-fold increase in RD & D spending by 2030.
” CGEP emphasizes a more specific near-term target : $ 25 billion by 2025 ( roughly tripling the current budget , which would still put energy innovation at about half what the US @ @ @ @ @ @ @ target is high enough to bulk up the energy R & D portfolio , CGEP argues .
It matches a bottom-up analysis of funding needs ; research shows that “ funding in roughly this range will translate into net economic benefits and rapid technological progress ” ; and it would bring US public investment in energy R & D to roughly the same percentage of GDP as China ’ s .
At the same time , history shows that spending of that level can be profitably and economically deployed by agencies to accelerate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the federal government is pretty good at this .
The previously mentioned health and defense innovations ecosystems have produced dozens of products and services that have spilled over into other sectors .
Defense R & D yielded semiconductors , computers , and GPS systems .
Biomedical R & D produced the biotech industry .
“ Science supported by NIH , ” CGEP writes , “ underpinned every single one of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2016.
” Federal R & D spending works .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ It ’ s been shown that government R & D in clean energy technologies redirects private R & D away from fossil fuel technologies and into clean energy , ” Sivaram says .
But the full potential of federal innovation spending is only unlocked at scale .
That means lots more money , quickly .
Federal innovation money should be targeted at the neediest sectors Data for Progress is blunt : “ Existing innovation programs are not designed to address climate change , ” but rather to boost US fossil fuel supply @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Energy ( DOE ) R & D spending is concentrated on the power sector , while the bulk of US emissions come from fossil fuel combustion in transportation , buildings , and industry .
What ’ s more , the bulk of DOE R & D spending goes to nuclear power and fossil fuels , despite the fact that the IPCC ( and everyone else ) expects renewable energy to be the backbone of a decarbonized energy system .
Both Data for Progress and CGEP recommend that funding priorities shift away from individual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ energy applications with large potential emission reductions .
CGEP suggests a focus on 10 particular “ technology pillars.
” ( In the report , each pillar is accompanied by a helpful summary of recent initiatives around it and some recommendations for new initiatives to boost it . )
One could argue about the relative weighting of these pillars — I have contended for a while that smaller , more distributed , modular , and digital technologies are better suited to America ’ s strengths — but as an initial list , it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Data for Progress ’ s similar list of tech priorities .
It will not be enough , however , to target money at early-stage research alone .
Federal innovation money should be spread out more broadly Too often , those who tout “ innovation ” seek to confine R & D money to early-stage research , as though the market will take it from there .
Extensive experience and analysis shows that is false .
In fact , research shows that R & D is vital to driving technologies down the cost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stage , but when crossing the “ valley of death ” between lab and market and when scaling up to full market maturity .
All those graphs you see of solar , wind , and battery costs falling ?
It ’ s not just scale , or “ learning by doing , ” that ’ s driving those cost reductions .
The graphs rarely show it , but behind almost every new technology that reaches broad market scale there is consistent innovation-boosting policy help , at every stage .
Different policies help more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chart below shows .
Today , public funding for innovation is overwhelmingly focused on early-stage research .
The underfunding of demonstration projects is particularly acute , since private capital is often leery of investing in high-risk projects where knowledge spillovers make it difficult to capture all the benefits .
“ As a result , ” CGEP writes , “ a yawning valley of death can swallow firms that lack the capital to demonstrate promising clean energy technologies that they have developed.
” Right now only 5 percent of federal energy R & D @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most of that is for advanced nuclear .
CGEP recommends that the government “ fund demonstration projects across the ten technology pillars at a level of at least $ 5 billion per year by 2025.
” To spend this money , the government should create a central financing authority .
Data for Progress recommends a national Green Bank ; CGEP mentions a possible Clean Energy Deployment Administration .
Either way , a central , accountable authority should dispense and track grants and loans .
And the government should join “ technology push ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ market pull ” policies that draw demonstrated technologies into market scale .
Options include “ carbon pricing , clean electricity standards , fuel economy standards , targeted tax incentives , and more , ” CGEP says .
This will help government spread investment more broadly across the technology development curve .
The funding should also be spread more broadly across agencies and programs to exploit synergies among agencies and better protect funding from political interference .
