Rentiers of the low-carbon economy? Renewable energy's extractive fiscal geographies

Progressive movements today call for transformative state-led investment in renewable energy and other climate infrastructures—in the United States, a vision that confronts inherited legacies of austerity. I argue that a significant obstacle is the neoliberal toolkit through which the US federal government subsidizes renewables, an indirect, highly opaque system of tax credits and incentives. For forty years, tax subsidies have ‘paid’ private financial players to invest in renewables, via allowing them to claim legal tax shelters against their other income. In this political economic analysis, I question, first, how US renewable energy acquired this peculiar form of public finance ‘through the tax code’, unique in the global industry. Second, I explore how the model has shaped US renewables financing, development, and ownership. I center two decisive moments: the California ‘wind rush’ in the 1980s, and the ongoing renewables boom of the last fifteen years. This history articulates financial experiments and tax sheltering scandals of the Reagan Administration with exploitation returned today in more organized (and lucrative) form, as ‘tax equity’ finance. Via tax equity, a handful of major US banks dominate financing for renewables and other politically embattled public goods. They exert a troubling ability to extract rents for their capital, gatekeep what projects get built and by whom, and stall US renewables development altogether. Today, the practice is increasingly strained by these and other problems—growing public costs, private capacity ceilings, and amplification of sectoral crises. Under Biden, it faces probable reform, but may need more comprehensive reimagination.

Environmental Battlegrounds

This chapter opens by revisiting the Tellico Dam/snail darter controversy that pitted environmental activism against the rising tide of conservative anti-regulatory fervor. Union members joined anti-environmentalists in blaming regulation as the cause of the nation’s economic woes, especially rampant inflation. On one side, you had increasingly radical environmental groups such as Earth First!, and on the other, the Sage Brush/Wise Use rebellion that found a welcome in the Reagan administration. The Spotted Owl controversy epitomized the growing rift. Reagan appointed such arch Sage Brush rebels as James Watt as secretary of the interior and Anne Gorsuch (mother of the Supreme Court nominee) at EPA to dismantle the programs they were charged to enforce. While the Wise Use movement emerged in the Western states, it had strong followings in the East as well, as conservatives fought regulations in the Adirondacks Park, zoning in Vermont, and preservation of clean water in the Delaware River Gap. Nimbys represented a new source of activism. These were often women fighting against local pollution and other threats to their families, homes, and communities. Lois Gibbs from Love Canal and Penny Newman from California were two of the most effective leaders to emerge. Other groups such as the Clamshell and Abalone Alliances opposed new nuclear power plants.

The Nicaraguan Question: Contadora and the Latin American Response to US Intervention Against the Sandinistas, 1982–86

While much has been written about the United States’ efforts to undermine Nicaragua's Sandinista government (1979–90), historians have paid little attention to Latin American state perspectives on the only successful armed revolution in the region since Cuba. In fact, the war that subsequently emerged between Sandinista armed forces and US-backed contras was a thoroughly regionalized affair: at least 12 Latin American countries—including the five largest—became directly involved in efforts to broker peace by the mid 1980s. How and why did they become involved? What can Latin American diplomacy vis-à-vis the Sandinista Revolution tell us about the shape of inter-American relations in the twilight years of the Cold War?To answer these questions, this article uses diplomatic archival sources and oral history interviews from Nicaragua, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Panama to trace Latin American state responses to US intervention against the Sandinista government between 1982 and 1986. While the Reagan administration viewed Nicaragua as the place where it would begin to roll back Soviet-sponsored communism in the Third World, a bloc of Latin American governments—especially those associated with the Contadora peace process—saw Central America as the site where they would push back against US unilateralism and the threat it posed to their real interests and shared hopes for regional sovereignty. In stark contrast with the earlier reaction to the Cuban Revolution, most Latin American states rejected US intervention and sought to legitimize Managua's left-wing government. The regional dimensions of Nicaragua's civil war therefore show how the political fault lines of Latin America's Cold War shifted over time.

