The browning of America

In politics, the urgent but not necessarily terribly important always trumps the important but not palpably urgent. In the US today, getting out of the economic downturn is urgent, but not a matter of life and death. Moving towards sustainable energy use and cutting back on man-made contributions to global warming is a matter of life and death, but not immediately so in the US. When there is a conflict between a speedy exit from the recession and saving the environment, the environment therefore loses.
Since the crisis hit, it has been clear that the only pro-environment policies that have a chance, in the US and possibly elsewhere too, are those that involve increased public spending. In this case environmental and Keynesian demand-boosting imperatives point in the same direction. Examples are grants for home insulation, support for R&D and environmentally friendly infrastructure expenditure such as public transport improvements. When environmental logic demands policy measures that increase costs to the private sector, however, the fact that such measures impose a financial burden on an already groaning private sector means that such measures will at best be watered down, at worst not implemented at all.

Financial Times