“ Many other federal agencies have missions that align with advancing energy innovation , ” CGEP notes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , NASA , the National Institute of Standards and Technology ( within the Commerce Department ) , and the Department of Agriculture , among others .
And finally , funding should be spread across institutions , from national laboratories to universities , private sector companies , and state and local governments .
Government partnerships with industry are a major feature of the German innovation system , which features 66 German Fraunhofer Institutes that focus practical research on various industrial challenges .
And it is well understood that innovation proceeds faster in research “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and firms work in close proximity .
The federal government can work with local and regional authorities to help build those clusters .
And again , it comes back to scale .
“ To sustain academic , industrial , and federal laboratory complexes , ” Sivaram says , “ a threshold level of investment is needed across all parts of the chain , to support this interplay between R & D and manufacturing.
” Federal innovation funding should be steady and flexible The scale of US defense and health R & D @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has created are at least somewhat self-sustaining .
Energy R & D , on the other hand , has been subject to continual boom and bust cycles , which inevitably disrupt research .
To scale up innovation as fast as needed , the government should “ signal its long-term commitment to increasing annual energy RD & D funding over the next decade , even after reaching the target of $ 25 billion by 2025.
” Researchers and industries need to be able to rely on it .
And agencies should rigorously collect and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increase trust among policymakers and the public so that funding survives swings in politics .
Finally , innovation funding should be flexible and adaptive , based on ongoing research , forecasting , and expert opinion .
If some technologies fall in cost faster ( or slower ) than expected , agencies should be able to course-correct and redirect funding .
“ If , for example , the commercial cost of producing clean hydrogen falls rapidly over the next decade , ” CGEP writes , “ it could make sense to redouble investments in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a feedstock to decarbonize industrial processes.
” Conversely , if hydrogen proves resistant to cost declines , it might make sense to channel more money to biofuels and battery chemistries .
Steadiness and predictability are the key , though : “ At a high level , ” CGEP says , “ policymakers must stick to their roadmap for ramping up the federal budget for energy innovation.
” The CGEP report contains several references to “ inclusive economic growth ” and lots of ideas for how federal partnerships with states and localities could foster @ @ @ @ @ @ @ report has a full and separate section on equity , which gathers key recommendations in one place , so let ’ s take a look at them .
The first and arguably most important recommendation is that federal innovation programs be explicitly redirected toward addressing the climate crisis , which crucially involves environmental justice .
Energy innovation programs should “ prioritize projects that improve social and economic equity , including through business models that allow for communities to lead , own , and benefit from clean energy projects , ” Data for Progress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ avoid exacerbating other inequitable environmental hazards in its quest to reduce emissions .
Second , Data for Progress argues that the federal government should direct at least 40 percent of climate-related investments ( including those on innovation ) to “ disproportionately burdened communities ” that have historically suffered from “ systemic racism and structural inequity.
” Third , it argues that the government should prioritize projects in communities dependent on the fossil fuel economy , which could be hard hit by a wholesale transition to clean energy .
When DOE is making research @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should “ consider the extent to which these programs can enable communities historically dependent on fossil fuels to benefit and diversify their economies.
” Fourth , the government should bulk up workforce redevelopment efforts aimed at clean energy jobs .
And fifth , it should expand international cooperation on climate initiatives that can help address global inequities .
This focus on equity throughout the innovation ecosystem , says Jake Higdon , a climate analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund and one of the authors of the Data for Progress report , is crucial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over innovation from the progressive caucus.
” The politics of clean energy innovation in 2020 Another difference between the two reports is that Data for Progress ’ s is explicitly framed as advice to Democrats for when and if they get power .
As it shows in its accompanying polling , this is good politics for Dems .
A narrow ( 51 percent ) majority of the public supports investing $ 1 trillion in green energy innovation .
And larger majorities would prefer to invest in clean energy tech over more military weaponry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ is all the more reason for progressives , who are concerned about the climate crisis and see it as an intersectional issue , to be engaging very deeply on setting the terms of the innovation agenda.
” CGEP , by contrast , is insistent that for public innovation spending to reach the scale , breadth , and resilience it needs , there must be a bipartisan consensus supporting it .
