Leap Manifesto

By Kate Aronoff for the LEAP Blog. Today’s renewable energy sector, while growing rapidly, hardly offers a roadmap to the transition needed. As billionaires battle over the profits promised by the “clean energy revolution,” experts agree that cobbling together private-sector solutions will not be enough. Neither will the boutique solutions on offer from the left. A more radical approach—one commensurate to the scale of the problem—will require state intervention. Yet traditional forms of public investment remain elusive. Calls for a Green New Deal or wartime-level mobilization against climate change, to use the oft-invoked metaphors (A “Marshall Plan for the Earth,” in Naomi Klein’s version), each take their cues from an economic ideology antithetical to today’s. Instead of direct investment, funding for renewables comes largely via tax credits and market-based incentives for private companies, including the recently extended 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar. Public infrastructure spending and job creation programs remain off the table.