『Power Struggle: Energy, Climate, and the Future』のカバーアート

Power Struggle: Energy, Climate, and the Future

Power Struggle: Energy, Climate, and the Future

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In April 1977, Jimmy Carter told the country that solving its energy crisis would take sacrifice — that the alternative might be, in his words, a national catastrophe. Nearly fifty years later, the crisis looks different. The gas lines are gone. In their place: climate change, an aging power grid, and data centers that are starting to draw more electricity than entire cities. But the underlying argument hasn't moved an inch. Who decides what America builds? Who pays for it? And who has the authority to make that call — Washington, the states, or nobody at all? The Constitution says almost nothing about energy. The founders could not have imagined a national electric grid, let alone artificial intelligence data centers competing with homes and hospitals for power. And yet nearly every major energy decision in American history — who builds what, who pays for it, who bears the cost when it goes wrong — traces back to questions about the proper role of government that the country has never fully settled. The fight is about electricity. But it is also about something larger: federal power versus state authority, private property versus the public interest, and whether government should plan a transition or simply get out of the way. It is a country where the grid was built one boondoggle, one monopoly, and one act of Congress at a time — and where the same argument that played out over canals and pipelines in the nineteenth century is now playing out over data centers and solar farms in the twenty-first. The modern energy debate has three inflection points. In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the Bonneville Dam and defended the federal government's role in bringing electricity to communities private utilities wouldn't serve — over the objections of those who saw it as government overreach. In 1977, Jimmy Carter told Americans that solving the country's energy crisis would require sacrifice, framing it as "the moral equivalent of war." And in 1981, Ronald Reagan reversed course, decontrolling oil prices and arguing that government should step back and let markets work. Each president left behind a piece of the system Americans still live with today: a grid built around monopoly utilities, a patchwork of federal and state authority, and an unresolved argument about who should be in charge. In this episode of America at 250: Due Diligence, three guests take on the energy debate from three very different vantage points. A historian of energy infrastructure explains why the pipelines, canals, and transmission lines built over two centuries didn't just meet America's demand for power — they created it, and locked in decisions that last for generations. The longest-serving chairman in the history of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission describes a grid under real strain from extreme weather and an unprecedented surge in demand from data centers, and argues that consumers — not just utilities — have to become active participants in fixing it. And a free-market energy economist at the Cato Institute makes the case that government's job is mostly to get out of the way, warning that decades of political whiplash on energy policy, and the temptation to let planning become monopoly protection, have left the country's biggest questions about affordability and reliability unresolved. Power in both senses of the word. Who builds it. Who controls it. Who pays for it. Hosts Steve Herman Steve Herman is a veteran journalist and former White House Bureau Chief for Voice of America. He brings decades of reporting experience to America at 250: Due Diligence, helping guide the series through the historical, political, and institutional questions that have shaped the United States. • Website: Steve Herman • X: @newsguyUSA Bill Bernardoni Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence. His work focuses on building, producing, and distributing podcasts and radio programs that bring serious conversations to broad audiences. • Website: Bernardoni Media & Marketing • Blog: The Bernardoni Brief • X: @BillBernardoni Guests Featured in This Episode Professor Christopher F. Jones Christopher F. Jones is an associate professor of history at Arizona State University, where he studies the intersections of energy, technology, and the environment. He is the author of Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2014). • Personal site: christopherfjones.com • X: @EnergyHistorian Jon Wellinghoff Jon Wellinghoff is the CEO and founder of GridPolicy, Inc. He was appointed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by President George W. Bush in 2006 and named chairman by President Barack Obama in 2009, serving until 2013 — the longest tenure of any chairman in the agency's history. • GridPolicy: gridpolicy.com Travis Fisher Travis Fisher is the director of ...
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