⚡️ When Jimmy Carter proposed his own DOGE
The Energy Mobilization Board might have begun a rollback of America's 1970s environmental regulation overcorrection. But alas ...
President Carter presided over the deregulation of several industries, which proponents hoped would help revive the sluggish economy. The Airline Deregulation Act (1978) abolished the Civil Aeronautics Board over six years, provided for the free entry of airlines into new routes, and opened air fares up to competition. Carter also signed the Motor Carrier Act (1980), which gradually withdrew the government from controlling access, rates, and routes in the trucking industry; the Staggers Rail Act (1980), which loosened railroad regulations by allowing railroad executives to negotiate mergers with barge and truck lines;[ and the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (1980), which removed ceilings on interest rates and permitted savings and commercial banks to write home mortgages, extend business loans, and underwrite securities issues. - Wikipedia
"Our problem is that you cannot get anything built in the United States today" is a statement that sounds like something a technology entrepreneur or venture capitalist might say, maybe during a CNBC hit or in a Wall Street Journal story on the need for environmental regulatory reform. The artificial difficulty of doing business in the world of atoms rather than bits is a common 2020s Silicon Valley lament. It notably serves as the thesis for the viral 2020 essay “It’s Time to Build” by VCer Marc Andreessen.
But that complaint was actually uttered in 1979 by US Senator J. Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat, during a congressional debate about legislation to establish a new oversight agency called the Energy Mobilization Board.
This proposed federal executive body would have acted as a "fast track" authority to expedite energy project approvals. Its key powers would have included a) establishing and enforcing permit decision deadlines across federal, state, and local agencies, b) protecting designated priority projects from certain new regulations, and c) stepping in to make decisions when agencies missed deadlines. Essentially, the EMB would attempt to cut through bureaucratic delays in the permitting process for significant energy projects while still maintaining most environmental protections.
The catalyst for the EMB proposal emerged in early 1979 when the Iranian Revolution triggered America's second major oil crisis of the decade. The situation quickly spiraled out of control, with gasoline lines growing and fuel prices rising. Although President Jimmy Carter initially welcomed the shortages as justification for comprehensive action on a new energy policy, including fuel rationing authority, public opinion turned sharply against him. This from a 1985 retrospective on the EMB:
By late June, however, matters were out of hand. The President was informed by chief domestic advisor Stuart Eisenstat that public opinion identified Mr. Carter himself as the principal culprit behind the nation's newest energy mess: "Nothing else has so frustrated, confused, or angered the American people-or so targeted their distress at you personally." Eisenstat recommended a "new approach to energy," the blaming of domestic ills on OPEC price manipulators. National policy disarray was best projected as the intrigue of "wiley" Arabs. Given the alien threat to national security, public opinion could be marshalled behind "new" programs, permitting the administration to rise above the political confusion and bureaucratic tangling. Among the initiatives Eisenstat gathered from the Department of Energy files were a massive synthetic fuels program already under consideration by Congress, and "a National Energy Mobilization Board" to bypass "the normal regulatory tangle that slows such projects down."
The public debut of the EMB idea came during Carter’s famous “crisis of confidence” address to the nation — also known as the “malaise” speech — on July 15. It was the fifth point of Carter’s six-point energy agenda:
I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 — never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. … To make absolutely certain that nothing stands in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects. We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.
Carter thought of himself as an environmentalist. But it was clear to many observers by the end of the 1970s that the flurry of environmental legislation passed at the start of the decade, such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, was having unanticipated consequences (at least unanticipated by many lawmakers though perhaps not environmental activists). For example: NEPA environmental reviews caused big delays in building the 1970s Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
(In my 2023 book, I quote futurist Herman Kahn as complaining that, thanks to new environmental regulations, “it is difficult to find any proposed project related to the important area of new energy supplies that has not been so affected, [including] nuclear power, thermal electric power, transmission lines, pipelines, refineries, petroleum and natural gas, and even geothermal power.”)
Another NEPA controversy back then was due to the 1973 discovery of the snail darter, a supposedly endangered species, during construction of the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River. Construction had begun in 1967, before NEPA became law. But due to NEPA delays, the dam was not completed until 1979. (And now, The New York Times just reported, it turns out that the snail darter wasn't even a distinct species at all, just an eastern population of the non-endangered stargazing darter. Yale researchers revealed that early scientists may have overstated the fish's uniqueness as a way to block the project, making it perhaps the first example of what they called a “conservation species concept” — declaring something a distinct species specifically to achieve conservation goals.)
