The more things change...

...the more they stay the same. In the year since I started this blog, we've witnessed many substantial changes, events, and progressions on the energy/climate frontier. And yet, on the whole, it seems American policy hasn't evolved much at all. Three examples illustrate this frustrating truth*.

• As you may have heard, this week is the one-year anniversary of the blowout at the BP's Macando well in the Gulf of Mexico. Described (accurately) as the worst environmental disaster in American history, the months-long fiasco spilled tens of millions of gallons, endangered local enterprise, public health, and demonstrated the terrifying and disproportionate disaster potential of our fossil fuel addiction. However, a year later, and Congress has yet to react to the Gulf catastrophe with any kind of legislation. Not only did we fail to come close to passing a cap-and-trade bill, but we couldn't even pass policy changes increasing the liability of oil companies in damages caused by accidents from $75 million to a more reasonable figure or widening the purview of regulators to oversee offshore oil drilling. For perhaps the most-reported non-nuclear energy accident in history, its legacy in American policy will apparently be shockingly empty.

• Last April, energy and environmental advocates cheered the Interior Department's approval of Cape Wind, the nation's first offshore wind farm. The victory came after a decade-long battle (the project was first proposed in 2001) against NIMBYism and obstructionist tactics to block construction. This past week, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement approved the project's construction plans. While technically good news, the Cape Wind saga demonstrates the unacceptable time frames with which we measure success in the Energy Quest, and as Alexis Madrigal pointed out, it is unclear how we will overcome these infrastructural challenges.
  

• Finally, we return to cap-and-trade. As I mentioned, last summer witnessed the upsetting (but not super surprising) failure of the American Power Act, which was originally Senators Kerry and Lieberman's cap-and-trade legislation. Californians, on the other hand, celebrated the defeat of Proposition 23 in November, whose backers sought to block AB 32, the state's own cap-and-trade policy ... until a coalition of environmental groups, the Association of Irritated Residents, blocked AB 32 in court. Keep in mind that these environmental groups were instrumental in campaigning against Prop 23, and proceeded with an about-face to reject the environmental policy on the grounds that it would concentrate non-uniformly mixed pollutants like NOx and sulfur dioxides in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Dave Roberts explains why this probably isn't true. From a big picture perspective, this example illustrates the difficulty of advancing energy and climate policy, even in California, "America's laboratory."
  

These and other distressing stalls and defeats show plainly that standard operating procedure in American energy policy is not working quickly enough. Tackling the problems of our fossil fuel addiction, national recession, increasingly violent resource wars, and climate change will require a change in dynamics. The sooner we transition to a policy agenda based on technological innovation, workforce and STEM education, and cohesive infrastructural progress, the better.
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*Yes, I'm cherry-picking. Please, PLEASE give me examples of why I'm wrong!