“ Any policy that is to last for decades in the United States must withstand shifts in partisan control of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House of Representatives , ” it writes , “ not to mention periods of divided government.
” It cites the Cold War consensus and the more recent consensus around biomedical research .
No such consensus has formed around energy — Reagan theatrically rejected Carter ’ s calls for more thoughtful energy policy — but CGEP claims the outlines of one are beginning to take shape .
“ This is a pocket of resistance among congressional Republicans against the Trump administration , ” Sivaram says .
In each of the last four years , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clean energy programs , including Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy ; each time , cuts were rejected .
“ Instead , ” CGEP writes , “ federal funding for clean energy RD & D has risen by about one-third during this period.
” The report also cites the American Energy Innovation Act , co-sponsored by Sens .
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska , a Republican , and Joe Manchin of West Virginia , a Democrat .
As chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee , they wrangled the interests of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that boosts R & D funding for a range of technologies and funds 17 demonstration projects .
( Sivaram says he was “ dismayed ” when the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists denounced the bill for directing too much funding to fossil fuel technologies . )
There ’ s a bipartisan group of legislators behind the “ Endless Frontier Act , ” which would set up a directorate in the National Science Foundation to fund 10 technology research areas ( including advanced energy ) to the tune of $ 20 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group behind the House Nuclear Energy R & D Act , which would refocus DOE ’ s nuclear energy program on next-gen reactors .
Sen. Lamar Alexander ( R-TN ) called for a “ New Manhattan Project ” for clean energy research .
Even Sen. Marco Rubio ( R-FL ) has hopped on board the innovation train .
The Bipartisan Policy Center has an American Energy Innovation Council stocked with CEOs who support energy innovation .
It ’ s not so much the climate angle that draws conservative support , Sivaram says , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competition-with-China angle .
And that might be enough .
“ The whole reason I devoted the last six months to doing this is I think it can actually happen , ” he says , “ and it ’ s not going to require a signal change in how the government works , compared with all the other climate plans.
” He acknowledges that implementing the recommendations in CGEP ’ s report will probably require a new presidential administration , but he insists that it “ does not require a substantial change in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ share Sivaram ’ s optimism .
CGEP ’ s report concludes with three recommendations for immediate action : The president should launch a National Energy Innovation Mission , Congress should increase energy RD & D funding by 30 percent in 2021 , and the US should reassert its international leadership on energy innovation .
If I were a gambling man , I would bet that US conservatives will condemn any mission launched by a President Joe Biden as a wasteful government boondoggle .
I would bet that , to the extent they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ major legislative victories in Congress , including a big clean energy bill .
And I would bet that any attempts to reestablish US commitment to clean energy on the international stage will be dogged by Republican assurances that , should they retake power , fossil fuels will once again be in the driver ’ s seat .
The political history of the past few decades reveals that the far right ’ s hold on the GOP and its near-religious devotion to opposing anything Democrats do or say steamroll any glimmers of bipartisan consensus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ force in US life .
Republicans may support channeling federal energy innovation money to fossil fuel companies and fossil fuel communities , but recent history suggests that they simply will not go beyond that to any perceived progressive priority .
Bipartisanship , with today ’ s GOP , means the portion of Republican priorities that Democrats are willing to support .
But I am a pessimist !
Perhaps Sivaram is right .
There ’ s no harm in trying .
Either way , it is good to see the left side of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a federal energy agenda .
And it is good to see that on this subject , as in other parts of climate policy , there is substantial overlap among centrists and progressives .
If Biden finds himself in the Oval Office , he will have a broadly popular and extremely detailed road map .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
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“Innovation” is a fraught concept in climate politics. For years, it was used as a kind of fig leaf to cover for delaying tactics, as though climate progress must wait on some kind of technological breakthrough or miracle. That left climate advocates with an enduring suspicion toward the notion, and hostility toward those championing it.
Lately, though, that has changed. Arguably, some Republicans in Congress are still using innovation as a way to create the illusion of climate concern (without any conflict with fossil fuel companies). But among people serious about the climate crisis, it is now widely acknowledged that hitting the world’s ambitious emissions targets will require decreasing resource consumption, aggressively deploying existing technologies, and an equally aggressive push to improve those technologies and develop nascent ones.
