Not a Scientist by Dave Levitan

Author:Dave Levitan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

THE CREDIT SNATCH IS most commonly used by politicians running for election or reelection, as was the case with Perry and Christie. Sometimes, though, it rears its head from politicians on the way out the door. Can you guess who said the following?

By encouraging cooperative conservation, innovation, and new technologies, my Administration has compiled a strong environmental record.23

If you guessed George W. Bush, you’re right! A snapshot of his White House website from 2008, at the end of his tenure, shows a couple more specific boasts: US wind power production increased by more than 400 percent since 2001, and solar power capacity doubled between 2000 and 2007.24 Both sound great, but it is exceptionally difficult to draw a straight line from anything the Bush White House actually did to those increases in wind and solar, or really to any sort of “strong environmental record.”

Two factors are primarily responsible for the nationwide growth in renewable energy: technological progress and state policy. State policy means those Renewable Portfolio Standards, largely: a total of twenty-nine states (plus Washington, DC) had an RPS in late 2015, while another eight have a nonbinding renewable energy “goal.” Most of the renewable energy in the United States sits in states that encouraged such development with an RPS. This is not a coincidence, and all this growth has little to do with who was president at the time.

The other factor was technological innovation. Advances in the manufacturing of solar cells and wind turbines have driven costs down to a level at which these power sources can compete with coal and natural gas. Here’s a Department of Energy chart showing falling costs and subsequently rising deployment of wind power:25

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