Biden's Climate Change Proposal That Could Have the Longest Lasting Impact

Biden is making sweeping proposals for dealing with climate change. One element of his proposal is to make the federal government a big consumer of alternative energy.

The US government has helped to accelerate a couple of major developments.

One was the standardization of parts. In the Revolutionary War, Eli Whitney was given a lot of money to develop interchangeable parts. The contract didn't work out but it helped advance this goal. Later, in the Civil War, the north churned out 1.5 million rifles with interchangeable parts and the tooling, processes and skills for that quickly translated into the post-Civil War boom of new products and factories that so transformed daily life.

Kennedy's space effort similarly funded research and development efforts that spilled into the private sector. By the end of the 60s, the space race employed 400,000 people - many wearing pocket protectors and learning how to work on and manage large, technically challenging projects. Projects like these spilled into the Cold War and billions were spent to develop weapons and communications technology. And those efforts - from technology to skills developed in engineering and project management - in turn spilled into the private sector.

It's worth remembering that the Berlin Wall fell in November of 1989. The 1990s turned into a dot-com boom. Many engineers and software developers who had developed skills under government contracts for DoD became part of the new IT industry. A friend of mine - an engineer from a defense firm - went on to co-found a few companies after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

One of the things that gets easily lost in the talk of technical innovation is this: it takes a long time and is very risky. If you're going to develop a new technology or method, you need years. Interchangeable parts took decades to develop.

What the government provides that is fabulous for the development of new technologies is a steady, patient customer with deep pockets. It is hard to overestimate the long term impact of giving promising contractors enough time to develop deep skills and technology that could ripple into the future for generations.

What Biden is doing is not new. Funding the development of important technology literally dates back to the days before we had won our war of independence. What he's doing isn't new but it could result in new technologies, processes, and value.