There is legitimate disagreement about the ratio — about how far and how fast existing, mature technologies can go — but there is virtually no analyst who thinks the current energy innovation system in the US is adequate to decarbonize the country by midcentury. It needs reform.
Related Many technologies needed to solve the climate crisis are nowhere near ready
What kind of reform? Here, as in other areas of climate policy, there is increasing alignment across the left-of-center spectrum. Two recent reports illustrate this.
The first — a report so long they’re calling it a book — is from a group of scholars at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), led by energy scholar Varun Sivaram; it is the first in what will be three volumes on what CGEP is calling a “National Energy Innovation Mission.” The second is from the progressive think tank Data for Progress, on “A Progressive Climate Innovation Agenda,” accompanied by a policy brief and some polling.
Both reports accept the International Energy Agency (IEA) conclusion that “roughly half of the reductions that the world needs to swiftly achieve net-zero emissions in the coming decades must come from technologies that have not yet reached the market today.” There are reasons to think this might be an overly gloomy assessment, but whether it’s 20 percent or 50 percent, aggressive innovation will be required to pull it off.
Both reports set out to put some meat on the bones of a clean energy innovation agenda. And they both end up in roughly the same place, with roughly the same set of policy recommendations. With a bigger team and more resources, the CGEP report is inevitably bulkier and more comprehensive, so I’ll mostly follow along with it, but the Data for Progress report adds a few key elements that we’ll touch on below.
There are five basic reforms involved in developing an innovation system that can decarbonize the US by midcentury: It needs to be bigger, better targeted, broader, more stable, and more equitable. But the politics of clean energy innovation matter too, and so we’ll also look at the prospects for a potential President Joe Biden administration.
US public spending on energy innovation is paltry
Today, the federal government spends less than $9 billion annually on energy innovation, “less than a quarter of what it invests in health innovation and less than a tenth of what it invests in defense innovation,” says CGEP.
Roughly 80 percent of the money goes to the Department of Energy; the rest goes to a grab bag of agencies including the Department of Agriculture and NASA.
US energy research and development (R&D) spending spiked after the 1970s oil crisis, but when oil prices fell and President Reagan came along, it plunged, and as a percentage of US GDP, it has never recovered.
And just as public R&D spending “crowds in” private investment in a virtuous cycle, the loss of funding leads to a vicious cycle. “Starting in 1984,” CGEP writes, “private funding for energy RD&D [research, design, and development] and US energy patents declined for the next two decades.”
Still today, what private investment there is in clean energy is overwhelmingly focused on mature technologies that are market competitive. In 2019, just 10 percent of private investment in clean energy went to innovative companies; the bulk was financing for projects like wind and solar farms, from established market players.
And venture capital isn’t stepping up either. “In 2019, VCs invested just $1 billion into US energy companies,” CGEP writes, “compared with about $20 billion for health care deals and $70 billion for information technology firms.”
In 2015, the US made a promise to the world, as part of the international Mission Innovation compact, to raise energy R&D spending to $12.8 billion annually by 2021. It remains billions of dollars short.
As IEA’s report makes clear, even the Mission Innovation target is grossly inadequate to the task. The US is only about 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. One of its primary roles in the climate fight must be putting its incredible intellectual and engineering might behind innovation, to drive down the costs of technologies other countries need to get on a sustainable path.
“The single most important thing that the United States can do to advance progress on climate change,” Sivaram says, “is launch a national energy innovation mission.”
The US energy innovation budget should triple or quadruple
One of the primary lessons CGEP draws from historical examples of government R&D is that “scale matters.” It cites defense and health spending, which have created expansive innovation ecosystems that encompass the entire development process, from lab to market, and are at least somewhat self-sustaining and insulated from ongoing political interference.
“Federal support for energy innovation has not attained this scale,” CGEP writes, “and as a result, enjoys neither a thriving and self-sustaining innovation ecosystem nor sufficient political independence to tolerate failures in the portfolio.” (Imagine how the health system would look if every failed drug were treated like Solyndra.)
The first order of business in creating an adequate innovation ecosystem is simply spending more money on it.