Environmentalists hated the EMB idea, of course. They feared it would undermine a decade of hard-won environmental protections and worried the board's powers to expedite projects and grandfather them from new regulations would weaken environmental safeguards and oversight. This 1979 New York Times column from Anthony Lewis gives a flavor of the concern:
It is 1981. The Mobil Corporation announces plans for the country's biggest oil refinery, to be built on the New River in North Carolina. A Federal law passed by Congress and signed by President Ford in 1976 protects the New River in its natural state. North Carolina laws protect the valley. But the Energy Mobilization Board says the refinery is more important. And under the Energy Act of 1979 the President, on the board's recommendation, can override both state and Federal law in order to build a critical energy facility. President Reagan orders all contrary Federal laws and local zoning and health regulations overridden. The way is clear for an immediate start on the New River refinery. A fantastic scenario? No. For the energy bill as it is now taking shape in Congress would allow future Presidents to do exactly that: override democratic decisions, local and national, and put aside the interests of health, safety and the environment.
Opposition wasn’t limited to the usual suspects. Some conservative groups saw the EMB as yet another ineffective federal bureaucracy that would actually create more delays for energy projects, and they strongly objected to the increased federalization of energy project approvals that would reduce state and local control over development. Here’s the Heritage Foundation back then:
One of the most significant criticisms of the manner in which the Energy Mobilization Board is organized is that it specifically does not have the authority to grant waivers to, or to expedite the construction of, nuclear facilities. The nuclear industry in particular has been beset with problems in siting and licensing similar to those the board is purported to eliminate. Further, nuclear plants are anticipated to play a major role in the nation's future electric generation capacity, even using the Department of Energy's own estimates. It therefore seems inconsistent to totally ignore the problems associated with the construction of such plants.
A second major criticism of the Energy Mobilization Board is that its function may be to merely expedite negative decisions. Since there is no authority to exempt facilities from environmental regulations and standards, related to emissions, or from federal land use regulations limiting the access to certain areas, the same barriers currently preventing the development of domestic energy resources remain in existence. With this being the case, there would be little apparent benefit derived from the board's existence.
Business groups also opposed the EMB because they believed it addressed symptoms rather than root causes. They argued that directly reforming and simplifying complex environmental laws would be more effective than creating a new oversight board that would still have to work within the existing regulatory framework. And states objected because they saw it as a federal power grab that would diminish their authority over local development and environmental decisions.
So, a death by a thousand interest group cuts (plus the GOP in 1980 changing its mind on the EMB to avoid giving Carter an election-year win). Congress killed the EMB plan in June 1980. And that’s unfortunate. Lewis’ scenario, while scary to him, is certainly tantalizing for those seeing energy deregulation as necessary, and perhaps EMB could have been expanded to in include nuclear energy by the Reagan administration. What’s more, by making anti-build environmental hurdles a live political issue, perhaps major reform of 1970s environmental laws might have been possible — and we wouldn’t be struggling with them still. It might have been time to build decades ago.
On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised
Micro Reads
▶ Economics
The Future of the Middle Class Is 'Low-Skilled' Work - Bberg Opinion
Estimating Who Benefits from Productivity Growth: Local and Distant Effects of City Productivity Growth on Wages, Rents, and Inequality - Review of Economics and Statistics
Left and Right Alike Are Blind to Trade-Offs - WSJ Opinion
▶ Business
Everyone Wants a Silicon Valley Wealth Machine - Bberg Opinion
▶ Policy/Politics
A Sluggish Start for Congestion Pricing - NYT Opinion
The US Health-Care System Is Flawed By Design - Bberg Opinion
▶ AI/Digital
Russia’s AI Is Smart Enough to Shut Up - WSJ Opinion
▶ Clean Energy/Climate
Deep Fission to supply Endeavour data centers with 2GW of nuclear energy from "mile-deep" SMR - DCD
Biden expands wind and solar tax credit to nuclear, hydropower, geothermal energy - The Hill
▶ Robotics/AVs
▶ Up Wing/Down Wing
Putting America First Requires H-1B Visa Reform - WSJ Opinion
Ambitious Projects Could Reshape Geopolitics - Spectrum
▶ Substacks/Newsletters
The Players on the Eve of Destruction - Noahpinion
Skilled immigration is good - Slow Boring
Do Climate Attribution Studies Tell the Full Story? - Breakthrough Institute
Now It's Republicans' Turn to Try for Abundance - Very Serious