A fawning article in Politico published on 3/27 touts the “Abundance Movement” as a new focal point for leftist Democrats who are finally willing to admit that everything they’ve done has failed. What better way to deflect criticism than by adopting a concept that is directly opposite to the Democrats’ legacy of scarcity in all things?
Scarcity of affordable housing, affordable water, and affordable energy. Scarcity of quality transportation and quality education. Scarcity of clean streets, affordable food, and affordable health care. Scarcity of common sense. Scarcity of sanity. All of this scarcity is thanks to Democrats. They own it.
The defining ideology and governing economic premise of Democrats is scarcity, which they view as a necessary response to the “climate emergency,” as well as an appropriate consequence of achieving “equity.” But they never come out and say, “We want scarcity.” You have to judge their motivations not by what they say, but by what they’ve done. So now, in California, a state awash in scarcity, they’ve decided to co-opt the concept of “abundance.”
California’s ambitious Governor Newsom, immediately recognizing its utility to his rebranding in preparation for 2028, has seized on the “abundance” mantra. He recently described a new book named—of course, what else?—“Abundance” as “one of the most important books Democrats can read.”
Although I’m not a Democrat, I purchased a copy of Abundance and read it closely. And it is an important book, for two reasons. First, because, as Politico gets right, it describes a strategy that Democrats are going to use to reposition and revitalize their party. Second, this book, by virtue of its clarity, reveals conflicts within the Democratic party that are irreconcilable. Which is to say that in the hands of Democrats, “abundance” will never be more than words. They are either too corrupt, too operationally incompetent, or too ideologically opposed to the idea itself to ever enact policies that might actually deliver affordable abundance to the American people.
None of this is meant to dismiss this book entirely. Written by New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and The Atlantic staff writer Derek Thompson, it exposes serious flaws in Democratic governance and asks many of the right questions. The authors accurately identify numerous causes of scarcity. A system that has become hyper-legalistic and hyper-bureaucratic, where “process” and regulatory complexity create value for attorneys and bureaucrats, while productive results become secondary. A glacial, labyrinthine permitting ordeal for any project involving multiple agencies, compounded by endless lawsuits. No argument there.
The authors even criticize the many regulatory add-ons to potentially worthy projects and programs, citing features and procedures that are mandated, for example, in service of goals relating to protecting the environment and ensuring equity. They criticize the reporting requirements mandated by bureaucrats that “colonize the time” that productive people, from scientists to construction project managers, might otherwise spend building and innovating. Again, no argument there.
But there are also gaping holes in the book’s narrative. For example, how persuasive are these two sentences from page 69? “A plausible path to decarbonization sees wind and solar installations spanning up to 590,000 square kilometers. That is roughly equal to the land mass of Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Tennessee.”
First of all, did the editors even fact-check this? These eight states, at least according to the U.S. Census Bureau, occupy 619,922 square kilometers, or, in deference to our beloved Imperial System of Weights and Measures, 228,000 square miles. They could have lopped Massachusetts off the list—10,544 square miles—and the total would have been a closer match. But where did their source come up with 228,000 square miles to begin with? To explore this question, a brief digression into the tedium of numeracy is called for.
Let’s suppose Americans were to convert all energy sources to “zero-emission” photovoltaic electricity. We would have to replace 93.6 quadrillion BTUs of energy per year, mostly coming from oil, natural gas, and coal, and consume the electrical equivalent, which would be 27 million gigawatt-hours (GWH). Let’s generously assume that the efficiency of electrification would cut that energy input down to 20 million GWH, and, with equal generosity, assume one square mile of photovoltaics can generate 1,000 GWH per year. That means it wouldn’t take 228,000 square miles to “decarbonize” the nation; it would “only” take around 20,000 square miles. This remains a stupefying quantity of land to carpet with PV panels, even while using an absurdly optimistic set of assumptions. And to be thorough, note that a square mile of wind turbines, best case, only yields around 150 GWH per year – meaning 133,000 square miles would be required using wind – and a square mile crop of corn for ethanol, best case, yields energy equivalent to a paltry 10 GWH per year – meaning that 2 million square miles would be required using corn. Perhaps the expert source the authors relied on used a blend of all three of these “renewables.” And let’s be clear – the land required is only one reason renewables aren’t renewable, and these additional concerns are not adequately addressed by the authors. Because that would be impossible.
More to the point, how could the authors of Abundance possibly think anyone would accept a land area equivalent to “Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Tennessee” being allocated to ethanol plantations, wind farms, and photovoltaic panels? Did they talk with anyone in Kentucky about this? Ohio? Liberal Massachusetts or Connecticut? Did they consider the fact that their Democratic constituency, which pushes so hard for carbon neutrality, are the same people who decry the asphalt lakes, also known as “parking lots,” that already gobble up unconscionable tracts of land?
Another gaping hole in the feasibility of an authentic “abundance movement” led by Democrats is the authors’ evident embrace of the entire “Housing First” doctrine, which denies public funding for any help to the homeless apart from free housing until there is free housing for every homeless person. What could possibly go wrong? Nowhere in their scathing and well-documented explanations for the housing shortage do the authors make any serious attempt to address the fact that addiction, mental illness, criminality, lax law enforcement, and indifferent prosecutors have as much to do with the homeless problem as a housing shortage. They actually attempt to defend Housing First by citing the case of West Virginia, a state with a lower homelessness rate than California, despite allegedly having higher rates of unemployment and mental illness. They claim this is because homes are cheaper in West Virginia, while ignoring the severe winters, stricter vagrancy laws, and cultural attributes that might more easily explain lower rates of homelessness.
Proper debunking of the Democrat attempt to launch a partisan Abundance Movement would itself require a book. But the central premise of the book is fatally flawed: Democrats will never accept reforms that might facilitate affordable abundance. The Democratic party – both its leadership and its voters – is comprised of special interests and factions that have little regard for each other, and each has a specific niche that is served by the status quo. Consider these hardwired sources of obstruction:
Will the heavily subsidized developers of affordable housing consent to a deregulated environment where they would have to compete with private and unsubsidized builders that could again construct and sell single-family homes that people could afford to buy? Will the environmentalist NGOs, conservancies, and real estate speculators that profit from artificial scarcity permit new homes to be built on inexpensive land outside the packed cities? Will public employees and their unions permit government budgets to again prioritize the enabling infrastructure that might bring roads and utility services to new housing developments on raw land, when they want all that money for their pay and pensions? Will the renewables industry, the climate zealots, and the network of consultants, brokers, traders, investors, and public utilities permit the price of energy to dramatically fall thanks to a resurgence of conventional fuels? Will the Homeless Industrial Complex support new laws and programs that actually solve the homeless problem? Will the “equity” entrepreneurs and the trial lawyers ever agree to a rollback of all the mandates that have made them prosper? Will unions consent to projects that aren’t subject to project labor agreements?
These powerful special interests are the Democratic Party. They bankroll the political campaigns for Democratic candidates, and they control what laws Democratic politicians enact and what agency appointments they make. They will never accept replacing “process” with results. They thrive on scarcity, and while they recognize the rhetorical power of an “abundance movement” led by Democrats, they will make absolutely certain it never crosses the line from rhetoric to action.
When it comes to “abundance,” at most, Democrats can ask good questions, but they have no answers. For that, they will have to speak to MAGA Republicans, who are determined to end the massive corruption promulgated by a Democrat-led uniparty for over a generation. If authentic abundance is ever going to be restored to Americans so they can again afford to live in their own country, that’s where it’s going to come from.