Data for Progress recommends “slightly more than a three-fold increase in R&D spending and a four-fold increase in RD&D spending by 2030.”
CGEP emphasizes a more specific near-term target: $25 billion by 2025 (roughly tripling the current budget, which would still put energy innovation at about half what the US spends on health innovation).
That target is high enough to bulk up the energy R&D portfolio, CGEP argues. It matches a bottom-up analysis of funding needs; research shows that “funding in roughly this range will translate into net economic benefits and rapid technological progress”; and it would bring US public investment in energy R&D to roughly the same percentage of GDP as China’s. At the same time, history shows that spending of that level can be profitably and economically deployed by agencies to accelerate innovation. Contrary to conservative myth, the federal government is pretty good at this.
The previously mentioned health and defense innovations ecosystems have produced dozens of products and services that have spilled over into other sectors. Defense R&D yielded semiconductors, computers, and GPS systems. Biomedical R&D produced the biotech industry. “Science supported by NIH,” CGEP writes, “underpinned every single one of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2016.”
Federal R&D spending works. And it draws in private capital. “It’s been shown that government R&D in clean energy technologies redirects private R&D away from fossil fuel technologies and into clean energy,” Sivaram says.
But the full potential of federal innovation spending is only unlocked at scale. That means lots more money, quickly.
Federal innovation money should be targeted at the neediest sectors
Data for Progress is blunt: “Existing innovation programs are not designed to address climate change,” but rather to boost US fossil fuel supply.
For one thing, Department of Energy (DOE) R&D spending is concentrated on the power sector, while the bulk of US emissions come from fossil fuel combustion in transportation, buildings, and industry.
(Note, in particular, the low spending on industry, where high-temperature processes like steel and concrete manufacture promise to be one of the most difficult areas to decarbonize.)
What’s more, the bulk of DOE R&D spending goes to nuclear power and fossil fuels, despite the fact that the IPCC (and everyone else) expects renewable energy to be the backbone of a decarbonized energy system.
Both Data for Progress and CGEP recommend that funding priorities shift away from individual fuels, especially fossil fuels, toward energy applications with large potential emission reductions.
CGEP suggests a focus on 10 particular “technology pillars.” (In the report, each pillar is accompanied by a helpful summary of recent initiatives around it and some recommendations for new initiatives to boost it.)
Foundational science and platform technologies Clean electricity generation Advanced transportation systems Clean fuels Modern electric power systems Clean and efficient buildings Industrial decarbonization Carbon capture, use, and sequestration Clean agricultural systems Carbon dioxide removal
One could argue about the relative weighting of these pillars — I have contended for a while that smaller, more distributed, modular, and digital technologies are better suited to America’s strengths — but as an initial list, it is solid. And it overlaps almost entirely with Data for Progress’s similar list of tech priorities.
It will not be enough, however, to target money at early-stage research alone.
Federal innovation money should be spread out more broadly
Too often, those who tout “innovation” seek to confine R&D money to early-stage research, as though the market will take it from there. Extensive experience and analysis shows that is false.
In fact, research shows that R&D is vital to driving technologies down the cost curve, not only in the lab stage, but when crossing the “valley of death” between lab and market and when scaling up to full market maturity. All those graphs you see of solar, wind, and battery costs falling? It’s not just scale, or “learning by doing,” that’s driving those cost reductions. The graphs rarely show it, but behind almost every new technology that reaches broad market scale there is consistent innovation-boosting policy help, at every stage.
Different policies help more during different stages, as the stylized chart below shows.
Today, public funding for innovation is overwhelmingly focused on early-stage research.
The underfunding of demonstration projects is particularly acute, since private capital is often leery of investing in high-risk projects where knowledge spillovers make it difficult to capture all the benefits. “As a result,” CGEP writes, “a yawning valley of death can swallow firms that lack the capital to demonstrate promising clean energy technologies that they have developed.”
Right now only 5 percent of federal energy R&D spending goes to demonstration projects, and most of that is for advanced nuclear. CGEP recommends that the government “fund demonstration projects across the ten technology pillars at a level of at least $5 billion per year by 2025.”
