The U.S. House of Representatives has finally passed climate
change legislation, but the national debate on this issue continues
to be based on a false assumption: that any major reforms will
inevitably take decades to make a serious dent in greenhouse
gas pollution.
 

To wit, the new legislation advanced by Edward Markey (D-
MA) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) envisions a time frame of
more than a decade to achieve just a 17% reduction in our
country’s greenhouse gas emissions — far below what climate
scientists say is necessary. And many critics say even this
modest target is too ambitious.
 
Sure, scattered voices say we can achieve change at a faster
clip. Al Gore, for instance, seeks a lightning-quick ramp-up of
renewable energy. But most decision makers on Capitol Hill
have dismissed such goals as fantasy, at least for the time being.
But who’s really living in fantasyland? Historically speaking, our
nation has undertaken numerous reforms of our energy system
that have spurred dramatic and rapid change.
 
Consider the 1992 Energy Policy Act. Before this bill passed,
only a limited number of players — mostly regulated electric
utilities that enjoyed guaranteed profits — had the right to sell
power. Entrepreneurs with innovative, efficient ways of
generating electricity were legally shut out. Not surprisingly,
then, hardly any such entrepreneurs emerged.
 
The Energy Policy Act reformed this closed system, allowing
more companies to sell power. And the results were staggering.
The bill took a few years to go into full effect because of a spate
of lawsuits from those who feared competition, but by 1998,
the federal government and courts had ruled in favor of
competition. The market exploded.
 
Within 10 years, unregulated entrepreneurs built nearly 200
gigawatts of power capacity, twice that of all the nation’s
nuclear reactors. Having taken utilities a century to build our
electric grid, independent generators took just one decade to
increase it by a quarter — and that after a modest regulatory
change. Simply remarkable.
 
New England regulators recently fostered even faster change in
the energy market. ISO New England — which helps ensure
the availability of electricity in Connecticut, Maine,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont
— decided about two years ago to allow entrepreneurs to get
paid for decreasing production during peak hours, like on a hot
summer day when the energy system is under great strain. Such
a program had been in effect previously for big utilities, but
now, smaller players were allowed to get in the game.
 
Already, small power producers in New England have brought
forth nearly three gigawatts of energy savings, the equivalent
output of three nuclear reactors. With a small change in
incentives that opened the market to competition, the energy
system quickly began operating a lot more efficiently. And we’ll
doubtless see even more of an impact in the years to come.
In both of these examples — neither of which, incidentally,
burdened taxpayers — energy companies showed how
adaptable they are. If the rules change, they’ll change, too. They
might not be looking forward to it. But they’ll do it. That’s how
the system works.
 
So it’s strange that our climate debate remains mired in a
swamp of diminished expectations. Policymakers seem to think
they have to treat energy companies with kid gloves — as if
demanding big changes will somehow be too much for them to
bear and result in a devastating blow to our economy. But this
view simply doesn’t square with history. With even minor
reforms, enormous changes can occur.
 
Just imagine what could happen if we had the guts to face up to
the challenge at hand and passed some bold legislation to fight
climate change. We just might change the way our nation makes
power.