Nathan Gardels is the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine. He is also the co-founder of and a senior adviser to the Berggruen Institute.
Tesla would not exist today if it wasn’t for California. That fact reveals the lie in Team Trump’s narrative, that climate policies and regulation are strangling growth and innovation.
Tesla would not have been able to scale up without the more than $3.2 billion in various state subsidies it received over the years, including for electric vehicle charging infrastructure through low-carbon fuel standard credits as well as other tax credits and grants for alternative and advanced transportation. Until 2023, the state government offered up to a $7,500 rebate on every Tesla bought in California. The robust EV market in the state, which Tesla dominates, only exists in the first place because of state regulations to reduce carbon emissions.
I asked former Gov. Jerry Brown last week if he thought Tesla was a California creation. “Of course, that’s true,” he told me. Brown formulated many of those policies as chief executive during his four terms in office. “Regulation is a driver of technology. It is what has forced companies to make their vehicles more fuel-efficient and appliances more energy-efficient, as well as increase the use of battery storage. It is what has fostered the adoption by residents and utilities of renewable sources of energy from rooftop solar to wind. Government, the market and technology together are what generate innovation.”
For Brown, Trump and his team are harboring a “delusional obsession” that we can get along without regulation and leave matters to the invisible hand. “The market is something nobody has ever seen, no one has ever tasted, no one has ever talked to. It’s an article of faith, a metaphor for those who want to do whatever benefits them,” Brown said.
He continued: “That is not the reality of how the world works and never has been. Without rules, regulations and laws, there is no market and there is no investment. Government can stifle at times, but with zero government you are back to a state of nature where everything is nasty, brutish and short-lived.”
There is a reason new technologies don’t emerge from the jungle.
A Dagger In The Heart Of The Climate Change Religion
Lee Zeldin, the new Trump-appointed administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has declared war against this California perspective.
In a slew of actions on March 12, he proclaimed: “Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has ever seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down the cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.”
The aim of Team Trump is to get rid of California’s environmental and climate policies — which date back half a century to when Brown was first governor in the 1970s — that set standards for industry and the entire nation to follow.
Responding to Zeldin’s proclamation, Brown retorted that “the use of religion when applied to climate advocates is offensive. I’d be tempted to use it instead with the climate deniers and the Trump acolytes. They certainly exhibit the zeal of religion, but it’s not of that theological dimension. If we are sticking to religious imagery, though, I’d put it more in the satanic realm.”
He went on: “Yes, Trump wants to eliminate electric cars, except for Tesla,” which he is hawking from the White House driveway. “And they want to do away with our special waiver that was created by Richard Nixon in collaboration with Ronald Reagan when he was governor of California.” The waiver allows the state to set environmental policies beyond the scope of federal law.
“But more fundamentally, they are attacking the so-called ‘endangerment finding’ by the EPA which concluded that CO2 is a pollutant, dangerous to health, and therefore can be regulated,” Brown warned. “That is a fundamental assault, because if Trump succeeds in redefining CO2 as a ‘non-pollutant,’ then there would be no basis for the whole regime of carbon emission regulation, whether from cars, factories, coal plants, oil refineries or anything else. That would all go out the window.”
The former governor hastens to add that we are not there yet because the executive orders Trump has been issuing do not have the force of law. “Even though the president has in his head that he’s a king or some authoritarian, independent lawgiver who thinks he can make law, he can’t. That is why there will be endless lawsuits against his actions, some of which will prevail. The courts will likely slow things down for a couple of years, maybe longer.”
Unfortunately, that is not the end of the story.
“There is a reason new technologies don’t emerge from the jungle.”
Brown reasons that, facing this frustration, Team Trump will “quickly turn to an obedient Congress to seek legislation that declares CO2 is not a harmful pollutant and thus cannot be regulated. If that becomes law, the game is over.”
The implications go well beyond California, Brown told me. “It’s going to open the door for Xi Jinping’s China, already the country with the most renewable energy production despite its coal plants, to become the world’s environmental leader. The U.S. then would be the chief custodian and advocate of the legacy fuels of oil, gas and coal that are phasing out globally.
The rest of the world is not standing still. China’s BYD, for example, just came out with a five-minute battery-charging capacity that will boost the appeal and spread of EVs worldwide. Trump’s America is not an island. He gets to prance around, preen and make himself look like the Colossus. But America is 4.1% of the world’s population. China, India and Europe are going to have something to say about what kind of energy they will use. Nearly everywhere else, renewables are on the march and fossil fuels are diminishing. America will fall behind at a disadvantage in the global energy economy of the future.”
On this score, Nils Gilman has insightfully mused that Trump’s climate policies may end up shaping a new geo-political order that pits a “renewable energy entente” between the EU and China against the petrostates of America, Russia, the Saudis and the Gulf States.
However others may carry on, what America does matters immensely. Because of its decisive weight as a top emitter of greenhouse gases, removing itself from the climate scene while going whole hog on fossil fuels amounts to an eclipse of the planetary imperative to stem rising temperatures. And that comes as we are nearing the tipping point of irreparable damage to our livable biosphere.
Trump Is America
Brown’s political instincts tell him that Team Trump’s radical overreach will sow the seeds of reaction, limiting what it can do in the end and possibly making a commitment to climate by others even stronger. Yet, he is not so sure anymore that his long experience in public life is relevant in a changed America.
What concerns him most regarding America’s turn is not so much about Trump but more about his supporters. “Significant players and large swaths of the American people are either totally applauding, cheering or passively going along with indifference. That is the major story about America today. Our future will thus be quite different than anything in the last 250 years. This is now America. Trump is America. Even when he leaves, the governing coalition is in place, and it may well continue on the same course.”
Of all the damage Team Trump may be wreaking, the assault on climate policies is the most existential. And the threat extends far beyond the borders of America to those who have no vote in the matter.
