In the context of environmental, energy, natural resource, and climate change issues, there are strong feelings of support and opposition to the shift in federal policies and efforts to curb related state and local priorities. However, stepping back, some form of change was likely necessary. For example, emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are increasing every year, 2024 was the hottest year on record globally, and it was millions of years ago the last time there was the current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. If you support action on climate change, the status quo is not working, and disruption is necessary.
In the U.S., more and better infrastructure needs to be built, and faster. There is a serious societal disconnect if climate change is a long-term threat to human prosperity, but as a nation we cannot collectively find a path to build the infrastructure necessary to mitigate climate change (e.g., transmission lines, CO2 pipelines) in a timely manner due to environmental permitting delays and litigation contesting the projects. The prior administration created a multi-billion-dollar framework to jump start the development of this necessary infrastructure but then failed to create an efficient pathway to effectuate change, raised unnecessary roadblocks, and otherwise failed to prioritize—with urgency—the real-world implementation of this framework.
New infrastructure to power the data centers necessary to support the advancement of artificial intelligence technology, building new homes and communities, especially in places like California, where the cost of housing is beyond the reach of most families, and the development of new domestic mining and mineral processing infrastructure to feed into the energy transition supply chains, will all require a disruption to the status quo. The disruption from long-term tariffs, trade wars, and shifting geopolitical alliances will only increase the need for changes at the federal, state, and local levels to advance the infrastructure necessary for the U.S. to remain economically and geopolitically competitive. However, the changes necessary to ride this wave of disruption must be positive and not be cross-current to each other. For example, efficient federal permitting to advance the necessary infrastructure projects may only be possible with the responsible federal agencies properly funded and staffed with motivated staff with high morale.