To spend this money, the government should create a central financing authority. Data for Progress recommends a national Green Bank; CGEP mentions a possible Clean Energy Deployment Administration. Either way, a central, accountable authority should dispense and track grants and loans.
And the government should join “technology push” policies focused on early research with “market pull” policies that draw demonstrated technologies into market scale. Options include “carbon pricing, clean electricity standards, fuel economy standards, targeted tax incentives, and more,” CGEP says. This will help government spread investment more broadly across the technology development curve.
The funding should also be spread more broadly across agencies and programs to exploit synergies among agencies and better protect funding from political interference. “Many other federal agencies have missions that align with advancing energy innovation,” CGEP notes. It cites the Department of Defense, NASA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (within the Commerce Department), and the Department of Agriculture, among others.
And finally, funding should be spread across institutions, from national laboratories to universities, private sector companies, and state and local governments. Government partnerships with industry are a major feature of the German innovation system, which features 66 German Fraunhofer Institutes that focus practical research on various industrial challenges. And it is well understood that innovation proceeds faster in research “clusters,” where labs, universities, and firms work in close proximity. The federal government can work with local and regional authorities to help build those clusters.
And again, it comes back to scale. “To sustain academic, industrial, and federal laboratory complexes,” Sivaram says, “a threshold level of investment is needed across all parts of the chain, to support this interplay between R&D and manufacturing.”
Federal innovation funding should be steady and flexible
The scale of US defense and health R&D spending produces predictability — the institutions it has created are at least somewhat self-sustaining. Energy R&D, on the other hand, has been subject to continual boom and bust cycles, which inevitably disrupt research.
To scale up innovation as fast as needed, the government should “signal its long-term commitment to increasing annual energy RD&D funding over the next decade, even after reaching the target of $25 billion by 2025.” Researchers and industries need to be able to rely on it.
And agencies should rigorously collect and analyze information, to foster transparency and increase trust among policymakers and the public so that funding survives swings in politics.
Finally, innovation funding should be flexible and adaptive, based on ongoing research, forecasting, and expert opinion. If some technologies fall in cost faster (or slower) than expected, agencies should be able to course-correct and redirect funding.
“If, for example, the commercial cost of producing clean hydrogen falls rapidly over the next decade,” CGEP writes, “it could make sense to redouble investments in RD&D to use hydrogen as a feedstock to decarbonize industrial processes.” Conversely, if hydrogen proves resistant to cost declines, it might make sense to channel more money to biofuels and battery chemistries.
Steadiness and predictability are the key, though: “At a high level,” CGEP says, “policymakers must stick to their roadmap for ramping up the federal budget for energy innovation.”
Federal innovation funding should be spent equitably
The CGEP report contains several references to “inclusive economic growth” and lots of ideas for how federal partnerships with states and localities could foster it, but the Data for Progress report has a full and separate section on equity, which gathers key recommendations in one place, so let’s take a look at them.
The first and arguably most important recommendation is that federal innovation programs be explicitly redirected toward addressing the climate crisis, which crucially involves environmental justice. Energy innovation programs should “prioritize projects that improve social and economic equity, including through business models that allow for communities to lead, own, and benefit from clean energy projects,” Data for Progress writes. And it should seek to avoid exacerbating other inequitable environmental hazards in its quest to reduce emissions.
Second, Data for Progress argues that the federal government should direct at least 40 percent of climate-related investments (including those on innovation) to “disproportionately burdened communities” that have historically suffered from “systemic racism and structural inequity.”
Third, it argues that the government should prioritize projects in communities dependent on the fossil fuel economy, which could be hard hit by a wholesale transition to clean energy. When DOE is making research grants or funding demonstration projects, it should “consider the extent to which these programs can enable communities historically dependent on fossil fuels to benefit and diversify their economies.”
Fourth, the government should bulk up workforce redevelopment efforts aimed at clean energy jobs. And fifth, it should expand international cooperation on climate initiatives that can help address global inequities.
This focus on equity throughout the innovation ecosystem, says Jake Higdon, a climate analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund and one of the authors of the Data for Progress report, is crucial to “garnering more engagement and ownership over innovation from the progressive caucus.”
