Does anyone truly believe the United States will ever completely give up fossil fuels? This country that worships the car, that has some of the largest oil and gas companies on the planet, whose rise to economic might in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would have been impossible without abundant coal, and whose citizens are usually suspicious - if not hostile - toward people unlike them who try to tell them what to do - this country’s Net Zero enthusiasts think they have any hope of success? George Orwell may not have said, “Some ideas are so stupid only intellectuals believe them,” but whoever said it, this is the kind of pipe dream they had in mind.
This doesn’t mean it’s bad for public policies to increase Americans’ use of non-fossil energy. Embracing nuclear, solar, wind, electric cars, mass transit, and high speed rail is an excellent way for a government to react to climate change. But enthusiasm for, and adoption of, these technologies is never going to span the entire US of A. Large swathes of this colossal country - large in both demographic and geographic terms - are just not conducive to lifestyles fueled entirely by clean energy.
Going green makes a lot of sense in the densely populated metro areas where true-blue environmentalists are often found. Let people in those parts of the country lower their carbon footprints, by all means. Speaking for myself, I love the idea of my surroundings containing more EVs, fewer cars overall (especially noisy ones), more rail stations, and more solar panels on more roofs. I’d be happy to get my electricity mostly from renewables, supplemented by natural gas with carbon capture (though nuclear would be even better). I get the appeal. If only progressives wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that what they want, and what’s practical in their neck of the woods, is what everyone should have. Or, even more condescendingly, that what they want is what everyone actually wants, even if the ignorant masses don’t realize it yet.
If Democrats want more people to jump on the clean energy bandwagon, it would probably help - counterintuitively though this may sound - to increase American oil and gas drilling. Making people better off economically, including by lowering their energy costs, makes it easier for them to care about the environment. It’s not a coincidence that environmentalism as we know it began in the 1960s, the peak of America’s post-World War II economic boom. Financial security gave more people the time and inclination to care about the natural world. On top of tackling some serious problems of midcentury America - air pollution, water pollution, excessive use of pesticides - early environmentalism helped make its adherents more attentive to nature-related concerns beyond their day-to-day lives. There’s nothing wrong with having a genuine concern about the general health of the planet.
The problem comes when green activists believe their vision of the planet’s well-being is one-size-fits-all. They don’t seem to realize how low on most Americans’ list of priorities fighting climate change is, even many Americans who care about climate change in the abstract. Like pro-lifers who seek to impose their will on a pro-choice majority, those who insist on everyone altering their lifestyles to fit a moral code most people don’t adhere to underestimate the American desire to say “screw you” to those who would push them around.
We Democrats can and should work to reduce America’s carbon emissions. Let’s fight Republican efforts to eliminate tax credits for EVs and renewables (and join with them if they want to expand incentives for nuclear). Let’s also take up Joe Manchin’s banner of permitting reform. But we’re fools if we think we’re going to achieve a completely carbon-free economy. Even if our party wins big majorities in both houses of Congress (unlikely in the next few election cycles barring major unforeseen economic, social, and political upheaval) while retaking the White House, that big coalition will include many voters - and more than a few elected Democrats - who don’t share the upper-middle-class left’s enthusiasm for going green. Better to return to President Obama’s “all of the above” strategy for gradual carbon reduction than to aim in vain for Net Zero.