Following up on Margaret’s post, I’m still holding to my cautious optimism that worries over the solar bill are over-stated; there’s still a lot of time left for this measure to pass, especially when legislators realize the huge damage of letting the bill lapse. Southwestern and Western Senators, at a minimum, are not going to sit back and let themselves be blamed for the blows to the solar industry.
That being said, including solar in a large bill with multiple provisions and sub-provisions – as happened with the most recent rejection of continued solar subsidies – offers a shield for senators to nix legislation like this without taking the blame of a straight “no” vote to solar. Solar is undeniably urgent, but it’s for that very reason that we can’t tie it to other legislation and complain about the larger culture of the Senate and American politics regarding environmental and conservation issues.
Ezra Klein at the American Prospect took up a similar point: putting aside the very, very strong arguments in favor of broad bills like this, if there’s going to be too much political debate around them to pass them as a suite, then let’s break them down and pass small pieces of legislation. Solar could be just one of those – in the context of government spending, the money we’re going to be sending towards subsidizing solar won’t be anything that will tie up the works in Congress for weeks, even if the long-term costs are going to be significant on a yearly basis. Make it an independent bill – or even tie it to a relatively minor concession on oil or coal taxes, if necessary – and get it through, and we have the issue wrapped up quickly.
Again, I can’t emphasize enough that Margaret is substantively and ethically accurate about the ridiculousness of the stonewalling and ineffectiveness of the Congress on climate change issues. But this problem isn’t going to change in time to help solar in 2008, and as a result I think we just need to accept it and keep the focus small and direct.
I do agree with you, Eric, that passing legislation to incentivize the adoption of renewable energy is a priority that should be separated out of the big bill “package” approach if possible; the problem with this is not that it is bundled with unrelated issues, but that it is bundled (or has been) with very related issues. Namely, how to fund the tax incentives. The government is losing income when it offers these tax credits to individuals and corporations, and must replace those lost funds somehow. Each of the two major parties would like to see funding come from a very different source: until this matter gets resolved, a bundled bill is not likely to pass. I don’t, however, think the solution is un-bundling it. What good is passing the legislation, after all, if we have no way to pay for the incentives? New Jersey ran out of money for their strongest state-funded incentive earlier this year, far sooner than expected, and leaving many people in the state at a total loss as to how to proceed. We don’t want that happening on a national level (the residential incentive is small and probably wouldn’t cause too many waves if it were cut, but not being able to fund the corporate incentive–set at 30% of system cost–would make waves on the scale of tsunamis). As frustrating as it is to wait for this bill to come through again, I’m in favor of legislators taking their time, as necessary, to determine the best method for funding before they reinstate the incentives. I think it would be irresponsible of them to do otherwise.