The politics of clean energy innovation in 2020
Another difference between the two reports is that Data for Progress’s is explicitly framed as advice to Democrats for when and if they get power.
As it shows in its accompanying polling, this is good politics for Dems. A narrow (51 percent) majority of the public supports investing $1 trillion in green energy innovation.
(Note how big the “don’t know” category is, especially among independents. There is lots of room for persuasion here.)
And larger majorities would prefer to invest in clean energy tech over more military weaponry.
Bipartisan public support, Higdon says, “is all the more reason for progressives, who are concerned about the climate crisis and see it as an intersectional issue, to be engaging very deeply on setting the terms of the innovation agenda.”
CGEP, by contrast, is insistent that for public innovation spending to reach the scale, breadth, and resilience it needs, there must be a bipartisan consensus supporting it. “Any policy that is to last for decades in the United States must withstand shifts in partisan control of the presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives,” it writes, “not to mention periods of divided government.” It cites the Cold War consensus and the more recent consensus around biomedical research.
No such consensus has formed around energy — Reagan theatrically rejected Carter’s calls for more thoughtful energy policy — but CGEP claims the outlines of one are beginning to take shape.
“This is a pocket of resistance among congressional Republicans against the Trump administration,” Sivaram says. In each of the last four years, the Trump budget proposed significant cuts in clean energy programs, including Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy; each time, cuts were rejected. “Instead,” CGEP writes, “federal funding for clean energy RD&D has risen by about one-third during this period.”
The report also cites the American Energy Innovation Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a Republican, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat. As chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, they wrangled the interests of some 70 senators into a single bill that boosts R&D funding for a range of technologies and funds 17 demonstration projects. (Sivaram says he was “dismayed” when the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists denounced the bill for directing too much funding to fossil fuel technologies.)
There’s a bipartisan group of legislators behind the “Endless Frontier Act,” which would set up a directorate in the National Science Foundation to fund 10 technology research areas (including advanced energy) to the tune of $20 billion a year, and another bipartisan group behind the House Nuclear Energy R&D Act, which would refocus DOE’s nuclear energy program on next-gen reactors.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) called for a “New Manhattan Project” for clean energy research. Even Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has hopped on board the innovation train. The Bipartisan Policy Center has an American Energy Innovation Council stocked with CEOs who support energy innovation.
It’s not so much the climate angle that draws conservative support, Sivaram says, as the economic development angle and the competition-with-China angle. And that might be enough. “The whole reason I devoted the last six months to doing this is I think it can actually happen,” he says, “and it’s not going to require a signal change in how the government works, compared with all the other climate plans.”
He acknowledges that implementing the recommendations in CGEP’s report will probably require a new presidential administration, but he insists that it “does not require a substantial change in the makeup of Congress.”
I do not share Sivaram’s optimism. CGEP’s report concludes with three recommendations for immediate action: The president should launch a National Energy Innovation Mission, Congress should increase energy RD&D funding by 30 percent in 2021, and the US should reassert its international leadership on energy innovation.
If I were a gambling man, I would bet that US conservatives will condemn any mission launched by a President Joe Biden as a wasteful government boondoggle. I would bet that, to the extent they are capable, they will deny him any major legislative victories in Congress, including a big clean energy bill. And I would bet that any attempts to reestablish US commitment to clean energy on the international stage will be dogged by Republican assurances that, should they retake power, fossil fuels will once again be in the driver’s seat.
The political history of the past few decades reveals that the far right’s hold on the GOP and its near-religious devotion to opposing anything Democrats do or say steamroll any glimmers of bipartisan consensus. Partisanship is stronger than any other force in US life.
Republicans may support channeling federal energy innovation money to fossil fuel companies and fossil fuel communities, but recent history suggests that they simply will not go beyond that to any perceived progressive priority. Bipartisanship, with today’s GOP, means the portion of Republican priorities that Democrats are willing to support.
But I am a pessimist! Perhaps Sivaram is right. There’s no harm in trying.
Either way, it is good to see the left side of the aisle getting serious about the details of a federal energy agenda. And it is good to see that on this subject, as in other parts of climate policy, there is substantial overlap among centrists and progressives. If Biden finds himself in the Oval Office, he will have a broadly popular and extremely detailed road map.