Why Reagan was not impeached

In the aftermath of Watergate and Vietnam, Congressional investigations uncovered the largely unknown activities of the CIA and other agencies, which included arming and interfering in the domestic politics of regimes in both Central America and Iran. These programmes had also involved supporting reactionary regimes in ways that some saw as drawing the United States into conflicts, like Vietnam, without public knowledge or consent. In 1987, it was revealed that the Reagan administration had operated a clandestine policy in Nicaragua that evaded the restrictions placed upon the executive by the Boland Amendment in terms of aid given to the Nicaraguan Contras and that National Security Council (NSC) staff had lied to Congress and concealed these illegal actions. They had solicited funds from foreign allies and smuggled arms to the Contra insurgents in support of their efforts to topple the Sandinista regime. Contrary to the Arms Export Control Act and to its own publicly stated policy, the administration had also sold arms, particularly missiles, to Iran, which had been branded a sponsor of international terrorism since the Iranian revolution, and which was currently at war with its neighbour, Iraq. Such deals had formed part of ‘arms for hostages’ negotiations that were also contrary to official policy. Finally, it was disclosed that profits from the arms sales had been diverted to fund the Contras and hence to evade Congressional restrictions on funding. This article explores why these illegal actions did not result in President Reagan’s impeachment. It considers the merits of the administration’s claims that this was a ‘rogue operation’ by zealots within the NSC, and the success of its efforts to present Reagan as eager to cooperate with efforts to discover the truth of what had happened. It reviews the interactions between the Tower Commission, Congressional investigations and Office of Independent Counsel probe (Lawrence Walsh) and shows how these contributed to Reagan’s ‘escape’ from impeachment. It reviews the argument that Reagan’s underlying health problems contributed to his lax management of NSC operations and it considers the importance of televised testimony, particularly that of Oliver North, in shaping public opinion in the administration’s favour. Finally, it considers how this significant episode in 1980s politics foreshadowed major trends in US politics that can be seen as culminating in the present, acute partisan divide, Donald Trump’s double impeachment, and a manifest decline in public trust and respect for American political institutions.

Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America’s Public Lands

Green Persuasion traces the history and evolution of volunteer-based public lands stewardship in the United States as well as the Advertising Council’s work promoting environmental causes, such as the Smokey Bear fire prevention and the Keep America Beautiful campaigns. The Take Pride in America program, developed during the Reagan administration, was revised, neglected, and readopted by subsequent presidencies. Working with the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Ad Council enlivened the Take Pride initiative with public service announcements featuring celebrity spokespersons Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, and Louis Gossett Jr. Green Persuasion offers valuable insights into how and why Americans have expressed care of the nation’s landed inheritance in their collective political choices.

Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America’s Public Lands

<i>Green Persuasion </i>traces the history and evolution of volunteer-based public lands stewardship in the United States as well as the Advertising Council’s work promoting environmental causes, such as the Smokey Bear fire prevention and the Keep America Beautiful campaigns. The Take Pride in America program, developed during the Reagan administration, was revised, neglected, and readopted by subsequent presidencies. Working with the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Ad Council enlivened the Take Pride initiative with public service announcements featuring celebrity spokespersons Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, and Louis Gossett Jr. <div><i>Green Persuasion </i>offers valuable insights into how and why Americans have expressed care of the nation’s landed inheritance in their collective political choices.</div>

The 1982 Voting Rights Act Extension as a “Critical Juncture”: Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, and Republican Party-Building

Republican support for the 1982 Voting Rights Act (VRA) extension is a puzzle for scholars of racial policy coalitions. The extension contained provisions that were manifestly antithetical to core principles of the “color-blind” policy alliance said to dominate the GOP. Recent scholarship has explained this puzzling decision by arguing that conservatives were confident that the VRA's most objectionable provisions could be undone by the federal bureaucracy and judiciary, while absolving Republicans of the blame of being against voting rights. This article suggests that the picture is more complicated. Applying the concept of “critical junctures” to the 1982 VRA extension, the article highlights the importance of actors’ contingent decisions and reveals a wider range of choices available to political entrepreneurs than has been conventionally understood. Highlighting differing views within the Reagan administration, this article also identifies a wider range of reasons why Republicans supported the act's extension, including career ambition, party-building, policy agenda advancement, and genuine commitment, rather than simply a defensive stance as implied by recent histories.