Short Circuiting Policy

Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States

By: Leah Cardamore Stokes

Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt

In 1999, Texas passed a landmark clean energy law, beginning a groundswell of new policies that promised to make the US a world leader in renewable energy. As Leah Stokes shows in Short Circuiting Policy, however, that policy did not lead to momentum in Texas, which failed to implement its solar laws or clean up its electricity system. Examining clean energy laws in Texas, Kansas, Arizona, and Ohio over a 30-year time frame, Stokes argues that organized combat between advocate and opponent interest groups is central to explaining why states are not on track to address the climate crisis. She tells the political history of our energy institutions, explaining how fossil fuel companies and electric utilities have promoted climate denial and delay.

Stokes further explains the limits of policy feedback theory, showing the ways that interest groups drive retrenchment through lobbying, public opinion, political parties and the courts. More than a history of renewable energy policy in modern America, Short Circuiting Policy offers a bold new argument about how the policy process works, and why seeming victories can turn into losses when the opposition has enough resources to roll back laws.

©2020 Oxford University Press (P)2020 Kalorama

Stealing Our Right to Harvest Sunshine and Sell It

A good primer to understand how the practical and the financial benefit of home generated solar power is stolen by the carbon industry, public utilities, and municipal utilities. Americans want to power their homes and cars with sunshine generated electricity produced at home. Money for political campaigns and disinformation and pressure exerted covertly by the carbon industry and utilities to state public service commissions and local candidates and local office holders are the tactics used to kill our right to harvest sunshine and use it or sell it.

Realpolitik

This book illustrates in unprecedented detail what is really happening with energy policy in the U.S. Chapters 1-3 & 9 are excellent for an overview. Chapters 4-8 illustrate how clean energy policy can get derailed despite public support. Great drama...too true.

Terrific analysis of energy interest group strategies

Leah Stokes is simply the best in the field, and this book is no exception to her brilliance. Academically rigorous, yet a pleasure to read.

Really bad sound quality

I can’t believe how poor the sound quality is on this recording. It is fatiguing to listen to something that sounds like a radio broadcast with static and fuzz. The narrator sounds like text to voice. Terrible.