The demise of Silicon Valley Bank last month triggered plenty of angst among solar energy developers. Before it collapsed, SVB claimed it had "financed or helped finance 62 percent of community solar projects in America," according to Washington Post business reporter Evan Halper. At first, it wasn't clear who might fill that gap. MAGA politicians took great delight in the disruption of what they tediously referred to as the "woke" economy. Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., typically tweeted this non sequitur: "So these SVB guys spend all their time funding woke garbage — 'climate change solutions' — rather than actual banking." Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, the vampirish mastermind of Donald Trump's 2017 Muslim travel ban, asked all too rhetorically how much time and money that bank had spent on what he called equity, diversity, and climate "scams."
Why has the right become so obsessed with climate-friendly banking? Here's a clue to answering that question: just as MAGA-world was celebrating such an interruption in renewable-energy financing, red-state lawmakers were taking legal aim at private companies and local leaders considered insufficiently deferential to the fossil-fuel industry. In state after state, such politicians are now attempting to dictate the makeup of the American energy supply — sometimes putting a thumb on the scale, at other times stomping on it.
Dictating Climate Disruption
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