Brookings embraces American Enterprise Institute’s climate head fake along with right-wing myths

[bananas]

http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/13/brookings-american-enterprise-institute-climate-clean-energy-proposal-post-partisan/

Brookings embraces American Enterprise Institute’s climate head fake along with right-wing energy myths
October 13, 2010

I’ll bet you didn’t know that

* The success Republicans had killing the climate and clean energy jobs bill means they are now ready to embrace a big new federal spending effort of $15 to $25 billion a year for low-carbon technology.
* Such RD&D could, all by itself, bring the cost of new carbon-free power plants below the cost of existing coal plants.
* A massive federal RD&D effort, even if it were not politically untenable, could, all by itself, avert catastrophic climate change.
* “Liberals often maintain” the “choice” is between “global warming apocalypse or mandating the widespread adoption of today’s solar, wind, and electric car technologies.”
* Nuclear power is likely to be a key part of an effort to deliver cheap, low-carbon power.

You didn’t know any of that because none of it is true. But it’s all part of a new report by Steven F. Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute, Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution, and others, amusingly titled, “Post-partisan power.”

<snip>

You can be 100% certain that the a top priority of the Tea-Party-led Republicans, especially if they take the House or Senate, will be to cut funding for clean energy. Whenever conservatives have the presidency or control of Congress, they have gutted or blocked funding for clean energy:

* President Reagan gutted Jimmy Carter’s renewable energy program (see “Who got us in this energy mess? Start with Ronald Reagan“).
* Newt Gingrich blocked President Clinton’s effort to boost funding for solar PV research and deployment programs.
* Even “moderate” conservatives like John McCain and Judd Gregg opposed the kind of funding and incentives that countries like Japan and Germany embraced.

How I wish the Brookings-AEI proposals were “post-partisan.” But they aren’t.

So what’s going on with this dead-end proposal? Some history might shed a little light.

<snip>

Even odder, the only low-carbon technology singled out for special emphasis is nuclear power. Nuclear isn’t going to be a low-cost climate solution in this country for a long, long, long time no matter how much we spend on it (see Exelon’s Rowe: Low gas prices and no carbon price push back nuclear renaissance a “decade, maybe two” and “Intro to nuclear power” and “Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost — $10,800 per kilowatt! — killed Ontario nuclear bid“). Sure, if you’re going to spend $15 to $25 billion a year on clean energy RD&D, then you’d certainly spend some money on nuclear R&D. But after decades of failed effort to lower prices, nuclear would certainly be among your lowest priorities.

<snip>

[hatrack]

1. As if anything's going to happen in the way of spending for a problem that "doesn't exist"

At best, a Republican House might rouse itself to shake the Magic Rhetorical Technology Stick (TM) from time to time, but that necessarily depends on them "reaching out" to anyone in their party with higher IQs than an ocelot, of which not many remain.

That, in turn, assumes that they'd say or do anything about climate or energy policy in the first place - an even wilder supposition.

[bananas]

2. Yeah, the article quotes the NY Times

A NYT article says:

When Mr. Hayward and I were talking, I asked whether he could imagine Republican leaders’ supporting more research spending no matter where the money came from. Probably not in the near future, he acknowledged. For now, Republicans will focus on shrinking government.