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One of the Trump administration’s top priorities has been its devastating, unilateral rollback of renewable energy projects and environmental regulations — and a corresponding, aggressive push for fossil fuel interests.

But to hear a growing chorus of “abundance” proponents tell it, the real obstacle to climate progress is environmental regulation itself.

In a disturbing trend, influential politicians and commentators are propagating the idea that U.S. environmental regulation is too stringent, which they blame for stalling worthwhile progress in all sorts of key realms, from housing to mass transit to renewable energy projects. Proponents of this worldview loosely refer to their agenda as “abundance,” which they say characterizes the techno-utopia we can build if we eliminate regulatory constraints.

As an illustration, organizers of the “Abundance” conference taking place this week in Washington, D.C., describe the “abundance” movement as “a cross-partisan coalition committed to accelerating economic growth, reinforcing American leadership in science and technology, dismantling bureaucratic inertia, restoring effective governance, and reducing the cost of living.”

There are many unfounded ideological assumptions in this statement. Is “bureaucratic inertia” a significant obstacle to desirable outcomes in energy, housing, transportation, or any other sector? Does “restoring effective governance” entail less regulation, necessarily? Is “reducing the cost of living” the single most important thing we can do to relieve the serious economic hardship that many people face today? The “abundance” lobby wants us to believe that the answer to each of these questions is “yes.”

This argument isn’t just being made by polluting industries and their supporters, but also by people supposedly concerned about mitigating climate change. They claim that environmental regulations are getting in the way of building renewable energy capacity quickly (although a great many of these critics are not specialists in environmental policy.) One approving reviewer of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance, for example, claims that the “biggest thing blocking the greening of American energy” has been “progressive environmental laws that have allowed NIMBYs to sue solar plants and transmission lines into oblivion,” asserting this as the truth without a shred of evidence.

In the recent past, this idea was referred to as “permitting reform” and primarily associated with fossil fuel backers like former Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia). Now it’s gotten a rebrand. Whatever you call it, the justification for a deregulatory “abundance” agenda is flat-out wrong. But like many bad ideas with powerful backers, it could still become conventional wisdom unless it’s aggressively dispelled.

What’s Actually Blocking Renewable Energy?

The “abundance” lobby cites only anecdotal evidence, such as the long delays and cost overruns for high-speed rail construction in California, to support their claim of regulations choking the growth of renewable energy and clean transportation. Data and peer-reviewed studies tell a different story.

At a logistical level, the wait time for new generation capacity to connect to the grid — known as the interconnection queue — is the main obstacle to bringing renewable energy online. In practice, what this means is that permitted (and sometimes fully built) solar and wind generation and energy storage projects have to wait for years for permission to connect to the grid. In 2023, the electric generation and storage capacity waiting in the interconnection queue was more than twice the installed generation capacity in the U.S.

What’s more, the capacity in the interconnection queue was overwhelmingly wind and solar generation and energy storage, while the existing capacity was dominated by fossil energy. This problem can be fixed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) directing regional grid operators to connect renewable energy to the grid quickly — in other words, more regulation.

A peer-reviewed study has shown that most delays in permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are attributable to budgetary constraints limiting the ability of permitting agencies to hire sufficient numbers of qualified staff (sometimes because of spending cuts by Congress), and staff turnover at permitting agencies (where qualified staff reviewing a project sometimes leave the agency before the review is complete), along with project backers failing to get key information to permitting agencies — not to the stringency of the NEPA permitting process. Another peer-reviewed study concluded that the vast majority of renewable energy projects are already subject to streamlined procedures, or not subject to federal permitting review at all.

This isn’t to say that stories of renewable projects getting tied up with bureaucratic delays are untrue. But to use them as an argument for weakening environmental review is like using the proliferation of online hate and misinformation to justify curbs on legitimate free speech. Procedural protections exist for a reason, and it’s a terrible idea to weaken them just because bad faith players sometimes misuse them.

Curiously, “abundance” proponents are largely not advancing proposals to speed up permitting of renewable energy exclusively while limiting or banning fossil fuels. Instead, it appears they want to weaken environmental regulation period.

But if more fossil fuel infrastructure is built as a consequence of weakening environmental review, the earth’s climate is cooked. This is basic math. If the U.S. keeps expanding its fossil fuel production, these fuels will keep emitting greenhouse gases when burned. Even if domestic fossil fuel use is rapidly replaced with renewables, the excess oil and gas produced will be exported to emit greenhouse gases somewhere else.

But “abundance” advocates have not made opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure a core plank of their agenda, raising the possibility that their professed concern for climate mitigation may be disingenuous.

Justice Denied

Strikingly missing from the “abundance” agenda is any serious consideration of justice.

Twenty-one percent of income in the U.S. goes to the top 1 percent of earners, while the bottom half of income earners receive only 13 percent. The wealthiest 10 percent of households own more than two-thirds of wealth in the U.S., while the bottom half of households by wealth own only 2.5 percent. The racial wealth gap is striking, with Black families twice as likely as white families to have a net wealth of zero.

In this context, attributing the inability of large numbers of people to access basic necessities like electricity or heating to physical shortages — instead of to poverty and extreme inequality — is naive at best.

We have a serious energy poverty problem in the U.S., with 27 percent of all households experiencing difficulty paying their energy bills. These numbers go up to 52 percent for Black and Indigenous households, and 57 percent for households with an annual income below $10,000.

However, the U.S. produces more oil and gas than needed to meet domestic demand, and is a net exporter. Likewise, we generate enough electricity to meet demand, and our electric grid is highly reliable. Increasing supply is not going to solve a problem rooted in economic and racial inequality.

A large body of peer-reviewed scientific studies have demonstrated how communities have been treated as sacrifice zones for the benefit of polluting industries, on the basis of race and class. Weakening environmental regulations will worsen these disparities, by robbing communities of the few legal protections they have from polluting industry. A mentality solely focused on rapidly scaling upwards — without any regard for expanding environmental justice — will only exacerbate these inequalities.

The Same Old Bad Ideas

For all of the attention it’s received, “abundance” is hardly a new idea. It combines two bad ideas from the past, presented in a shiny new package.

One is “all of the above” energy policy, the official (and dangerously wrong) Obama energy doctrine. Every credible analysis shows that in order to avert climate catastrophe, it’s imperative to phase out fossil fuel production even as we expand renewable energy.

The other bad idea embodied in abundance is trickle-down economics: ignore inequality and expand the economic pie, and people at the bottom will benefit. That’s why “abundance” advocates insist on expanding supply instead of addressing distribution. Decades of experience with trickle-down economics shows that it makes the rich richer at the expense of the rest of us.

The notion of “abundance” has superficial appeal, even to unsuspecting progressives. It invokes job creation, higher material living standards for all, and mitigating climate change by building more renewable energy. That’s why it’s important to understand it as a resurrection of trickle-down economics to support a fossil fuel industry agenda.

Progressives must fight for a very different agenda to solve real-world problems of poverty, climate change, and scarcity of affordable housing, clean transportation, and health care. Unlike the “abundance” vision, the progressive agenda needs to be community-driven and not top-down. We must wrest power from the wealthy and powerful interests who are the real reason why we can’t have good things, acting together to confront the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street banks, health insurers, and corrupt government officials who side with these industries instead of the public interest.

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